Open Journal of Philosophy
2013. Vol.3, No.1, 5-8
Published Online February 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2013.31002
Suicide and Freedom from Suffering in Schopenhauer’s
“Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung”
Christopher Roland Trogan
Department of Humanities, United States Merchant Marine Academy, New York, USA
Received November 4th, 2012; revise d De cember 8th, 2012; accepted December 20th, 2012
Schopenhauer’s stance on suicide focuses on the possibility of achieving freedom from suffering through
the denial of the individual will-to-life. Ultimately, Schopenhauer argues that suicide fails to achieve this
freedom, primarily because it is an act of will that confirms, rather than denies, the will-to-life. Suicide,
he argues, is a kind of contradiction in that it involves the individual will’s willfully seeking to extermi-
nate itself as a way of escaping the wretchedness of willing. While Schopenhauer explicitly states that one
possesses the individual right to commit suicide in order to attempt to obtain freedom from suffering, and
even admits that he can understand why one would attempt to do so, he denies that there is any possibility
that this freedom may be actualized. To take one’s life indicates a lack of awareness (or an unwillingness
to become aware) of the futility of the individual will and the experience of the wholeness and totality of
will-in-itself. One has the freedom to destroy oneself, but one’s freedom to free oneself from suffering is
an illusion. If one concurs with Schopenhauer that suicide should be understood as a futile escape from
the freedom of suffering, one cannot deny the brilliant insights of his argument. His is, one the one hand,
a brilliant articulation of the function of suicide—placing the act squarely within what one would intuit as
its primary purpose (freedom from suffering). On the other hand, given Schopenhauer’s philosophical
framework, it negates that possibility and precludes consideration of any others.
Keywords: Schopenhauer; Suicide; Will; Freedom; Suffering
Introduction
Schopenhauer’s stance on suicide focuses on the possibility
of achieving freedom from suffering through the denial of the
individual will-to-life. Ultimately, Schopenhauer argues that
suicide fails to achieve this freedom, primarily because it is an
act of will that confirms, rather than denies, the will-to-life.
Suicide is a kind of contradiction in that it involves the indi-
vidual will’s willfully seeking to exterminate itself as a way of
escaping the wretchedness of willing.
Freedom from Suffering
His position seems paradoxical when placed within the con-
text of his enlightened view of self-death. In fact, in a short
essay entitled “On Suicide” (“Über den Selbstmord”) first pub-
lished in a volume of essays called Parega and Paralipomena
(1851), he deplores the fact that suicide is often regarded as a
crime, “whereas there is obviously nothing in the world over
which every man has such an indisputable right as his own
person and life” (Schopenhauer, 1851, 1974: p. 306). In princi-
ple, Schopenhauer finds nothing morally objectionable in sui-
cide. He falls far short of Kant’s repudiation of suicide as a
violation of the categorical imperative1. He reminds us that
suicide was regarded by many Greeks and Romans as noble,
and explicitly commends David Hume’s 1755 essay “On Sui-
cide” (published posthumously in 1777) as the most thorough
refutation of the feeble arguments put forth by religion against
the act2. He is particularly opposed to Christianity, which, he
argues, has as its core the truth that the real purpose of life is
suffering. Since suicide is an attempt to free oneself from suf-
fering, Christianity rejects it. However, Schopenhauer argues
that it is only natural to attempt to free oneself from suffering
and that few, if any, persons would voluntarily choose to live
their lives over again:
But perhaps at the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere
and at the same time in possessions of his faculties, will ever
wish to go through it again... Rather than this, he will much
prefer to choose complete non-existence... Similarly, what has
been said about the father of history (Herodotus) has not been
refuted, namely that no person has existed who has not wished
more than once that he had not to live through the following
day. Accordingly, the shortness of life, so often lamented, may
perhaps be the best thing about it (1818, 1844, 1969: Vol. 1, pp:
324-325).
Not surprisingly, Schopenhauer acknowledges that suicide
would be worth carrying out if it were a means to achieving
this goal. Dale Jacquette writes that “Schopenhauer maintains
that suffering makes life so miserable that only the fear of death
restrains the individual from self-destruction, while if life as a
1Indeed, Schopenhauer writes in On the Basis of Morality (Über die Grund-
lage der Moral) of 1837 that “the... criticism of Kant’s foundation of morals
will be in particular the best preparation and guide—in fact the direct path—
to my own foundation of morals, for opposites illustrate each other,and my
foundation is, in essentials, diametrically opposed to Kant’s” (Schopenhau-
er, 1837, 1 965: p. 34).
2In the essay Hume puts forward a framework for conceptualizing suicide by
arguing implicitly that individual freedom is the factor which justifies sui-
cide and t hat all created bei ngs have received t he power, author ization, and
freedom to change the natural course of things in order to guarantee their
well-being.

C. R. TROGAN
whole were enjoyable, the idea of death as the culmination of
life would be intolerable” (Jacquette, 2000: p. 301). Unfortu-
nately, for reasons explained below, Schopenhauer believes
that suicide does not release one from suffering. In order to
understand why Schopenhauer believes this is so, one must first
look more closely into the nature of suffering and its relation-
ship to the will-to-life.
Suffering and the Will-to-Life
The central concept of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is that of
will (der Wille). Will is the ultimate driving force and essence
of the whole material world, including ourselves. It is not to be
seen as the purposeful will of an individual person, but as the
blind impulsion of each thing to realize its own nature. True
understanding, then, consists in recognizing that, from a meta-
physical standpoint, this is the way things are. In the same way
that the world is the Will, the human body is an individual will
and expresses itself within humanity as the will-to-life (der
Wille zum Leben). However, this will-to-life and the physical
body through which it is expressed is not merely part of the
physical world which becomes “activated” or driven by some
separate force which is Will. It is exceedingly difficult to ex-
plain the relationship between the Will and the will-to-life. Per-
haps the simplest way to understand it is that the will-to-life is
the force that expresses the Will at the level of the individual,
i.e. it is an individual aspect of the greater Will. In this way,
Schopenhauer seems to view the former as an instantiation of
the latter. Still, Schopenhauer does not make this entirely clear.
Instead, he writes that all of reality, including ourselves, is Will.
Schopenhauer writes that once one truly understands this:
[it] become[s] the key to the knowledge of the innermost be-
ing of the whole of nature... He will recognize that same will
not only in those phenomena that are quite similar to his own,
in men and animals, but continued reflection will lead him to
recognize the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant... by
which the crystal is formed... that turns the magnet to the North
Pole... all these he will recognize as different only in the phe-
nomenon, but the same according to their inner nature (Scho-
penhauer, 1818, 1 84 4 , 1969: Vol. 1, p. 5).
Since an individual is essentially composed of this blind, re-
lentless, striving (the will-to-life), he is destined—for reasons
given below—to dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustra-
tion. Indeed, Schopenhauer maintains that “in-eliminable” suf-
fering is so great a part of our lives that it is essential to our
existence: “suffering is essential to life, and therefore does not
flow in upon us from outside, but everyone carries around with-
in himself its perennial source” (Schopenha uer, 1818, 1844, 1969:
Vol. 1, p. 318).
There are three major ways in which Schopenhauer believes
the will-to-life is intertwined with suffering. First, he argues
that as material, living creatures, our ordinary existence is such
that we must strive towards ends. Schopenhauer points out that
a being who strives and is conscious of whether his ends are
fulfilled is a being who suffers. Each of us must strive in order
to exist, and conflicts of ends will inevitably occur: “Awakened
to the life out of the night of consciousness, the will finds itself
as an individual in an endless and boundless world, among in-
numerable individuals, all striving, suffering, and erring” (1818,
1844: Vol. 2, p. 573).
Second, Schopenhauer argues that suffering is connected to
the will-to-life, since the latter springs not from a state of con-
tentment but from some sort of lack or deficiency; in other
words, the experience of a lack or deficiency is, in itself, a form
of suffering. When one fails to achieve some of the ends for
which one strives, the lack or deficiency is prolonged—“to-
gether with the consciousness of not achieving one’s end”—
and this furthers suffering” (Janoway, 1989: p. 105). Moreover,
he holds that even if one does achieve the end toward which
one strives and experiences satisfaction, the latter state is only
positive relative to the deficiency it removes. According to
Schopenhauer, satisfaction is “negative” while pain is “posi-
tive,” since “pain is something which we feel, but satisfaction is
an absence; to be satisfied is simply to return to neutral by
wiping out a felt deficiency” (Janoway, 1989: p. 105). There-
fore, having no deficiency and having nothing to strive for has,
according to Schopenhauer, no value in its own terms. Scho-
penhauer makes this point nicely in On the Basis of Morality:
The reason for this is that pain, suffering that includes all
want, privation, need, in fact every wish or desire, is that which
is positive and directly felt or experienced. On the other hand,
the nature of satisfaction, enjoyment, and happiness consists
solely in the removal of a privation, the still of a pain; and so
these have a negative effect. Therefore, need and desire are the
condition of every pleasure or enjoyment. Plato recognized
this... Voltaire also says: “There are no true pleasures without
true needs. Thus pain is something positive that automatically
makes itself known; satisfaction and pleasures are something
negative, the mere elimination of the former (Schopenhauer,
1837, 1965: p. 146).
Schopenhauer also reflects on this point in more concrete
terms using examples as wide-ranging as that of taking a sip of
water to contemplating the Sistine Chapel. No matter the case,
he holds that gratification (even mere satisfaction) occurs only
because of a reduction or temporary suspension of willing; to
be gratified or satisfied is merely to return to a “neutral” state,
but returning to “neutral” (without deficiency) means having
nothing to strive for and, according to Schopenhauer, this has
no positive value on its own terms. Indeed, if such a state con-
tinues for any period of time, it wipes out one’s essential being
(willing) and leads to what Schopenhauer calls “boredom”
which he argues is a state of suffering itself.
Finally, the attainment of ends never makes striving—and
suffering—cease altogether. Even when our striving is suc-
cessful, we will soon strive for other ends and suffer further.
Every satisfied desire gives birth to a new one and “no possible
satisfaction in the world could suffice to still its craving, set a
final goal to its demands, and fill the bottomless pit of its heart”
(Schopenhauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: Vol. 2, p. 573). Whenever
our striving is successful, it is not long before we continue to
strive for something else, and to suffer further. The will-to-life
is like an unquenchable thirst: we can have momentary satisfac-
tion and relief, but there is quite literally nothing that we can do
that will stop us from willing or suffering. Schopenhauer cap-
tures all three of these points succinctly:
Awakened to life out of the night of consciousness, the will
finds itself as an individual in an endless and boundless world,
among innumerable individuals, all striving, suffering, and
erring; and, as if through a troubled dream, it hurries back to
the old unconsciousness. Yet till then its desires are unlimited,
its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives birth to
a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to
still its craving, set a final goal it its demands, and fill the bot-
tomless pit of its heart (Schopenhauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: Vol.
2, p. 573).
6

C. R. TROGAN
Indeed, suffering arising from the striving of the will-to-life
makes life so miserable that only the fear of death stops from
self-destruction. For many, this fear is greater than one’s desire
to eliminate suffering:
If life itself were a precious blessing, and decidedly prefer-
able to non-existence, the exit from it would not need to be
guarded by such fearful watchmen as death and its terrors. But
who would go on living life as it is, if death were less terrible?
And who could bear even the mere thought of death, if life were
pleasure? But the former still always has the good point of
being the end of life, and we console ourselves with death in
regard to the sufferings of life, and with the sufferings of life in
regard to death (Schopenhauer, 1818/1844/1969: Vol. 2, pp.
578-579).
While this fear of death is virtually universal, Schopenhauer
holds that there are no rational reasons for it. He explores sev-
eral familiar arguments for the fear of death—all of which he
believes are irrational. First, we might fear dying if dying in-
volved pain, but then the object of fear would be pain, rather
than death itself. Second, he argues that we did not exist for an
infinite time before birth and that this is a matter of indifference
to us, so we should rationally regard our not existing in the fu-
ture with the same indifference. Third, he reiterates Epicurus’s
argument that since death is non-existence, it should not be
feared. To something or someone that does not exist, it should
not (and cannot) matter. Therefore, it would seem that if living
necessarily entails suffering, and if we need not fear death, we
may as well destroy ourselves in order to escape the suffering
caused by the will-to-life. However, he maintains that this is
impossible.
Essentially, there are two reasons why suicide fails to free us
from suffering. The first reason does not focus on suicide in
particular, but on death in general. Schopenhauer’s position lies
in between those who maintain that death either leads to abso-
lute annihilation or immortality—both of which he regards as
“equally false” (Schopenhauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: Vol. 2, p.
464). In order to understand his “higher standpoint” on death,
he utilizes the Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself
and the phenomenon. Each individual exists as part of the
world of phenomena that oc cupies space and time in t he physic-
cal world and then, at some point, ceases to exist. From this
point of view, death is certain and absolute annihilation. How-
ever, Schopenhauer makes it clear that the self is much more
than this. The individual is also something in itself outside of
time and space, beyond change, not susceptible to death3. Scho-
penhauer writes that my phenomenal self is actually an infini-
tesimal part of who I truly am:
the greatest equivocation really lies in the word “I”... Ac-
cording as I understand this word, I can say: “Death is my
entire end”; or else: “This my personal phenomenal appear-
ance is just as infinitely small a part of my true inner self as I
am of the world (Schopenhauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: Vol. 2, p.
491).
One exists partly in the phenomenal world, but more fully in
the world itself—a world beyond space and time, unsusceptible
to individuation. In fact, Schopenhauer claims that individuality
is not only a source of torment, but a kind of illusion. Since this
is the case, one’s death cannot be true a nnihilation.
What Schopenhauer means by “my true inner nature” is the
same thing as the world in itself (Will) which is not subject to
individuation. With regard to Schopenhauer’s distinction be-
tween true reality and our individual, ephemeral existence in
the phenomenal world, Christopher Janoway writes that “reality
in itself is eternal in the sense of timelessness. I have my “now”,
and every other phenomenon that was or will be has its time,
which for it is equally a “now” (Janoway, 1989: pp. 107-108).
Reality in itself, of which I am, is something permanent, not
subject to annihilation. The idea is that the world manifests
itself as the phenomenal “me” (in the here and now), but that
once that “me” ceases to exist, the same world will manifest
itself in other individuals who will each refer to themselves as
“I” just as I have, pursue their ends, experience suffering, etc.
Therefore, death does not afford freedom from suffering. It is
merely a phenomenal episode in the world of appearance that
has no bearing on the Will or the will-to-life; that individuals
die is not a fact about reality itself. Bryan Magee expresses this
point nicely:
what is phenomenal about him would have died anyway, and
what is noumenal about him cannot cease to exist. To adapt
one of Schopenhauer’s earlier metaphors, he is like a man who
tries to remove the rainbow from a waterfall by scooping out
the water with a bucket (Magee, 1983: p. 223).
One would imagine that Schopenhauer’s position on death
would suffice as an argument against the possibility of achiev-
ing freedom from suffering, but he takes it a step further by
focusing specifically on suicide. Aside from the fact that death
in general fails to achieve freedom from suffering for the rea-
sons described above, suicide possess a further characteristic
which makes it, more than death in general, especially power-
less to bring about freedom from suffering.
For Schopenhauer, suicide is an instance of the will-to-life
acting against itself. It is an outright contradiction, successful
only at destroying the individual phenomenon rather than the
Will itself. Individual consciousness is indeed destroyed through
suicide, but man’s inner nature, identical with the Will and en-
tailing the experience of suffering, can never be destroyed.
Schopenhauer describes suicide as:
... the arbitrary doing away with the individual phenomenon,
[which] differs from the denial of the will-to-life, which is the
only act of its freedom to appear in the phenomenon... Far from
being a denial of the will, suicide is a phenomenon of the will’s
strong affirmation. For denial has its essential nature in the
fact that the sorrows of life, not its sorrows, are shunned. The
suicide wills life, and is dissatisfied merely with the conditions
on which it has come to him. Therefore he gives up by no
means the will-to-life, but merely life, since he destroys the in-
dividual phenomenon (Schopenhauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: Vol. 1,
p. 398).
The individual simply cannot willfully exterminate himself
as a way of escaping the suffering resulting from willing. Sui-
cide ends life, but as the result of a willful decision in the ser-
vice of the individual will-to-live, i t cannot by it s very natu re tran-
scend willing4. As Jacquette notes, freedom from suffering—
3A detailed explanation of Schopenhauer’s complex treatment of the sel
f
exceeds the bounds of this article. In short, he sees the self in at least four
ways which seem, at first, to struggle for dominance: as a subject of experi-
ence and knowledge, a subject of will and action, a bodily manifestation o
f
the will to life, and a pure mirror of timeless reality. The first three might
best describe the phenomenal self, while the last seems closest to the true
self.
4Janoway writes: “The question whether Schopenhauer’s higher view o
f
death would be consoling is a difficult one. He tries to inculcate the thought
that one’s own death has no great significance in the order of things. But i
f
one accepted his reasons for taking this attitude, ought one not to think that
one’s life has just as little significance? And is that a consoling thought?
Schopenhauer appears to think so...” (Janoway, 1996: p. 89).

C. R. TROGAN
8
the denial of the will-to-life through an act of will against one-
self—lacks logical coherence within Schopenhauer’s system:
The only logically coherent freedom to be sought from the
sufferings of the will is not to will death and willfully destroy
the self, but to continue to live while quieting the will, in an
ultra-ascetic submissive attitude of sublime indifference to both
life and death (Jacquette, 2000: p. 307)5.
Herein lies the problem of freedom as it relates to Schopen-
hauer’s position on suicide: while he states explicitly in “On
Suicide” that one possesses the individual right to commit sui-
cide in order to attempt to obtain freedom from suffering, and
even admits that he can understand why one would attempt to
do so, he then denies that there is any possibility that this free-
dom may be actualized. To take one’s life indicates a lack of
awareness (or an unwillingness to become aware) of the futility
of the individual will and the experience of the wholeness and
totality of will-in-itself. One has the freedom to destroy oneself,
but one’s freedom to free oneself from suffering is an illusion.
... whoever is oppressed by the burdens of life, whoever loves
life and affirms it, but abhors its torments, and in particular
can no longer endure the hard lot that has fallen to just him,
cannot hope from deliverance from death, and cannot save
himself through suicide. Only by a false illusion does the cool
shade of Orcus allure him as a haven of rest. The earth rolls on
from day into night; the individual dies; but the sun itself burns
without intermission, an eternal noon. Life is certain to the
will-to-live; the form of life is the endless present; it matters not
how individuals, the phenomena of the idea, arise and pass
away in time, like fleeting dreams. Therefore, suicide already
appears to us a vain and therefore foolish action (Schopen-
hauer, 1818, 1844, 1969: p. 491).
If one concurs with Schopenhauer that suicide should be un-
derstood as a futile escape from the freedom of suffering, i.e. as
an (admittedly futile) means to a (failed) end—one cannot deny
the insightfulness of his argument. However, this may be too
reductive a view of suicide. It is possible, for example, that
suicide may be an end in itself, perhaps—among other things—
a spontaneous expression of individual freedom. Yet, Schopen-
hauer’s philosophical system does not allow for such a pos-
sibility. His is, one the one hand, a brilliant articulation of sui-
cide—placing the act squarely within what one would intuit as
its primary purpose (free dom from suffering). On the other hand,
given Schopenhauer’s philosophical framework, it negates that
possibility and precludes consideration of any others.
REFERENCES
Jacquette, D. (2000). Schopenhauer on death. Cambridge companion to
schopenhauer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CCOL0521621062.010
Janoway, C. (1996). Schopenhauer. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Magee, B. (1983). The philosophy of schopenhauer. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Schopenhauer, A. (1965). On the basis of morality. Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill.
Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The world as will and representation. New
York: Dover.
Schopenhauer, A. (1974). On suicide. Parega and Paralipomena. Ox-
ford: Oxford U.P.
5Schopenhauer makes one very interesting exception to his position on
suicid e and i ts fai lure t o ach iev e fr eedom fr o m suf fer ing . It is th e case o f t he
ascetic who commits suicide by starvation. Far from being a manifestation
of the will-to-life, the ascetic ceases to live because he ceases to will. Only
this exceptional type of suicide has the capacity to free one from suicide:
“Thus [the ascetic] resorts to fasting, and even to self-castigation and self-
torture, in order that, by constant privation and suffering, he may more and
more break down and kill the will that he recognizes and abhors as the
source of his own suffering and of the world’s” (Schopenhauer, 1818,
1844, 1969: Vol. 1, p. 382).