Abstract

This treatise examines suicide as the fundamental philosophical problem through an analysis of four major thinkers: Albert Camus, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Carl Jung. Beginning with Camus's declaration that suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem, this paper extends his analysis to argue that the question of suicide is not asked once but answered behaviorally every day upon waking. Drawing on Schopenhauer's insight that suicide paradoxically affirms rather than denies the will-to-live, Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence and life-affirmation, and Jung's conception of suicide as the termination of individuation, this treatise develops a consilient framework positioning suicide as the greatest philosophical sin—not merely a tragedy but a transgression against the philosophical project itself. The daily behavioral response to existence constitutes an ongoing referendum that structures conscious life. The paper concludes that the question of whether life is worth living is answered thousands of times across a lifetime, each morning anew, ad infinitum.