In other posts I've argued that suffering-at-capacity aka max suffering (or maxed out suffering) aka unbearable suffering is logically incompatible with a loving God. Suicide entails suffering-at-capacity. Thus, suicide entails there is no loving God.
But is it true that suicide entails unbearable suffering?
It seems like my own views say no, because I believe that some people can die happy, and can even die happy by choice. I think an example of this is Jesus, who willingly goes to his own death. But Jesus can die happy, knowing that he will survive his death and knowing that his death is for the salvation of the lucky elect (or, under universal reconciliation, for everyone).
Socrates is another example. He takes his own life, but he seems to do so with a kind of satisfaction, knowing that either he will be favorably judged by gods in the afterlife, seeing as he is a philosopher who has strived to cultivate virtue, or death is a peaceful sleep. Either way, there is nothing to worry about. Socrates dies peacefully, despite the fact he dies by suicide; no unbearable suffering in sight.
First, here is a similar puzzle: If someone sees that they will be crucified on a cross in the near future, and takes their life to prevent what would be unbearable suffering, then isn't this a case of suicide implying a lack of unbearable suffering?
My response: Dread itself can cause unbearable suffering. If you want to know whether someone is suffering unbearably, look no farther than signs that life is not worth living for them. So if someone takes their life, it must be the case that living has become unbearable by something. In the case above, it's dread that is the source of the person taking their life, and thus it is dread that is the cause of unbearable suffering.
So how do I respond to the case of Jesus, or Socrates?
One option (and these options need not be mutually exclusive) is to say that no one can really die happy; everyone wants to live. Consider what Diotima says in the Symposium:
“Now, then,” she said. “Can we simply say that people love the good?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But shouldn’t we add that, in loving it, they want the good to be theirs?”
“We should.”
“And not only that,” she said. “They want the good to be theirs forever, don’t they?”
“We should add that too.”
“In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever.”
“That’s very true,” I said. (206; pg 519)
Which reminds me of something Nietzsche said:
"Oh man! Take heed of what the dark midnight says: I slept, I slept—from deep dreams I awoke: The world is deep—and more profound than day would have thought. Profound in her pain—Pleasure—more profound than pain of heart, Woe speaks; pass on. But all pleasure seeks eternity—a deep and profound eternity." (Schaeffer, Francis. How Should We Then Live? Translated by Udo Middelmann. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976, pg 169.)
We then must speak of dying relatively happy. Some deaths are more miserable than others, and we should strive to have the least miserable death we can.
A key to dying well is to write down a bucket list, a set of things you'd like to do while you can, and to then prioritize them. Take the single most important achievement on that list and turn it into an action plan. And that there becomes your life, for the time being at least. If you do this accurately enough, and if you are lucky enough to succeed, and if you don't happen to change your mind such that the achievement in question no longer interests you, then you will achieve a pretty good sense of satisfaction with yourself and your life; you accomplished the essential task you set out to accomplish; you slayed your dragon.
So when we talk about dying happy, we are talking about something relative and not absolute. Obviously, if an old, accomplished person had the chance to live another life, or to be young again and free, they'd take that over death most of the time. But we don't get the option. So you have to psychologically adapt to what you're stuck with.
Another option is to say that Socrates did in fact suffer unbearably.
Another option is to say that being able to die happy is exactly what causes unbearable suffering. If someone is able to die happy, then they probably have achieved some sense of existential completion; something of a self-actualization, or maybe even a psychological state beyond self-actualization. Whatever it is, it's the peak of psychological achievement; a kind of bliss or nirvana or enlightenment. But if someone has achieved such a state, then you can see how continued living could become unbearable for this kind of person. To live further would be pointless, and indeed it may be impossible to live without some kind of pursuit on which to live, a pursuit that betrays desire or need, when the person who is existentially complete has no desire or need, and thus has no pursuits, and thus has no basis on which to live. Living itself becomes unbearable for such a person. So far from the ability to die happy contradicting the idea that self-death entails unbearable suffering, it actually can entail it.
So I can have it both ways: self-death always entails unbearable suffering, and yet someone can die happy while choosing to die. But how can such deep peace be compatible with such deep suffering?
Another option is simply to say that not all suicides entail unbearable suffering, but some of them do. Even if just a single suicide entails unbearable suffering, that's enough for my argument against God.
The problem of different kinds of unbearable suffering:
Let's say someone achieves existential completion and can die happy. Because of this, they find life unbearable and so they choose their own death. Here's the problem: We now have two entirely separate kinds of unbearable suffering. The first kind is the suffering of being existentially incomplete. The second kind is living without a basis on which to live.
For the kind of person under question, the greater suffering between the two is obviously being existentially incomplete. Because, after all, why wouldn't this person just choose to die before accomplishing their great task? If they're going to choose death anyway, why not save themselves the trouble? The answer: because the thought of dying before accomplishing the great task is unbearable. And yet the thought of dying is no longer unbearable after the task has been accomplished, and indeed the thought of living becomes unbearable.
So now we have two kinds of unbearable suffering:
(1) Die before becoming existentially complete.
(2) Live while existentially complete.
Which one is worse? Surely, the first one is worse. And yet, death is not a conscious harm. And only conscious harms can be the worst harms. If suffering in general ultimately cashes out in terms of consciousness, then the worst suffering cashes out in terms of consciousness. But if we allow depriving evils to cash out in terms of consciousness via the theoretical conscious comparison between the positive goods and a lack thereof, then don't we allow depriving evils, and thus unconscious harms, to be the worst of sufferings? This would lead to a contradiction on my part.
Response: Being deprived of paradise is bad for the one deprived, but not as bad as being sent to hell. We know that being deprived of paradise is bad the same way we know being sent to hell is bad: by the test of direct awareness. We can be certain that one experience is better than another (or better than a lack) by comparing the two in our minds. If one of the experiences is not actual but probable, then we still have probabilistic justification for believing that one experience is better than another.
The person directly aware of their happiness in paradise is aware that being deprived of paradise would make them infinitely worse off. But this doesn't mean that deprivational evils are as bad as positive evils of the same magnitude. This is an asymmetry between max depriving evils and max extrinsic evils, and between max saving goods and max extrinsic goods. Being saved from hell is a max saving good. Being sent to heaven is a max extrinsic good. The latter includes the former, but then also includes infinitely more goodness. So extrinsic goods / evils are always greater than saving goods / depriving evils of the same "rank", at least when maxed, because max extrinsic goods / evils always include max saving goods / depriving evils. (Maybe unmaxed evils and goods are sometimes, or always, incommensurable and cannot be held at the same rank.)
So the worst of suffering and the best of flourishing still must be intrinsic and not merely depriving or saving. So technically the best possible good with respect to someone suffering in hell is to send them to heaven, and not merely to snuff them out of existence. But both the sending and the snuffing are in fact maximal goods, it's just that one is greater.
But how can you have two max goods with one being greater than the other? Likewise, how can max suffering be considered maxed when we can imagine a worse suffering? If (2) is an unbearable suffering, and yet (1) is worse, then (2) isn't really a max evil. This would mean that suicide doesn't entail max suffering.
Response: Think of unbearable suffering as suffering that surpasses a threshold. Different sufferings can surpass that threshold to different degrees. So if I have a bank account with $100 in it, I can overdraft it by spending $101 or by spending $1,000. If one's capacity for suffering is overdrafted, then one experiences unbearable suffering, no matter the degree of the overdraft.
This means that some max sufferings are worse than other max sufferings. This makes sense, for God could always enhance our minds so that we could suffer in deeper and more profound ways, and then torture us with our new heightened capacities for suffering. These heightened max sufferings are worse than our current max sufferings.
But max suffering is relative to the individual's capacity. And saving goods are relative to the suffering. So no matter how simple the creature, their suffering-at-capacity produces a good of being saved from that suffering, and it's hard to imagine what goods God has in mind that are supposedly greater than these saving goods.
To die happy then is to die without a specific kind of suffering – the suffering of feeling unfinished in one's life, and to die with a specific kind of happiness – the happiness of feeling that one's life is complete. But it's entirely compatible to have one kind of happiness amid outweighing pains such that one dies with one kind of happiness, peace, and yet also with unbearable suffering. The mistake is in thinking that necessarily happiness and pain eliminate each other and cannot co-exist, or in thinking that specifically contentment cannot survive along with suffering, as suffering implies discontent. But one can be content in certain respects while discontent in others, just as one can be happy with some things while unhappy with others. No one is truly happy, because to be truly happy would be to plainly ignore the failings of this world and the plights of others.
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