Suicide In The Holy Bible

To be, or not to be, is Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy and arguable the most famous soliloquy ever written. The passage provides readers with an understanding of Hamlets personal fight with suicide. Here Hamlet weighs the positive and negative effects of committing suicide. Although Shakespeare inserted the passage to explain Hamlet’s thoughts it also has significance to the target audience of the Elizabethan/Jacobean Era. As through the passage Shakespeare discusses the controversial action of suicide. In the 17th Century society cared about the honour and respect of their family name. If one was to commit the sinful action of suicide they would be seen as dishonourable. Therefore suicide victims were not provided respectful burials and

Emile Durkheim was one of the most influential people to write about suicide and its causes. Suicide had previously been thought to be a moral and psychological problem whereas Durkheim related suicide to sociological problems in modern society. He believed and worked to prove that suicide was not related to individualism but linked to the effects of the external influences of modern society. External social influences upon an individual covered the broad and varied aspects such as culture, religion and family. Durkheim believed that suicide was directly related to the level of social integration and/or regulation of a person in society. He developed groups into which an individual was categorised according to their level of integration

For many the concept of teenage suicide is almost always correlated with the psychological mindset of the individuals. However, there is a lot of the factors behind these horrifying events that actually are more sociologically related. These catastrophic events are directly correlated with interactions with the world. The loss of teenagers across the world is increasing and it is a subject that should be touched on in both sciences. Throughout this paper the study of teen suicide in the sociological view will be discussed by going through Emile Durkheim’s studies and the sub groups in which it can occur. These events are related back to such things as social rejection, religious beliefs and social situations. This paper will also touch on the different types of suicide and what the suicides correlate with. The main purpose of this paper is to show how teen suicide is not only a psychological problem with students but to breakdown the areas in which cause these feelings.

However, as Durkheim attempted to restrict this definition to suicide being actions intended to result in loss of life, many disagreed with him (3). He then decided to search for a new definition of suicide. Digging deeper, he filed through cases deemed suicide that included actions of heroism such as a father jumping in the path of a bullet for his son. Such cases reveal a situation in which death is not desired by the individual but is nonetheless an inevitable consequence of the actions taken. This sort of suicide, according to Durkheim, should be known by any other name under the same broad term. Suicide can be divided into smaller categories. The first subcategory defined by Durkheim is Egoistic Suicide. An individual who commits a suicide of this distinction is considered to feel detached from society and thus separated from life’s meaning. He further explains by saying, a society with a focus on human interaction and involvement produces a value on the individual’s existence and contribution. If the society lacks human interaction and involvement, a low value is placed on an individual’s existence and contribution. Thus, Egoistic Suicide occurs when an individual has placed a low value on

The first sociologist to theorize on suicide and its sociological interpretations was Emile Durkheim. Durkheim worked during the late 1800’s identifying social structures as the key determinant in self-destructive behaviour. In his work Suicide: A study in Sociology, Durkheim stated that “suicide rates increase when a society’s value system breaks down.”2 Durkheim believed that the shared values of a society and the mechanisms in place that ensure that its members adhere to these values, is interpreted as a person’s “social structure.” Durkheim suggested two basic factors in social structure that heavily influence the incidence of suicide. These are regulation and integration. He believed that an individual needs to become part of, and find direction in his own society. Without these factors in place, suicide becomes a common substitute. Teens are often anxious about fitting in to their society (especially among peer groups) so it is clear that integration is essential to adolescence. Durkheim also suggested that it is these two factors

28) to react to and explain the changes society as he had known it. He alluded to how the division of labor as a primary element in the undoing of society. Furthermore, he witnessed the erosion of a patriarchy, so to speak, and feared society to be barreling towards amorality. Without someone instilling good morals into society at large, those who were not strong enough to make decisions on their own would be left behind. It is without coincidence that simultaneously religion’s grip on the masses seemed to be waning. In his book Suicide: A sociological study, Durkheim specifically researches the period between 1841 and 1872. He notes the reason he chose this time period was due to the rich climate of upheaval. (Durkheim, 1951 [1897], p.46) Could this have led Durkheim to conclude that those who were in a more close-knit community, specifically a particular religious community, had a lower of a rate of suicide? Political unrest was pervasive in European society at the time. Many countries were revolting against their governments.

Durkheim’s theories and work on suicide classified the phenomenon into four types; Egoistic, Altruistic, Anomic and Fatalistic (Ritzer Pg 200-202). Durkheim’s concept of social integration ties into egoistic suicide as it

In the article “Suicide” on the Opposing Viewpoints website they state “Each year, about thirty thousand people in the United States commit suicide” (“Suicide”).I chose the theme of violence from the novel Kindred, written by the author Octavia Butler. A specific issue that arose within this theme is the act of suicide. Webster Dictionary defines suicide as the act of intentionally causing one 's own death. Suicide is the escape route out of many situations their victims can’t fight. Suicide goes back in history all the way to BC time. One of the first suicide cases was the Greek philosopher Socrates dated on 399 BC May 7. Suicide has been around for several years. This theme relates to kindred because one of the characters commit suicide. . Suicide is a critical conversation in the world today because the suicide rate is increasing rapidly (“Suicide”). It is very common to see someone has committed suicide. The age group that’s being targeted now are young adults, and older celebrities. Teen suicide is a growing health concern. It is the third-leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, surpassed only by homicide and accidents, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Many people take different viewpoints on this issue. Some people feel as though self-murder is there choice. Another viewpoint people feel is, there is always another option than suicide. In society, we feel like you can seek professional help before you try to commit

The Middle Passage has been a focal point of investigation for many historians who are dedicated to comprehending the slave trade. The literature as a whole reveal that slaves asserted autonomy over their social being by committing suicide. This act disrupted the process of transatlantic voyages as slaves surrendered the physical self to reclaim their psychological and social strength. In addition, European perception of suicide shaped the ways in which slave traders and surgeons responded to captives’ means of resistance. Self-inflicted death amongst the enslaved was brought to the attention of British Parliament via testimonies of pro-abolitionists. This essay will explore European attitudes toward suicide, slave suicide as an act of resistance

Durkheim does not see egoism, altruism, anomie and fatalism as types of suicide, but types of social structure that highlight the presence or lack of integration and regulation. It must be stressed that this excess/lack of integration and regulation are not seen as direct causes of suicide, rather Durkheim sees a number of voluntary deaths in society as inevitable; integration and regulation are merely prophylactic to suicidal impulses, which when taken to excess or dramatically reduced, fail to act as a preventative, and so suicides occur. This clarification is an important strength of Durkheim’s theory: it allows the biography of the individuals who kill themselves to vary, while still explaining underlying pressures/lack of to explain their deaths, and the varying suicide rates between groups.

Whatever a religion may offer as it's belief about suicide, the followers of that religion do not always uphold that belief. At Masada, for example, a sect of fervently religious Jews known as Zealots held off Roman invaders for two years. When it became apparent that defeat was inevitable, their leader convinced the remaining nine hundred and sixty of them to commit suicide (Flanders 5). And Michel de Montaigne, a Christian writer living in France in the mid sixteenth century wrote five essays arguing that suicide is a matter of personal choice, and it is a viable option under some circumstances (OCRT 1).

According to Durkheim’s theory, society can play a part in suicide rates due to strenuous social change which lead to unclear norms in a community. When this emotional strain leads to suicide, Durkheim would explain this as anomic suicide. First Nation groups experienced this during the time of residential schools. Aboriginal people were forced to rapidly change their ways

Emile Durkheim was considered one of the greats of the sociology world. His use of scientific methodology to identify social factors which contributed to suicide has produced a foundational model for empirically based social research still relevant in sociology today. The purpose of this essay is to examine Durkheim’s study of the social causes of suicide, specifically how his theory of social integration and regulation contributed in interpreting these differences in suicide rates. This essay will argue that although heavily criticised Durkheim’s findings of the social factors which contributed to suicide are still relevant in Australia today more than a century later. In order to support this claim, firstly an overview of Durkheim’s social theory will be provided, specifically of his social causes of suicide. In addition it will then focus on how Durkheim interpreted these differences in suicide rates between various groups using his theory of social integration and discuss the two types of suicide Durkheim identified in this area. We will then discuss social regulation and its two forms of suicide. Criticism of his theory will then be discussed, before providing relevant statistics from Australia in regards to suicide rates of teen and indigenous communities and examine these figures to explain these variances in light of Durkheim’s social theory’s, to support the fact that Durkheim’s theory’s are still relevant in Australia today. Emile Durkheim was born in 1858 in a

Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a purely individual decision but French sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed in the influence of society on the individual and that if anything can explain that relation, it is suicide. His use of the data of suicide, not specific cases and reports, to study the societal trends reveals his true subject of study: society as a whole and its role in the individual experience. Durkheim uses the study of suicide via the quantitative methodological approach as a tool to study society as a broader whole.

Suicide does not show up in the Bible but there are a few cases of people who committed suicide like Judas. Scriptural writers neither denounce nor adulate those whom they recorded as having taken their own lives (Gearing et al. 2009). The perspective of suicide as a sin rules current Christian states of mind over the different denominations like Catholics, Baptists, and Protestants. The sin of suicide is likened with different types of taking life, for example, abortion and murder (Maris et al. 2000). When a person dies, he/she aces judgement by