In a poignant article in the March 14, 2025 issue of
The Wall Street Journal, financial journalist and columnist Jason Zweig wrote that his friend Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics whom he had helped research, write, and edit the 2011 global bestselling book
Thinking, Fast and Slow for two years until they had an amicable “book divorce” in 2008, e-mailed dozens of friends this message in March last year: “I am on my way to Switzerland, where my life will end on March 27.”
Kahneman had turned 90 that month. “By most accounts—although not his own—Kahneman was still in reasonably good physical and mental health when he chose to die,” Zweig wrote in his article.
Zweig said he actually didn’t receive his copy of Kahneman’s e-mail, but that several people have shared it with him over the past year. “Only close friends and family knew...that it transpired at an assisted-suicide facility in Switzerland,” he said.
“But I never got to say goodbye to Danny and don’t fully understand why he felt he had to go,” Zweig wrote. “His death raises profound questions: How did the world’s leading authority on decision-making make the ultimate decision? How closely did he follow his own precepts on how to make good choices? How does his decision fit into the growing debate over the downsides of extreme longevity? How much control do we, and should we, have over our own death?”
A renowned psychologist, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on integrating psychological insights into economic science, particularly concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.
Read the full article by Jason Zweig in The Wall Street Journal online now!
