Cathi asked:

What is morally objectionable about murder? and is killing the same as murder?

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The crucial difference between murder and killing seems to be that killing is socially approved but
murder is not. Killing of animals or killing of enemies or killing under death penalty are culturally
approved actions. Therefore most people would not agree that "soldiers are murderers". Even "The
Sixth Commandment" in the recent translations does not state "Thou shalt not kill" but "Thou shalt not
murder" — consistent with the fact, that there is lots of killing even of children, women and elderly
under God's approval in the Old Testament. And even the killing of Jesus has been ordered by the
High Priest with approval from the Synhedrion (Council of Priests).

Murder is socially objectionable because it is a private deed without consent of the society and it's
institutions by law. That cannot be accepted. It's the same difference as between a sworn in surgeon
who is maiming you in your hopefully best interest and anybody else maiming you with bad intentions.

There is left a very deep question, posed by Sophocles in his drama Antigoneand by many
dramatists and writers — and philosophers — afterwards: Is there a difference between what is
"morally" objectionable and what is "socially" objectionable" — and if that is the case (as it surely is),
then where's the line to be drawn, and why. In part, this marks the division between "law" and
"custom" — as in blood-feud or in duelling or in bride-kidnapping, which all have been socially
accepted somewhere sometimes, as have been terrible forms of death-penalty. But that leads into the
history and philosophy of law and is another question.

Hubertus Fremerey

Murder is, not simply killing, not even unjustified intentional killing, but the unjustified intentional killing
of a person. To wantonly kill a cat may be morally objectionable, but one cannot murder a cat
because a cat is not a person. Murder is morally objectionable because (a) objectionability varies with
the value of that which may be harmed or destroyed by a prospective action (i.e., the greater the
value, the more objectionable is any prospective action taken against it) and (b) persons are the
highest moral values there are.

Tony Flood

In terms of moral principle, we object to murder on the ground that if it were to be found acceptable,
society would be a dangerous place. Murder and killing do differ. Legally, murder is defined as having
a mens reawhich is the possession of an intention to kill. Without this intention, where killing is in
some way accidental, an act of causing the death of another is not murder. In times of war, there is
an intention to kill, but this intention is brought about by instructions of a body which is legally
empowered to order killing whether we like it or not. But it is not (arguably) as abhorrent as the evil
which is present in an individual murder. David Hume thought that there is nothing that we can point
to in a murder which makes it objectionable. We just don't like it. I think this is wrong. There was evil
in the mind of the person and even if we can't see into the mind of the person, evil was there. And
really, it is not just a moral principle regulating a safe society that makes murder wrong.

We might say that manslaughter, or accidental death, and killing in war are "evils", as many things
that occur in the world are, such as death caused by volcanic eruption. These are events or features
of the world. This is a way of describing the facts in the world. When we say a murder is evil, we are
describing a fact, but also the state of mind of a person. It is not just that the fact is evil, but that the
man embodies evil which makes it morally abhorrent.

Rachel Browne

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