IS MURDER WRONG?

Before I start this one, I feel like I need to clarify a few things:
No I am not a murderer,
No I am not a psychopath,
Yes I am sure,
No I don’t need to talk about it.

Besides, if I really was a murderer, do you think I would go and make a song and a dance about why murder is so great on the internet? On a website where my information is literally accessible to anyone who cares in ‘About Us’ – ‘The Scope Team’ – ‘Nikhil Handa’, who can then read my other fantastic articles, follow me on Twitter, follow me on Instagram and generally worship me as a human being? No, I don’t think that would be sensible either. Alright, now you have all fallen into my tra – I mean, now I have convinced you all of my innocence, let’s get to the question at hand.

It should be now that I inform you all, unfortunately, that you have been click baited. I’m really going to be talking about why murder is wrong, or what makes it illegal in the first place. Sure, go ahead, queue the boos, but jokes on you, I got the views.

For a question like this, we need to define murder as being separate from simply ‘killing’ – killing can include anything from abortion (depending on your beliefs), suicide, assisted suicide and man-slaughter, which are all political issues I am going to skirt dangerously close to but I’ll do my best to avoid them. To define murder, I am going to refer to the CPS’ (Crown Prosecution Service) conditions for murder to be labelled as such (a quick Google definition was unsurprisingly insufficient). The CPS states that a murder case is only a murder case if:

“A person:
Of sound mind and discretion [i.e. sane];
unlawfully kills [i.e. not self-defence or other justified killing];
any reasonable creature [human being];
in being [born alive and breathing through its own lungs]
…
under the Queen's Peace [not in war-time];
with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm [GBH].”

With that in mind, let’s jump straight into what is sure to be a killer article (I’m not even sorry).

One popular stance in western philosophy when it comes to ethical issues is that of utilitarianism, which is concerned with the consequences of the different actions you can take in an ethical predicament. For example, if I was to hand in this article late to my editor-in-chief, it would lead to an increase in the general annoyance and stress in his life, and the entire issue would have to be delayed. However, if I stop procrastinating and get this in on time, he’ll be happier and the issue will be published on time. Therefore, according to the utilitarian standpoint, it would be morally correct to hand in my article on time (this doesn’t mean it’ll happen however).

Now we have established the meaning of the utilitarian perspective, we can apply it to the question we have to address. What is a utilitarian’s view of murder? Well, let’s think of the consequences of the action: we can assume that in most cases, those close to the victim will be traumatized and deep in mourning. As the utilitarian would put it, this does not ‘produce good’. However, we also must consider the impact on the murderer, right? Well, we can assume the murderer has murdered because, well, they want to, and so they must receive some sort of satisfaction from the act. And in the case of some especially despicable psychopaths who deserve to burn in hell, they might even experience glee. So, rather controversially, we have to recognise the positive consequences the act has on the perpetrator in our assessment of morality. However, such an emotion of satisfaction is typically short-lived, as the prospect of going to jail and losing their rights faces them, and the long-term effect of the consequence is also something a utilitarian must consider. Hence, it seems the more bad than good is produced from murder, and hence, to a utilitarian, it can be seen as wrong. But hold on, we have established that murder is wrong because of the impact on those around the act; what about the actual victim? Surely the victim has been wronged in some way? This, for me, is where the heart of this problem lies. The heart of the problem lies with the one whose heart has stopped beating. And yes, I am incredibly proud of myself for coming up with that over-dramatisation of a line.

Okay, but since the utilitarian perspective helped us so much last time, let’s see what we can do with that again. For the victim of the murder, the consequences they experience is… death. That’s it. They can’t experience any other consequences because, well, they’re done. So that begs the question: Is death a good consequence or a bad consequence? Well I looked it up on Google and it didn’t tell me, so it must be a really hard one to answer. But that’s the key: the answer is that we cannot answer it. We don’t know what happens after death. It could be another life, but one that is filled with torment and torture, or it could really be the case of the ‘sweet release of death’. It could even be, quite simply, nothing. Just nothingness. Like the result of many House of Commons’ Brexit debates. Completely nothing. And so if this was the case, we cannot say that death would have either bad or good consequences for the one who’s been killed. The end result of this is that the utilitarian method cannot tell us why murder is an injustice to the victim.

So do we just give up on the question, go home and ask Alexa to play Despacito? Well you can do, but I’m going to persist with this over here. And by that I mean I’m going to partly steal the idea of another philosopher far more qualified than myself. Michael Tooley, a graduate of Princeton University, argues in his book ‘A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide’:

“... An individual cannot have a right to life unless it is the case, or was at some time in the past, that the individual is capable of envisaging a future for itself and of having desires about that future.”

As you can see by the book title, this quote was written in defence of abortion; however, the concept introduced concerning what defines a ‘right to life’ is vital in understanding what makes murder wrong. Tooley argues that it is the capability to have desires for your future that gives you a right to life; in other words, if you have a life purpose, you have a life right?

But what makes this Tooley bloke right? Well, with philosophy being as pretentious as ever, we don’t say that he’s right as such, but we can say that his argument is reasonable. Okay, then why is his argument reasonable? For me, it’s because his argument corresponds with what we can see.

When someone is murdered, they typically don’t want to be murdered. Why is this? It can’t just be the fear of the unknown, the fear of death that causes such intense emotion in the face of death: such a fear is too weak, too unjustified. It seems that people don’t want to die because of the future they would be missing out upon. Think back to all the Hollywood movies you’ve ever seen that includes a death scene. In the majority of these scenes, especially in the case of the poor innocent average Joe who had just gone out to buy some bananas, the victim tends to beg for their life by claiming they have kids, or a family. As well as for bringing a tear to our eye, this is useful in representing Tooley’s point. The banana buyer’s life purpose is to see their kids grow up, or to supply their family. This is what they have worked for in their life and ending poor banana man’s life is a deprivation of that future. It’s the exact same case as destroying something that someone else has worked incredibly hard for.

Contrasting with this: it is common that in most cases of suicide, it is a case of a momentary lapse in being able to see your life purpose. Of course I am not generalising, but the cause of depression is often seen to be this exact feeling of purposelessness. With Tooley’s argument in mind, it seems like no coincidence that those with no life purpose at the time, are most willing to die. But for those whose life purpose is not lost, it is this prevention of their future with the irrevocability of the murder that can be seen to make murder wrong.

Sorry if that got a little intense there, but given this article was on the topic of murder, you must be a rather intense person in order to click on it in the first place. So for all you intense people out there, don’t reference this article when you’re arrested.