On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, Alison Croggon wrote...
>I am constantly puzzled
>by how importance or significance attach to some deaths and not to
>others, how moral opprobrium attaches to some acts and not to others,
>when to my simplistic mind they seem to me essentially the same
>action. The acrobatics consist in relabelling it. If we condemn
>murder, oughtn't we to condemn it consistently?
>
Dear Alison,
In a word, no. I'd agree that any human death should be regarded as
important, and that the deliberate killing of one human by another
should be regarded as a serious matter. But whether a specific instance
should be condemned, and if so, by how much, depends on the
circumstances. I wouldn't condemn a police marksman who kills the man
holed up in a school and killing his hostages, for example. I wouldn't
condemn the person who kills the terminal cancer sufferer who has
expressed a wish to die. I wouldn't condemn as much the woman who kills
the man who has been abusing her, as I would the person who leaves a
bomb in a pub. I would, though, want to make sure that in all of the
above cases, the issues were as they seemed. It would be a different
matter if the police marksman knew that his colleagues were about to
restrain the hostage-taker, or the cancer sufferer had been coerced into
expressing a wish to die.
Even if it were possible to strip the word "murder" of its moral and
emotive connotations, I still think it would be a mistake to give it a
wider provenance. If anything, we need more terms, not fewer.
Best,
--
Peter
http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
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