Aleksandar Damjanović
17 April 2013
Abstract
Philosophical responses to the question of the legitimacy of suicide range between voluntarism and dogmatic theories based on religious prohibition. The lecture includes a deliberation on the prevention of suicide on the basis of classifying suicide as an autonomous or a non-autonomous act. The author considers the phenomenon of paternalism with its ethical consequences as a possible approach to suicide prevention. The work includes the deliberation of various aspects of treatment and prevention of suicide, and gives a blueprint of the definition of philosophical suicide. The author also discusses the operational criteria which could be used as a basis to define philosophical suicide as a clinical entity. The author illustrates his lecture with a number of examples from literature, philosophy and art that he found helpful in the construction of philosophical suicide.
Key words: suicide, philosophy, prevention
Biography
Aleksandar Damjanović, PhD, is an Associate Professor of the Medical School of the University of Belgrade, lecturing on psychiatry. He is an active member of the Serbian Medical Society (SMS), Serbian Association of Psychiatrists. He is also the President of the Psychiatric section of SMS, member of the Drug Agency of the Republic of Serbia, the Board of Editors of the Engrami journal, the Bioethical Society of Serbia, and of the Association of Writers of Serbia. He was a member of the state sub-committee for the selection of drugs to the positive list in the area of CNS in the period between 2002 and 2005, and was a member of the state committee for the evaluation of induced abortions of advanced pregnancies in the period between 2000 and 2010. He has published over 200 bibliographical units at home and abroad. He has also published the following books: Meta-theoretical Psychiatric Experiments (2004), Psycho and Patho-biographies – Construction, Reconstruction or Deconstruction of Personality (2005), Growing Shadow of Darkness – Vivisection of the Psychological Motives of the Horror Genre in Film and Literature (2006), Psychological and Philosophical Ounces, A Guide Through the Apocalypse (2008) and On Mind and Body (2012). Delirium and its Divine Emissary (2009) was his first book of poetry.
