Suicide and the Inalienable Right to Life (IN: Suicide: the Philosophical Issues, ed. by M P Battin & D J Mayo)

Feinberg takes the Jeffersonian view, embodied in the US Constitution, that the rights to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. He asks whether this could mean that suicide is wrong because it involves alienating or relinquishing a right to life which is inalienable. He then provides 3 different interpretations of the original Jeffersonian dictum & argues that the most plausible of these does not preclude voluntary relinquishing one’s right to life by committing suicide.