著者

松永 幸子

出版者

東京大学大学院教育学研究科

雑誌

東京大学大学院教育学研究科紀要 (ISSN:13421050)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.42, pp.11-20, 2003-03-10

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Is committing suicide sin? This is the issue on which has been debated for a long time. In early modern Europe, suicide was called "English Malady". One of the reasons is that the debates on suicide in England was much heater than elsewhere, and the word "suicide" was coined in the seventeenth century England. In this paper, the writer has attempted to clarify the characteristics of the arguments on suicide in its early stages in England, analyzing the contents of their theses. The first runners were John Sym (Lifes Preservative against Self-Killing, 1637) and John Donne (Biathanatos, 1647). Sym enlarged the category of "exempt cases" and included suicide which was committed by "passion" or those who could not judge morally, proposing his dietetic measures which prevented from people committing suicide. Donne demonstrated that all suicide could not be sin, using the neutral term "Self-homicide" for the first time. According to Donne, suicide could be "Self-preservation" itself. On the ground built by them, the following debates on suicide evolved in the 17th and 18th century England, where suicide became to be considered as "non compos mentis".