Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas is presented as one of several theologians and philosophers who argued against suicide on the ground that human life is entrusted by God and is not for people to end at will. His role is concise but significant: the book uses his position to frame a comparison between a long-standing theological argument and themes reported by people who survived suicide attempts.

Appearance in the Book

The discussion identifies Thomas Aquinas as a medieval theologian and places him within a history of arguments against suicide that reaches across different periods and intellectual traditions. The book does not provide a broader account of his life or teaching; it focuses on the particular argument attributed to him about who has authority over the end of life.

Life as a Gift

Thomas Aquinas’s reasoning, as summarized in the book, begins from the premise that life is a gift from God. Because life is given by God, the judgment about when it should end belongs to God alone. Suicide, in this account, is therefore not an individual’s decision to make. The argument makes human life a matter of entrusted responsibility, rather than unrestricted personal choice.

Place in a Wider Argument

Thomas Aquinas is one voice in a set of historical arguments that the book associates with the idea that people are in life on assignment or as recipients of a gift from God. The author also refers to Plato, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant, whose arguments differ in formulation but similarly connect human life to a purpose or duty that a person should not abandon at will. Aquinas’s contribution is specifically the claim that life’s divine origin leaves the decision about its ending to God.

Comparison and Its Limits

The author finds a close resemblance between this theological reasoning and statements made by people interviewed after surviving suicide attempts. Those interviewees said their attempts had solved nothing: the problems they had hoped to escape remained unresolved, and they described returning with a sense that they still had a purpose in life. The comparison is about shared ideas concerning life’s purpose and the decision to end it, not evidence that Aquinas’s argument has been proven by those accounts.

The author explicitly avoids presenting the historical arguments as an endorsement or as a moral judgment about suicide. Thomas Aquinas therefore serves as a point of comparison in a discussion that acknowledges the complexity of suicidal behavior and the limits of what the reported experiences can establish.