Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis: On Killing Oneself by Hermann Burger

“Suicidology is the science of self-murder. Suicidography is the vision of a life reduced to a chain of causes that lead in the final instance to self-extermination.” In the tunnel-village of Göschenen, at the northern foot of the St. Gotthard Pass, a man named Hermann Burger has vanished without a trace from his hotel room, suspected of the cold-blooded act of self-murder. What is found in his room is not a suicide note, however, but a 124-page manuscript formulating a philosophical “suicidology” entitled Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis: an exhaustive manifesto comprising 1,046 “thanatological” aphorisms (or “mortologisms”) advocating suicide. This metaliterary “grim science of killing the self” studies the predominance of death over life, drawing inspiration from such traumatic experiences as the breakup of his marriage, a dismissal from his post as a newspaper culture editor, years of endogenous depression, the erosion of friendships, and the sexual disgrace of impotence, but the aphori