The Suicide Phenomenon and the Contemporary Society: Knowing and Understanding the ‘Self’
Abstract
Our objective in this paper is to examine the phenomenon of suicide which is becoming a pervasive part of our contemporary social life. In spite of the comforts from human innovations and inventions in contemporary societies, disillusionment about life is still a problem. This calls for a sober reflection on the experience of suicide. Through historical and phenomenological analysis, we argue that in contemporary
societies, the parochial view of ‘self’ has caused the fragmented living that is responsible for suicide. In the end, we argue that rather than deploying psychological, moral or theological justifications against the permissibility of suicide, knowing and understanding the narrow perception of the self at the background of suicide will be more helpful in addressing the phenomenon of suicide in contemporary society.