Arthur Schopenhauer on Suicide (1820)

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Let me be precise about something which people persistently misunderstand. I do not condemn suicide in the manner of the clergy.

[00:00:09]They have no argument worth examining.

[00:00:12]The church brands it a crime, yet cannot find a single passage in scripture that forbids it.

[00:00:20]They declaim. They call it cowardice.

[00:00:23]They offer insipidities.

[00:00:26]What penalty, I ask, can frighten a man who is not afraid of death itself?

[00:00:31]The ancients, the Stoics, the Greeks, many honored volun-