Israeli-American Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman revealed to have died by assisted suicide
Wall Street Journal says pioneer of behavioral economics, who died last year at 90, made decision to forgo suffering of old age and leave life on his own terms
Israeli-American Nobel Prize Laureate Daniel Kahneman, who died last year at 90, decided to end his life through assisted suicide in Switzerland, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Kahneman decided to end his life on his own terms while he was still in relatively good health, instead of letting his physical condition deteriorate, the newspaper said.
In farewell letters sent to his closest friend, the psychologist wrote that his decision was motivated by a long-held belief that the suffering typically associated with living to old age was unnecessary.
“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief,” he wrote to them.
After making his decision, Kahneman spent his last days in Paris with his family. Afterward, he traveled to Switzerland, where his assisted suicide was carried out.
Barbara Tversky, Kahneman’s companion in his later years, wrote in an essay after his death that in his last days, the two “walked and walked and walked in idyllic weather…laughed and cried and dined with family and friends.”
She said Kahneman “took his family to his childhood home in Neuilly-sur-Seine [outside Paris] and his playground across the river in…the Bois de Boulogne… He wrote in the mornings; afternoons and evenings were for us in Paris.”
Kahneman reportedly confided in a few close friends about his decision weeks before his death. Despite their persistent efforts to dissuade him, he remained resolute.
Related: Nobel-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, who upended his field, dies at 90
“It was a matter of some consternation to Danny’s friends and family that he seemed to be enjoying life so much at the end,” one friend told the Journal.
“‘Why stop now?’ we begged him. And though I still wish he had given us more time, it is the case that in following this carefully thought-out plan, Danny was able to create a happy ending to a 90-year life, in keeping with his peak-end rule. He could not have achieved this if he had let nature take its course.”
In his final letter, Kahneman wrote: “Not surprisingly, some of those who love me would have preferred for me to wait until it is obvious that my life is not worth extending. But I made my decision precisely because I wanted to avoid that state, so it had to appear premature. I am grateful to the few with whom I shared early, who all reluctantly came round to support me.”
His friends told the Journal that his decision was personal and did not serve as an endorsement of assisted suicides.
“I am not embarrassed by my choice, but I am also not interested in making it a public statement,” Kahneman wrote in his letter, according to the Journal. “The family will avoid details about the cause of death to the extent possible, because no one wants it to be the focus of the obits. Please avoid talking about it for a few days.”
“Right to the end, he was a lot smarter than most of us,” Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and friend of Kahneman, told the Journal.
“But I am no mind reader. My best guess is he felt he was falling apart, cognitively and physically. And he really wanted to enjoy life and expected life to become decreasingly enjoyable. I suspect he worked out a hedonic calculus of when the burdens of life would begin to outweigh the benefits—and he probably foresaw a very steep decline in his early 90s.
“I have never seen a better-planned death than the one Danny designed.”
The author of the article, Jason Zweig, who was a personal acquaintance of Kahneman, speculated that his decision was influenced by his witnessing the cognitive decline of his mother and wife, both of whom died before him.
Kahneman ended his letter to his friends by writing: “I discovered after making the decision that I am not afraid of not existing, and that I think of death as going to sleep and not waking up. The last period has truly not been hard, except for witnessing the pain I caused others. So if you were inclined to be sorry for me, don’t be.”
Kahneman was considered a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics, best known for upending the assumption of classical economics that human beings are essentially rational decision-makers.
In 2002, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research integrating psychology and economics, which challenged the notion that people act rationally. Instead, he argued, people’s mental biases often lead them to make decisions that run counter to their own interests.
Charlie Summers contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.