Product Description

In this compact and illuminating history, Georges Minois examines how a culture's attitudes about suicide reflect its larger beliefs and values-attitudes toward life and death, duty and honor, pain and pleasure. Minois begins his survey with classical Greece and Rome, where suicide was acceptable-even heroic-under some circumstances. With the rise of Christianity, however, suicide was unequivocally condemned as self-murder and an insult to God. With the Renaissance and its renewed interest in classical culture, suicide reemerged as a philosophical issue. Minois finds examples of changing attitudes in key Renaissance texts by Bacon, Montaigne, Sidney, Donne, and Shakespeare. By 1700, the term suicide had replaced self-murder and the subject began to interest the emerging scientific disciplines. Minois follows the ongoing evaluation of suicide through the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods, and he examines attitudes that emerge in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science, law, philosophy, and literature. Minois concludes with comments on the most recent turn in this long and complex history-the emotional debate over euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the right to die.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #626986 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03
• Original language: French
• Dimensions: 1.19 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Booklist
Suicide, or "self murder," was viewed as an honorable death in ancient times. By the high Middle Ages, however, the corpses of suicides were mutilated and buried in unconsecrated grounds. Now, of course, terms like Kevorkian (sometimes used as a verb!) and assisted death have become part of an ongoing national debate. Minois, the author of numerous books on religious attitudes and relations with secular society, has provided a timely chronicle tracing the evolution of societal attitudes toward suicide. He utilizes such diverse sources as St. Augustine, Shakespeare, and Camus. Minois writes in an unadorned, concise prose that aids him in treating a serious subject in a serious manner. Although his own convictions on the issue are clear, Minois treats both sides of our current debate with objectivity, understanding, and compassion. Jay Freeman

From Kirkus Reviews
Minois's book follows the religious, philosophical, literary, and judicial debate for and against self-murder from antiquity to the end of the Enlightenment, demonstrating the close connection between political power, religious authority, social s tatus, and the freedom to die. Minois, an independent scholar and author of 14 books, begins with the change in public attitudes toward suicide in Rome, in the face of military exigencies and a barbarian onslaught. The Epicurean ideal of the ``perfect exi t'' was rejected by a state desperate to increase the number of taxpayers and soldiers at its disposal. Suicide was punished by confiscation of the deceased's estate and destruction of the corpse. After the rise of Christendom, church leaders incorporated prohibitions on suicide into religious doctrine, in part through the philosophical translation of Thomas Aquinas. Medieval law followed suit, prescribing torture, hanging, public display, and ignominious disposal of the corpses of suicides. Not until the advent of scientific inquiry in the Renaissance were these rules challenged, but by then there was a double standard: commoners who hanged or drowned themselves were punished, while nobles who took their own lives with cold steel or pistols escaped ``jus tice'' through insanity rulings and purposely botched investigations. Most interesting is the link between power and suicide; whenever the political and religious establishment experienced weakening authority, official opposition to suicide increased. The Reformation, Enlightenment, and French Revolution all saw intensified propaganda against self-murder. The conclusion is clear, as is Minois's sympathy: suicide is the last refuge of the free man. Death, after all, is not only a land of no return, it is t he line delimiting the power of state and church. Minois's study is detailed and thorough, though he rarely leaves France and England for examples. It may be too thorough for the casual reader, but gory anecdotes and effective reference to overarching int ellectual trends make the book edifying and morbidly enjoyable. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
This book, lucidly translated, makes compulsive reading. -- Roy Porter The Times of London Minois's book follows the religious, philosophical, literary, and judicial debate for and against self-murder from antiquity to the end of the Enlightenment, demonstrating the close connection between political power, religious authority, social status, and the freedom to die... Minois's study is detailed and thorough... Gory anecdotes and effective reference to overarching intellectual trends make the book edifying and morbidly enjoyable. Kirkus Reviews Minois... has provided a timely chronicle tracing the evolution of societal attitudes toward suicide... Minois writes in an unadorned, concise prose that aids him in treating a serious subject in a serious manner. Although his own convictions on the issue are clear, Minois treats both sides of our current debate with objectivity, understanding, and compassion. Booklist The History of suicide has come of age. After a century of sociological inquiry, historians over the last decade have now embraced this all-too-human act and have produced remarkable results. -- D. J. A. Matthew American Historical Review Minois has succeeded in pulling together a wide range of materials, and in reminding us how elite attitudes to suicide shifted, and that those shifts may well serve as pointers to some more general developments in the intellectual history of Europe. -- J. A. Sharpe Journal of Early Modern History A broad and thought-provoking discussion of the complexities of suicide. Continually reminding us that the legalities and theoretical discussions of suicide often do not coincide with the reality of suicide, Minois focuses his discussion around Hamlet's famous question, 'to be or not to be,' and this proves to be an effective way to organize and present the large and dense amount of material... This book provides a useful and impressive collection of data and an absorbing discussion of attitudes toward voluntary death. -- Elise P. Garrison Religious Studies Review