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Revision as of 16:56, 20 April 2002 by AxelBoldt (talk | contribs) (+Amery's treatise)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Suicide is the act of voluntarily ending one's own life. It is considered a sin in many religions and often a crime as well. Some cultures have also viewed it as a honorable way to exit certain embarrassing situations.
Among the famous people who have committed suicide are Hannibal, Nero, Alan Turing, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva and Kurt Cobain.
In the late 18th century, Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, (The Sorrows of Young Werther), the romantic story of a young man who comits suicide because his love proves unattainable, caused a wave of suicides in Germany.
Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, wrote a very famous study of suicide in the late 1800's.
Albert Camus saw the goal of existentialism in establishing whether suicide was necessary in a world without God.
A study of suicide in literature was written by the poet Al Alvarez, entitled The Savage God.
Jean Améry, in his book On Suicide: a Discourse on Voluntary Death (originally published in German 1976) provides a moving insight into the suicidal's mind. He argues forcefully and almost romantically that suicide represents the ultimate freedom of humanity, attempting to justify the act with phrases such as "we only arrive at ourselves in a freely chosen death", lamenting the "ridiculously everyday life and its alienation". He committed suicide in 1978.
See also: euthanasia, hara-kiri, kamikaze, marytrdom