Jennifer Michael Hecht
Believing into being.
December 18, 2020‘Suicide is such a powerful end; it reaches back and scrambles the beginning. It has an event gravity: eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in that direction.’ -David Lipsky
On Being
Jennifer Michael Hecht on suicide, and how we believe each other into being:
‘We believe each other into being.’
That’s the message the philosopher, poet, and historian, Jennifer Michael Hecht, puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who died by suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. She proposes a new cultural understanding based on our essential need for each other.