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Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?

The Stoics and Existentialists agree on the answer

Issue 60, 6th November 2017
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Philosopher and author of How to be You: Simone de Beauvoir and the art of authenticity (2022), How to Live a Good Life (2020), and Existentialism and Romantic Love (2015). She teaches at Columbia University and the City College of New York. 


1,297 words
Read time: approx. 6 mins

When every day many of us wake up to read about fresh horrors on our fresh horrors device, we might find ourselves contemplating the question as to whether, as Albert Camus supposedly put it, one should kill oneself or have a cup of coffee. If there is any philosopher who is famous for contemplating suicide, it’s Camus who, in a more serious tone, proposed in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus that, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.''

The existentialists and Stoics are notorious for being at loggerheads on many issues. Yet Simone de Beauvoir, who was much less famous for her views on suicide than Camus, gives an example that shows the existential answer isn’t so far removed from the Stoic one – a fascinating case of philosophical convergence, two millennia apart.

Skye C. Cleary
Massimo Pigliucci
Issue 60, 6th November 2017

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Steve Carnes 28 June 2018

To "anonym aenb"

I could not agree less with your statements about Massimo Pigliucci and I find it telling that your post anonymously and offer no supporting evidence to your claim. I have been following Massimo for a long time, and I studied ancient philosophy in grad school, not to mention Ancient Greek. He is a modern Stoic.

Johan Bosmans 6 January 2018

Detail to add:
« Non, je ne suis pas existentialiste. Sartre et moi nous étonnons toujours de voir nos deux noms associés (…) Sartre est existentialiste, et le seul livre d’idées que j’ai publié, le mythe de Sisyphe, était dirigé contre les philosophies dites existentialistes (15 novembre 1945)
Deux semaines avant sa mort Camus écrivait à un professeur américain : L’existentialisme chez nous aboutit à une théologie sans dieu et à une scholastique dont il était inévitable qu’elles finissent par justifier des régimes d’inquisition.(Essais, 1965). On ne peut qu’admirer la persévérance de ces critiques littéraires et de ces historiens de la pensée qui passent outre à de telles prises de position et qui, aujourd’hui encore, taxent d’existentialiste celui qui écrivit dans le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942) : L’existentialisme est un suicide philosophique.
(http://www.guichetdusavoir.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6587&view=print)

Maybe we can talk about it over a cup of coffee.