The Ethics of Killing
A post I wrote a couple of years ago, The Ethics of Killing in Self-Defense , received some renewed attention this past week. Judging by some feedback I’ve received, I thought it might be helpful to set the discussion into a larger context, The Ethics of Killing in general, you might say. Homicide The sixth commandment safeguards human life with the prohibition, “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13). It should be pointed out, however, that the verb in the commandment (Heb., ratsach ) is more general in meaning than “murder.” Kill is the single word that perhaps best captures its meaning. It indicates a range of actions from murder, to causing death by negligence or reckless behavior. The word which is used in modern jurisprudence is homicide, derived from the Latin homÅ , meaning man, human being , and the suffix -cide, which indicates an act of killing . Thus the term refers to the killing of a human being. [1] Homicide is a neutral term. Any killing of a human being, whet...