There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide," said Camus. That holds as true today as at any time in the past. Suicide continues to baffle philosophers, muddled like a Rorschach blot with the most pertinent issues of the age. The death of actor Robin Williams by suicide especially rankles because he brought so much joy to so many through his comic roles.
In last year's Ida, a young woman who is set to take vows as a nun, is told by a Mother Superior that she must meet her aunt before matters proceed. The aunt is her mother's sister and, together, the duo set out to find the graves of Ida's parents, Jews who were killed by the Nazis. They discover their bodies - skeletons, rather - and bring back the head of Ida's brother to bury him properly. Within days of this, Ida's aunt commits suicide.
Why does she do it? Before Ida came into her life, she was all right. On the day Ida visits her, there is a man in the aunt's room who leaves subsequently. The aunt shows little interest in Ida, giving her a picture of her mother and saying goodbye - until she decides during the course of her day that she does, after all, want her niece to be a part of her life, and goes to the railway station to stop Ida from departing.
Once they have done what they set out to do, the aunt drops Ida back to the convent. She returns to her life, and on the day of her suicide has spent the night with another stranger picked from the bar. When she leaps from the window, there is music playing on the gramophone - Mahler perhaps.
The question is, did the trip to the burial site of her family induce in the aunt a fatalism that she was otherwise protected from? What was the value of her life before the trip, and does the fact that her life might seem valueless justify her decision to end it? Does her decision come as a relief against her frittered existence, or does it speak to something darker to which the aunt succumbed? Did she "realise" that she was just passing her days in search of something, which she finally found at the burial site? Was her decision sublime, or was it not? Finally, does life score over death in every instance, or might there be a case for death superseding life?
All arts are evil, but the movie-making business especially so. Heath Ledger overdosed himself on drugs. Why did he do it? He was an international star, with Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight to his credit. He made those movies. There is no Joker without him. No Ennis del Mar without him. Robin Williams battled depression for years. Perhaps it was the manic, haunted by the demon of the approaching depressive, who turned out that gem called Mrs Doubfire. The depressive might have been plumbed for Dead Poets Society. That is what actors do. They use their illnesses for the screen.
Robin Williams had an Oscar, he had fame. Why did he do it? Things are relative. There are always contemporaries more successful than you. Jack Nicholson and Ed Harris continue to make a mark. Meryl Streep's Oscar nominations are already part of legend. The movie-making business makes you seize and present before the world the most sensitive, the most protected parts of you, and then, when you are done or past your prime, it expects you to take it on the chin like nothing's happened.
But the central question of suicide refuses to go away. Why do it? Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have identified a gene that makes someone susceptible to suicide. They hope to isolate it so that people may be tested and their suicidal "pre-tendencies" noted and kept in check.
There goes the notion of free will down the gutter again. If you, poor sod, thought that you exercise no control over this life that was given to you without your permission, turns out you cannot switch off either without predestination playing a role. All of us are unhappy, in our own ways - to paraphrase Tolstoy - but only those of us with the right genetic code can choose to opt out. For the others, no amount of willpower is enough to kick the bucket, as it were.
Perhaps it comes down to this: suicide remains the last philosophical problem because it continues to exert a grim fascination over our collective consciousness. Because in a world riven with doubt, it is the ultimate act of faith.
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