Ethics

Why is murder considered a crime when the person who was murdered was going to die whether or not that person killed him or her?

Comments

Just because something will inevitably happen to you doesn't meansomeone else has a right to decide when and how it's going to happen.Murder is a crime not because it brings about a state of affairs, someone'sdeath, he or she would otherwise have avoided but because the murderer has noauthority to bring about that state of affairs.

Well, everyone murdered would have died anyway, had he or she not been murdered. After all, we're all going to die, whether we're murdered or not. It strikes me that the difference between death as a result of murder and death that resulsts from some other cause is that the former is in some sense a violation of law and moral principle, rights to liberty and life--not to mention a violation that occurs through some agency and might not have occured then. All deaths are deaths, but murders are illegitimate and wrongful deaths. Other deaths are perhaps unfortunate but in many cases not unlawful.

While it is true that, given the current state of technology, each of us will eventually die, it is not true that, no matter what, each of us will have a life of a particular length.

A longer life is often more valuable than a shorter life because it often contains more good things than a shorter life. With a longer life, I have the opportunity to develop my talents, to engage in long term, complex and valuable projects, to build and cultivate complex and valuable relationships, and to have more fun.

Murder is a bad thing, it seems to me, simply because it cuts short a life that otherwise would have been much longer and more valuable both for the person who lived it and for others who are positively affected by her life. From the point of view of the person who dies prematurely and of those who are affected by her life, it doesn’t make much difference whether her life is ended by a murderer, accident, or disease. It’s the same loss in any case. Unfortunately, though, accidents and diseases cannot be prevented by criminalizing them. Our hope is that by criminalizing murder, we give potential murderers an additional incentive not to murder, and thus make premature death by that cause less likely.

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