Euthanasia

Is suicide or putting an end to one’s own existence a contemptible and cowardly act? That it is contemptible it is arguable, but to put end to one´s own existence requires courage, and a high sense of appreciation of life; the estimation of the value of an individual’s existence; the estimation of the value of your own existence.  

First of all, why should the act of suicide be a contemptible act? If we think of scenarios where people put end to their own existence, like for instance, a young lady who takes her own life by drowning in the sea, it is difficult to tell what makes this act contemptible in itself rather than tragical. For something to be a contemptible act, it requires that the act in question (suicide) has to be dishonourable, or worthless, as if the act were an improper modification of the natural order of things, as though to live (to exist) were a duty of a high divine order. Death is the natural and inexorable destiny of life; whatever comes into being also passes away, just as an indivisible instant ceases to be as soon as another new instant supersedes it, and so on ad infinitum. This truth is not only about life but about time as well. In fact, existence comes into mind through the temporalization of being.

If the young lady had her reasons for putting an end to her miserable existence, there is nothing more honourable than having the power of determination of taking power over her own destiny by her own hands; she takes control over her time being alive.  Perhaps she wasn’t able to escape a cruel reality peculiar to her own and distinct existence. If no one could tell or see the reason or motive why the young lady took her own life, then the act of suicide would be no more worthless than the act of striving for the prolongation of one's own existence when it becomes too miserable. The bewilderment lies in the incapability of understanding why someone who appears to be successful and with pleasant prospects in life, decides anyhow to put an end to his existence. When life prospers, it is worth living it.  A person who sees no worth in living begs the question (petitio principii) of another person who sees no worth in dying. The former may strive for the best way to die, whereas the latter for the best way to live. No one chooses to come into existence, it depends on an infinite amount of circumstances that not even the parents that chooses to bring a child into this world could escape. Once this is understood the notion of "freedom" is called into evaluation; Hume says that there is no freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse. You have no free will until you use your free will to refuse, for nothing in your will is free, but emanates strictly from necessity.

Suicide is regarded as contemptuous by an arbitrary judgement prompt by a sentiment of dread; the fear of the death, which is a natural sentiment of which living creatures have been endowed with. It is natural to fear death; its abhorrence lies in its emptiness, and this emptiness unveil the true nature of existence. Existence is emptiness of being, as a being which has never been, a being that has been but is no more; as a being that is now but ceases to be immediately as time proceeds, - as an instant that appears and disappears as soon as another instant emerges - as a being that (probably) will be but its being is not yet. There is nothing contemptuous in suicide but the fear of death at the moment it is embraced; it is the cessation of the continuity of being in space and time as one knows it, and the starting point for the bewildering nature of noumena. It is true that for most animals, and for life in general, the striving for the continuity of the own existence is the norm, but it is also true that life is always at risk, that life's delicate  and ephemerous existence is always vanishing and regenerating itself.

An individual’s existence becomes miserable whenever suffering and pain, caused by the sentiments of shame, humiliation, disappointment, blow, setback, or  any other kind of misfortune appears in its existence. Existence is a  relief and a tragedy; it is a becoming and passing away, in the sense of coming-into-be and ceasing-to-be. Schopenhauer says, in the relation of being to existence, that the emptiness of existence consist "in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being." The tragedy of existence is the annihilation of Being, the acknowledgement that Being in itself is almost as empty; its nature is diaphanous and reduces reality to an experience of ghostly character.