ON THE ETHICS OF SUICIDE (edited by A. Aportone)

("Preparations for voluntary death by a wretch," by an eighteenth-century anonymous author, based on, "Reflections and Lessons" by I. Kant), Casa Editrice Le Lettere, Florence, 2003, pp 137, euro 18,50

This publication seems to furnish particularly interesting food for thought in the debate on "assisted death" and on the reasons for and against voluntary death. It consists of an erudite introduction by the editor, A. Aportone, and a lucid, impassioned work by an anonymous German teacher (translated into Italian for the first time), who compares opinions, in a posthumous dialogue, with Immanuel Kant, the figure he considers his mentor.

The anonymous author uses both personal and speculative arguments to support his decision to commit suicide and introduce it into the logic of Kantian philosophy.

The third part of the volume provides an anthology and a transcription of lessons by the Philosopher, who condemned suicide on the grounds of his own moral philosophy, making a controversial stand against the Enlightenment movement which, breaking away from religious tradition, deemed suicide to be a lawful expression of liberty. Commenting on the Kantian lesson, Aportone points out that general condemnation apparently coexists with the justification of practical rules and thus of actions which shorten life, in circumstances that cannot be specified a priori.

While the anonymous author coherently expounds his "wish to die" through a series of rational arguments, there is an inkling of the desperation of a person unable to perceive a possible future in a negative "triad" (the future, the world and himself) characteristic of clinical depression, rather than of the seriously somatically ill person he considers himself to be. But such impression may be due to the reviewer's professional bent.

On the whole, the book appears to have a very contemporary focus and the reader will not be left indifferent to the lucidity and shape of the theories advanced by intellects pledged to affirming the freedom and autonomy of individual will.