Isabelle Künzer: Autothanasia, Gebunden

Klappentext

Numerous cases of suicide have been recorded from the period of ancient Greece. Those affected took their own lives for a variety of reasons. By committing suicide, an individual generally defies fundamental notions of social order. This process requires explanation, and against this backdrop, even ancient observers questioned the intentions of those who took their own lives and the functions that suicide served. Equally significant is the relationship between suicide and social norms and emotions. Isabelle Künzer is the first to comprehensively examine these three levels and their interplay in suicidal behavior within Greek antiquity, from the Archaic period through Hellenism, by focusing on emotionally shaped interpretive frameworks.

Künzer draws on the so-called enactive approach, a holistic-integrative concept that posits a close interaction and a dynamic relationship between perception, emotions, and actions in cognitive processes. This perspective brings into view the complex and dynamic interaction between the individual and the environment - and thus the subjective and emotionally shaped understanding of the world - in cases of suicide within the lived world of ancient Greece.

The author demonstrates that emotions in suicidal incidents should be viewed as an essential component of complex and dynamic assessment processes. What suicidal episodes have in common is that, in precarious situations, they facilitate an understanding of normative and emotional concepts and, ultimately, a reaffirmation of the relevant sociocultural and sociopolitical communities.