Topics Death

Question Some people say, hopefully with a good dose of irony, that murder is a victimless crime. In a twisted sense, this is almost true; once murder has been committed, the victim no longer exists (not as a person at least, though as a corpse), and as long as the victim still exists, no murder has taken place. So why is it that we find the thought of murder abhorrent? Unlike rape or torture or even theft, in the case of murder, we're not around to suffer the consequences of the murder (assuming the murder wasn't preceded by other crimes), because we're just not around anymore. I think it was Mark Twain who said that, having not existed for millions of years prior to his birth, he surely wouldn't mind not existing after his death. So why is (unprovoked) murder one of the worst crimes there is, in almost all societies? Is it the fear of death? Is it because we don't want to witness others dying?

Accepted:
April 6, 2011

Comments

The remark that murder is a victimless crime, while surely ironic, hits home. As Alexander George remarked a while back on this site in response to a related question, "death is rather peculiar...in that it's a misfortune that eliminates from the world the subject of the misfortune." Alex went on to say that "once one's dead, not only does one cease to experience things, but one ceases to have interests too," which, he explained, makes the question of what harm is caused by death difficult to answer. Alex's response concludes where your question begins: "As one of my students once asked when we were discussing this in class: 'So murder is a victimless crime?'."

The fact that the victim of a murder dies may make it difficult to say in what respect the victim's interests suffer in virtue of that victim's death, which complicates the question of who is harmed by murder. This question, however, is distinct from another question that you raise: "why is it that we find the thought of murder abhorrent?" or, to reformulate the question: What's wrong with murder? Although the answers to the questions "Who is harmed by murder?" and "What is wrong with murder?" are surely related, they need not be directly conceptually connected. (Whether they are is another, good question, which I won't take up here.) I propose to focus on the question of what's wrong with murder.

It seems to me that a murderer manifests a callous disregard for the value of another's life, and, also that a murderer arrogates the right to dispose of that life. (Perhaps it's because the murderer has no regard for the value of another's life that the murderer can dispose of it.) This, it seems to me, is what is so abominable about murder. But why is it abominable to think that one has the right to dispose of another's life?

Various justifications can be given for the respect in which it is wrong to think that the murders has the right to terminate another's life : religious, political, moral. I'll give an example of a religious justification and an example of a political justification. (In a theocracy, a religious state, a religious justification could of course also be a political justification.) One might say that murder is wrong because in so doing one assumes that one can dispose of the life of another, but it is only God's place to do so, and, moreover, one has a duty of charity to love one's neighbor as oneself; one might say that murder is wrong because no individual has the right to infringe on another's pursuit of her own interest, provided that such pursuit does not infringe on one's own interests, and, in any event, one does not have the right to terminate altogether the possibility of another's pursuing her own interests (at least in one's own name, as opposed to on behalf of the state).

Each of the preceding answers makes substantial, albeit defensible, presuppositions about the nature of religious obligation and also the nature of politics, which one may well wish to reject. The question then, becomes one of determining what is the best basis for grounding the claim that it is wrong to think that one has the right to murder another person?