Introduction to the Issue of Rational Suicide (IN: Contemporary Perspectives on Rational Suicide, edited by J L Werth, Jr.)

This chapter provides a foundation for the ones that follow by creating a context for the book. To this end, the first section differentiates rational suicide from aid-in-dying, & more specifically, physician-assisted suicide. The second section describes some of the presently articulated sets of criteria for rational suicide in order to show the range of views on the matter. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book’s contents.