For the purposes of this essay the assumption will be that there is no god or life after death. Eliminating the concept of God in a sense dissolves the question of sinfulness and guilt. Therefore a relativist position will be adopted and the absolutist one will be rejected. The issue of cowardice should also be addressed as a soldier facing certain death is probably not a coward and few people would be capable of harming themselves. The taking of life can be considered under three categories: as an exercise in rational philosophical thought, as an action that has boundaries prescribed by law and finally in a theological sense. It is also worth and imperative to allude to the fact that suicide is only one form of ending life and that within a social context other forms of ending life are accepted and sometimes necessitated by a particular event. A social position will then be adopted to delineate the boundaries and presumed morality or immorality of suicide. For example, the Augustinian view of suicide is based on the sixth commandment, ? you will not kill?. However, it could equally be argued that Jesus committed suicide by giving his life for others despite Augustine accepting him as a son of God and attributing to him the foresight and ability to have saved himself. The translation of the sixth commandment is ? Thou shalt not kill unlawfully? and the whole moral idea is further made ambiguous by the fact that suicide is not condemned in the Bible, especially the suicide of Judas Iscariot. The Catholic idea of ​​double effect, that death must have a positive outcome, is open to debate, as we can actually distinguish between martyrdom, self-sacrifice and suicide, despite the intention to die. Did Jesus himself affirm and implement? Greater love has no man than that of laying down his life for another.? However, if we adopt an epistemological position and assume as a premise that we lack prior evidence of the implications of death, suicide is always an irrational conclusion. Since we cannot understand superintelligence or conceive of intelligence, due to the parameters of our mind superseding that of our worldview, it is surely impossible to determine any superhuman perspective or prerogative and apply it. Deontological arguments can produce little evidence to support their premise that suicide is ... middle of paper ... without any credibility. Aristotle's claim that suicide was harmful to the state is also unlikely, as the huge amount of suicides received little recognition except in an insular sense involving the grief of relatives, but realistically the death of a person at the hands own is irrelevant to the state or mechanism by which it operates. Morality therefore in the sense of government shows a complicity with popular opinion and seeks to express it through law and is open to transmuting and revising its definitions as society requires. Suicide is required or permitted based on the individual agent's perspective on what morality is or on any other rational argument he proposes. Bibliography: Battin, Margaret. "The least worst death?". Oxford, 1994Grant, Richard B. ?Morality and Rationality of Suicide? from Moral Questions ed. Rachel, James. Locke, James. ? Two treaties for the government? chapter 2.Nagel, Thomas. ? Deadly Questions?, chapter 1.Rachels, James. ? Active and passive euthanasia? from Moral Questions ed. Rachel, James Warburton, Nigel. "Philosophy: the basics?". Second edition, Routledge, 1995