We are not built to enjoy death. Our species is tuned for vigilance and self-preservation, not serenity at the brink. Terror management theory suggests that awareness of mortality reliably stirs defensive anxiety (Greenberg et al., 1986), while clinical work on dying underscores the mind’s reluctance to accept annihilation (Kastenbaum, 2000). The upshot is plain: the very act of deciding, “Now I end,” is inherently uncomfortable because it asks the will to erase the subject that wills.
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” — Camus (1955)
Take that problem seriously and the core paradox appears: even if technology can minimize physical pain, volition cannot make self-erasure feel natural. The choice is not a mood; it is a confrontation with identity, obligations, and the narrative threads that tie a life to others. That is why suicide cannot be the “most comfortable” death—no instrument or setting dissolves the existential friction of authoring your own absence (Nagel, 1979; Joiner, 2005).
“The main ingredient in suicide is… ‘psychache’—unbearable psychological pain.” — Shneidman (1993)
Shneidman’s diagnosis helps explain the exception many find morally intelligible. When the alternatives are worse—unremitting, cruel pain with no prospect of relief, or the credible threat of prolonged torture—the calculus shifts. The act does not become comfortable; it becomes comparatively less agonizing. In such extremis, the question is not between comfort and discomfort, but between degrees of torment. Philosophy had this intuition long ago.
“No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.” — Hume (1987, original work published 1777)
Hume’s austere line is not a romance of self-destruction; it is a sober threshold. If life can still be kept as life—with tolerable suffering, bonds intact, and some remaining projects—then the will’s revolt is premature. But where the horizon is only agony without reprieve, choosing the lesser agony is not comfort; it is triage.
Two claims can therefore be held without contradiction. First, suicide is never the most comfortable death, because deciding to terminate one’s own life is itself a discomfort that cannot be anesthetized away (Greenberg et al., 1986; Joiner, 2005). Second, there are rare circumstances in which that uncomfortable decision can still be more comfortable than the unchosen alternatives of relentless suffering or the prospect of slow death by torture (Hume, 1987/1777).
In short: do not mistake comparative mercy for comfort. The gentlest exit remains un-gentle when it must be chosen; only the sudden, unannounced end, beyond any choreography, can be truly free of dread—and that is not ours to script.