> Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue, c'est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie.
(There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that's suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is answering the fundamental question of all of philosophy.)
If you arrive at the conclusion that there is no point to any of it, why not end your life on your own terms? We will all die eventually; it seems to me more courageous to decide of the moment.
We regard suicide as the ultimate failure; but isn't it, rather, the ultimate choice? And isn't that the problem?
Suicide in a way is an insult to the living, that's what makes us hate it so much.
Of course, not all suicides are equal; teenage suicide is especially tragic, for the exact reasons given in the article (I had a cousin who killed himself at 24; for everybody who survived him, and esp. his brothers and sisters, and his parents, it's an incredible ordeal, a wound that will probably never heal).
But we should respect the decision of a middle-aged man who had a wonderful and very successful career, and maybe came to the conclusion that he's done. We're not him, we'll never know how he felt anyway.