Suicide and the Crisis of Meaning

Are we a barbaric civilization?

On the day of Emperor Meiji’s funeral in 1912, General Nogi Maresuke, the celebrated hero of the Russo-Japanese War, retired to his home, composed a farewell haiku, and then committed seppuku with his wife. In 1994, at the height of fame, Kurt Cobain wrote a suicide note, went into the garage of his Seattle home, and killed himself with a shotgun.

There …