Don’t be selfish.

Discussed in class, Kant faces the problem of suicide, he finds it immoral and he came to this conclusion using the Categorical Imperative.  First he identified the maxim as “If suicide is the only way to satisfy the demands of self love, kill yourself.”  To end ones current state of suffering, kill oneself out of self love.  But here lies the contradiction, Kant defines self love as the pursuit to further ones life.  Killing yourself out of self love obviously doesn’t work if the main purpose of self love was to keep yourself alive, therefore this cannot be a universal law.  Man has the duty of self love to keep themselves alive and further their life. Kant doesn’t care about the future whether the suffering will end or not because he is not a consequencalist, so as of the moment one should keep themselves alive because it would be the moral thing to do according to the Categorical Imperative.

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