A01=Jennifer Michael Hecht
ancient world
Author_Jennifer Michael Hecht
bible
Category=JBFV
Category=NHTB
community
cultural history
culture
death
eq_bestseller
eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics
friends and family
grief
happiness
history
hope
individual
inspired
inspiring
jennifer michael hecht
john berryman
living
logic
mental health
mental illness
moral
mourning
philosophy
religion
religious history
religious rules
rights
secular
secular age
shakespeare
sociology
statistics
stoics
suffering
suicide
suicide rate
taboo
world religion
Product details
- ISBN 9780300209365
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 13 Mar 2015
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A leading public critic reminds us of the compelling reasons people throughout time have found to stay alive
Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our “secular age” in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment’s insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.
Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our “secular age” in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment’s insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.
Jennifer Michael Hecht is a historian of science and culture and a poet. She has written seven books, including the best-selling Doubt: A History, the story of unbelief across the world. Hecht teaches at The New School and lives in Brooklyn.
