User:I6097063/sandbox

The suicide: a sociological study

The suicide: a sociological study (original publication in Dutch: De zelfmoord: een sociologische studie) is a book written in 1899 by Dutch philosopher and author Cornelis Johannes Wijnaendts Francken. It was published in the Hague by Martinus Nijhoff. The book describes the sociological circumstances and causes implicated in suicide, and includes an overview of how different cultural groups thought about the issue, ranging from the time of the Ancient Greeks until the late 19th century.

Historical context

The Church and the Enlightenment

In the 18th century there was still strong condemnation of suicide by the Church. During that time, suicide was viewed as a triple crime against oneself, God, and the state. The bodies were denied a proper Christian funeral and their possessions were pawned. It was only until the end of the 19th century that Western European countries started to quit this tradition. The Enlightment knew several philosophers critisizing the Church's view of immoral suicide. In Victorian era Britain, suicide was also sometimes seen as the ultimate act of self-possesion.

The early 19th century then saw a rise in the concept of the heroic suicide, so that Romantic literature was characterised on the one hand by stories of immoral suicide, and on the other, glorification of the emotionally troubled genius. In Victorian era Britain, acts of suicide were sensationalised. Romantic thinkers and authors were worried of the effects of contagion, although others have claimed these effects were sometimes exaggerated. However, it was generally accepted that the more media attention the subject got, the more people would be inclined to copy the behaviour. Later still, a third form of suicide became recognized: suicide by insanity. Generally, suicide victims that were deemed 'insane' were less judged on the basis of morality. This then paved the way for the discussion whether suicide should be punishable by law or seen as a disease. At that time, sociology became established as a scientific discipline.

The birth of sociology

The book was written shortly after the birth of sociology in France, as a new scientific discipline separate from anthropology and psychology. Posivitism had just been established by pioneers such as Auguste Comte in 1840, partly in an attempt to understand why the French Revolution had happened. According to positivists, science should aim to improve society. Sociology would then be the new discipline to study society and its general laws, aided by another innovation: demographics. These developments were accompanied by an extension of social management practices by the government, nowadays known as the welfare state. Whereas in the 18th century, deviant individuals were mainly excluded from society, the 19th century saw an increase in social interventionism that was wholly in the spirit of the Enlightenment.

Next to that, there was a trend of increased individualization. Every individual, regardless of background, could be observed, compared with others, and advised. Individual cases, a person's unique background and motivations suddenly became a topic of interest. Psychiatry and academic psychology also became established in that time, and these fields focused more on the psychopathology of the individual. As a result, the sociologists and psychiatrists studying suicide drifted apart. Actually, it was the philosophy of Comte that sociology was the science that would unite all other sciences, and had greater explanatory power than other sciences, including psychology.

Late 19th century views on suicide

Henry Morselli and Tomas Masaryck were among the first to statistically investigate what looked like an alarming increase in the number of suicides in 19th century Europe. Morselli, another primary source for Francken, was a proponent of Social Darwinism, a political movement in response to evolutionary theory. Morselli believed that suicide was a process of natural selection by which the mentally weak were weeded out from society.

Francken also references Emile Durkheim, French key figure in sociology, on many occassions in the book. Durkheim's work Suicide (French: Le suicide: Étude de Sociologie) is considered one of the first influential sociological studies of suicide. Durkheim proposed a four sided typology of suicide: egoïstic, altruïstic, anomic, and fatalistic. The statistics used and conclusions drawn by Durkheim have not gone uncriticized, as critics have pointed out his use of the ecological fallacy and generalising too quickly. Durkheim's theory that many cases of suicide could be explained by either too much social cohesion or too little have not always stood ground. For example, in some occassions the reported difference between Protestants and Catholics could be reduced to differences in reported cause of death. However, the altruïstic and egoïstic types have gained some empirical support in later studies.

Suicide and crime

In the circles of academic criminology in the late 19th century, it was not unusual to view suicide as a form of crime. Also in the Netherlands, there were still academics in 1910 who thought a person surviving a suicide attempt should be punishable by law. Some of these sentiments were driven by eugenicist views, others by religious. Cesare Lombroso, a Social Darwinist like Morselli, was among the first to view criminal behaviour as a phenomenon worthy of scientific study. Lombroso thought that insanity and crime came from the same cause: a regression in human evolution. As suicide was thought to be related to insanity at the time, some criminologists concluded that suicide was similarly the result of natural selection.

The author

Francken never had an official occupation during his life, as he inherited a large sum of money when he was still young. Instead, he travelled all across the globe, visiting every continent but Australia. He wrote reports about most of his travels, such as ‘Door West-Indië’, ‘Van Kaapstad tot Khartoem’ and ‘Door Amerika’. Next to that, Francken studied many different subjects at several universities. He started out with biology at the University of Utrecht, but before the publication of this book, his interest was focused on ethics, psychology and philosophy. He had studied these subjects at the universities of Jena, Zürich, Berlin and the Sorbonne in Paris from 1898 to 1902. His preoccupation with philosophy in this period is reflected in the works he then produced, namely Social ethics (Sociale ethiek), Philosophical-sociological studies (Wijsgeerig-sociologisch onderzoek), and Buddhism and its worldview (Het Boeddhisme en zijn wereldbeschouwing).

To honor his contributions to Dutch literature, he was awarded the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. His wife, Esther-Welmoet Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck was an active feminist and co-founder of the Dutch Society for Women's Suffrage, among many other accomplishments. Francken himself was not a feminist. He had the opinion that there are undeniable physical and psychological differences between the sexes that should not be ignored. This frequently put a strain on their marriage, which ended in 1916.

The work of Francken was influenced by positivist views and despite his strongly religious father, Francken did not adhere to the Christian faith himself. He despised anything abstract and instead preferred the clear-cut language of empiricism. Francken was a known afficionado of aphorisms, and he uses them frequently in this work as well. He was praised for being well-read and being a productive writer about many different topics. It has been suggested that Frankcen's literary productivity was motivated by a desire for recognition, perhaps in the form of an occupation as professor. Francken felt somewhat isolated from society, as he did not have children and was never offered prominent positions. In an attempt to gain recognition, he devoted his life to his studies, switching from one subject to the other. Frankcen has also been praised for his ability to clearly and objectively convey the views of much of the Western philosophers preceding his time. This is reflected in his style of writing, the discourse. Steven Margadant praised Francken by saying that the author always knew how to focus on the problem, had great readiness, objectivity and a fine understanding of the opinions of others and how they have tried to solve the problem. Then, according to Margadant, Francken criticizes the discourse, and communicates the result of his own reflections.

Contents

The main thesis of the book is that suicide is a social phenomenon, that is, it is determined by factors contained within society and its different subpopulations. More importantly, this also meant it could be studied scientifically. In the first chapter, Francken immediately refers to Wagner and Quételet as having shown that social phenomena are subject to laws that can be laid bare by the practice of statistics.

To support the thesis that suicide is a phenomenon fit for sociological scrutiny, Francken starts out with listing all the statistics of circumstances that were at the time known to correlate with incidence of suicide. In order, the circumstances discussed are: nationality, religion, age, sex, marital status, (military) occupation, enprisonment, season, method of suicide, and behavioural contagion. For the discussion on marital status, Francken refers to his earlier work, Evolution of marriage (Dutch: Evolutie van het huwelijk). The second chapter discusses direct causes other than the society that can be identified. Francken lists inherited insanity or weak instinct for survival, in addition to psychological disease acquired over the lifetime, but concludes that insanity only accounts for some of the cases. Lastly, he assesses a potential relation to crime, as was at that time a popular belief among Italian academics like Ferri, Morselli and Lombroso. They thought that suicide and murder were complementary. In their view, when suicide goes up, murder goes down and vice versa. Degenerates would choose murder if the society approved of bloodshed, but suicide in a society that disapproved it.

The third chapter takes a closer look at the supposed rising prevalence of society over the years 1830-1880. 19th Century authors estimated the numbers for Europe to be over 20.000, though De Boismont suspects it to be double that, suspecting the estimates may well be inaccurate. The increasing numbers can be explained, according to Frankcen, by several characteristics of modern society. The first being secularization and a break from the order and comfort of religion. Secondly, he list bad upbringing and educational factors, specifically teaching children how to learn facts instead essential life skills. Other important features of the modernising society are egoïsm, materialism, and individualism. The Western worldview has shifted, according to Frankcen, to a mindset where one cares only for himself and his possesions, and does not reap the benefits of a tightly knit community that cares for each other. Lastly he discusses the effects of intellectualization, argueing that a mind that is well educated, rational and focused on achieving intellectual achievement pays the price of having a balanced emotional constitution. All of these factors can be summarized shortly by what Francken and others have called: ‘overcivilization’.

The final chapter investigates how different cultures view the morality of suicide. Several motivations for suicide are listed in line with Durkheim’s theory of suicide. He discusses suicide in the ancient Greeks, ancient Japan, and Roman, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Islamic cultures. Even though he clearly states that any judgement about suicide is influenced by the judger's cultural background, it is his viewpoint that most of the times, suicide is not an act of selfishness or corwardice. Instead, he calls it an unfortunate consequence of life adversity, and its victims must therefore be remembered with compassion.

Reception

Because of Francken's failure to commit to any one subject, much of his work more closely resembles an extensive review of other authors than a work containing many original ideas. As a consequence, his works never attracted a large public. His fame has mainly survived to this day because of the award carrying his name. As an honorary member of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, he personally financed the Dr. Wijnaendts Francken award for essays and literary criticism.

Frankcen has been criticized for not paying enough attention to personal, psychological factors, similar to other sociologists like Durkheim and Morselli. The book itself did manage to be mentioned in a positive review in Dutch newspaper De Nederlandsche Spectator, where it was described (in Dutch): 'The book is a popular resumé, most suited to the general public as a description of the various findings and theories that scholars have presented on the topic. We hope that in the future, the author will delight us many more times with the most important insights in sociological matters. However, it must be noted that this review was showcased in a work written by the author himself, in which only positive reviews were included. After writing The suicide: a sociological study, Francken went on to write other philosophical works, for example his Introduction to Philosophy (Inleiding tot de Wijsbegeerte, 1905).

On top of the criticism on the sociological method, some of the statistics and sources Francken based his discourse on have been criticized as well. In the Netherlands, statistics on suicide were not collected until the founding of the CBS in 1899, and underreporting continued to be a problem after that. It was pointed out that especially Catholics often did not report the cause of death as suicide, because of the condemnation by the Church.

In the timecourse after the publication, meaning early 20th century, scientific investigations into suicide continued. While Francken wrote he did not buy into the notion of animal suicide, early 20th century writers became more interested in the possibility that animals could commit suicide just like humans. Those adopting an evolutionary viewpoint were interested to discover if, should humans be evolutionary connected to other animals, these animals show suicidal tendencies as well. At the end of the 19th century, the dominant opinion about the nature of suicide in general was that rather than a disease, it could better be characterized as a symptom of many things, including the difficulties of living in a modernised society. The book has not been cited frequently, but Francken's general argumentation on the motives and circumstances of suicide victims has been used in a historical study on Huntington's Disease.