Language

Imagine that imediately before the happy ending of a film the good guy says to the bad guy: "You should have killed me when you could." I assume that this doesn't mean "you had the moral duty to kill me when you could." But what does it exactly mean then?!

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Following Kant, we might distinguish hypothetical imperatives from categorical imperatives to answer your question. Hypothetical imperatives tell us what we should do given our aims. Categorical imperatives tell us what we should do, full-stop, regardless of our aims. Moral imperatives (our moral duties) are taken to be categorical imperatives, and they can be expressed using "should": You should not murder, you should not lie, you should show compassion to others, etc. But hypothetical imperatives can also be expressed using "should". If we're talking to someone who wants to go to law school, we might say, "You should take the LSAT." If we're talking to someone who wants a good challenge, we might say, "You should read some Kant." If we're talking to someone who wants to be a model, we might say "You should get plastic surgery." If we're talking to someone who wants to commit murder quietly to avoid getting caught, we might say, "You should use poison." None of these "should" statements are reflective of moral duties.

Your case from the movie is a perfect example of a hypothetical imperative. Given the aim of the bad guy--namely, to defeat the good guy--he should have killed him earlier, while he had the chance.

Thanks for your question. I agree that it's unlikely that the remark concerns the bad guy's moral duty. In lieu of a fuller description of the case, my guess about a reasonable gloss of that remark would be: it would have been in the bad guy's *interest* to kill him when he had the chance.

Note that something can be in a person's interest even if it is immoral. For instance, it's in a sadist's interest to control and torture people, given his desires; that is of course compatible with the fact that it is immoral for him to control and torture people. Philosophers like to distinguish between prudential and moral norms, where the former have to do with a person's interests, whatever they may be. So it's prudent for the sadist to torture, even if it's wrong for him to do so.

One other thing to keep in mind, I suggest, is that cases like these, even when represented in film, can be awfully complex, and good movies often bring a lot of moral ambiguity to the table. As a result, it is not always clear who the good guys and bad guys are, and even when it is, it might still seem like the good guys have their flaws and the bad guys their virtues. As a result, the situation you imagine *might* be one in which the good guy is making not just a prudential, but also a moral claim. We just don't know for sure until we think more about the details of the case.

Mitch Green

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