Wrongness of Killing in an Epicurian Account of Death

Introduction

Why is killing wrong? This seems to be one of the most straightforward questions in ethics. Of course we would right away say something like: “Killing is wrong because we harm the one who dies.”^[1] Besides this we could claim that none of us want to die so if someone were to kill us it would be wrong on those grounds alone.

However, what if death itself wasn’t bad for the one who is dead? Epicurus famously said: “So death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.” (Epicurus, 1994.) Epicurus’ argument questions the badness of death for the one who dies and, importantly, separates the question of death from the question of the moral impermissibility of killing. So following this the main question of this essay will be: How can killing be wrong if death is not bad for the one who dies?

My goal is to examine the moral impermissibility of killing if we accept that death is not bad for the one who dies. I will argue that killing is wrong on the grounds that if it were to become a moral rule^[2] then it would produce bad societal consequences. Namely, if killing was allowed in a society it would undermine its existence.

Firstly, I will take a closer look at Epicurus’ argument and then I will present and analyze my position. Following this I will examine two objections to my view. The first one will attack the premises of my position on the grounds that we don’t judge killing as morally wrong because of its consequences. The latter objection will focus on the bad consequences that my position entails if accepted.

Badness of death and wrongness of killing

In this part I will do two things. Firstly, I will analyze Epicurus’ argument that death is not bad for the one who dies. Secondly, accepting this I will put forward my argument for the wrongness of killing based on the negative societal consequences that would arise should it become a moral rule.

(I) Badness of death

In Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus discusses death itself. He focuses on whether a state such as death, which lacks experience, can be considered good or bad. We can formulate the argument as follows:

1. Whatever can be good or bad is an experience. 2. Death (being dead) implies no experience. 3. Therefore, death is neither bad nor good. (Epicurus, 1994.)

In the first premise he claims that everything we understand to be good or bad (for an individual) also implies it to be an experience. For example, when someone induces us bodily harm we experience pain which leads to suffering which we label as bad. There can’t exist a case where someone suffers without experiencing.

The second premise claims that we lack any experience when we are dead. It is worth noting that someone making us dead (killing us) is not the same as being dead. The act of killing someone can cause harm and therefore be bad, but if someone is actively trying to kill us that implies that we are still alive. This can be bad precisely because we experience it. On the other hand there is no experience once we’re dead.

In this essay I will not be examining whether this argument is true. (Of course, there is much debate on this. Many, such as (Nagel, 1970.) oppose the first premise claiming that something can be bad even if we don’t experience it. This account of death is called the harm thesis.)

The goal of this essay is not to analyze the Epicurean vs. harm thesis debate about death. Rather, the aim is to examine the morality of killing if an Epicurean account is accepted. This is relevant because many of the common objections to killing appeal to the badness of death itself. If killing can’t be deemed as morally wrong on the grounds of death being bad then we need to find an alternative.

(II) Wrongness of killing

Before getting into the argument, we need to define the scope the terms. By “killing”, in this essay, I understand the killing of humans, more specifically, humans which have a normal moral status in society. Although animals are also killed I don’t discuss that in this essay. Furthermore, certain extreme scenarios like abortion or the death penalty are also beyond this discussion. And lastly, I exclude killings which happen in wars or which occur in self-defense and similar scenarios.

These cases are excluded because my goal is not to argue about every single type of killing, rather, it is to examine the morality of killing as a general rule in society. Also, I will use “killing” rather than “murder”. For the most part these two expressions can be used interchangeably, but sometimes they differ. “Murder” is most often associated with a negative meaning whilst “killing” can be used in a neutral sense. For example:

1. “He was murdered in cold blood.” 2. “He was killed as a result of a war battle.”

Scenario (1) is negative while scenario (2) is neutral. This would lead us to believe that “murder” is negative while “killing” is positive. However, we can look at a different example:

1. “A massive killing occurred there.”

This, most definitely, carries a negative connotation. These examples create confusion and because of that for the remainder of the essay I will use “killing” and it will, from now on, be used in the context defined in this paragraph.

Now we can move on to the main question. Namely, how can we argue that killing is morally wrong if death is not bad for the individual who dies? I will argue that if killing were to become morally permissible then it would lead to bad societal consequences. I will formulate my argument as follows:

1. The function of a society relies on certain key characteristics such as trust and security. 2. Killing as morally permissible would undermine trust and security. 3. Therefore, societies which would have killing as morally permissible wouldn’t be able to function normally.

Both trust and security are vital for the function of a society. Trust arises when agents expect contracts (formal and informal) to be fulfilled. For example, when someone goes to the bank to get a mortgage they expect the bank to live up to their end of the agreement. This happens because they hold that the level of trust is adequate. This is an example of a formal contract.^[3]

Furthermore, when you get a flat tire and you call someone to help, and they tell you they will be there in half an hour you expect them to be there (this is an example of an informal contract). Contracts need time passed for them to be fulfilled. If one person promises another to do something later both persons need to be alive for the promise to be guaranteed^[4]. If killing was not prohibited it would negatively influence this. Contracts would be more likely to be broken and a fall in fulfilled contracts between agents would, naturally, lead to a fall in trust.

Security can be defined as the tendency of agents to be unharmed in a society^[5]. For example, we have a society A in which each agent has a % chance to be harmed. If this number is too high then the society isn’t safe. Naturally, if it is below that threshold then it would be considered safe. Killing as morally permissible would, certainly, strongly raise this % chance.

Although there aren’t clear examples of societies where killing was morally permissible we can take a look at high crime areas as an example. High crime areas in the USA often come with a high rate of murder^[6]. People who live in these often feel insecure and distrust their environment (this is why they are often armed). This occurs because of violent crimes, especially murder.

But murder is just one type of crime. Couldn’t this feeling of distrust and insecurity be the result of some other crime? I argue not, suppose you live in an area of extremely high crime rates. But the crimes which are in question are tax fraud and bank robberies. Would anyone here actually feel insecure when walking down the streets?^[7] Or would you feel distrust to other agents if you know they commit tax fraud? It’s hard to see how they would.

Can we really say killing is bad because of its consequences?

In his paper What Is Wrong With Killing People? R. E. Ewin examined murder. Namely, how can we say that killing is wrong if the one who dies will not be around to face the consequences? (Ewin, 1972.) This is particularly relevant because he raises the same question as I do in this work.

Ewin raises one notable point, namely, that killing isn’t regarded as wrong because of its consequences, rather, because it’s inherently bad. Ewin gives the following example. If a man kills another (not in self-defense or similar) we judge the act as wrong regardless of the consequences. Furthermore, he describes the consequences as incidental. The consequences could be good or bad but they aren’t relevant to the decision, it’s only the intention that makes it wrong. (Ewin, 1972.)

His argument:

1. Death is not bad for the individual who dies. 2. A killing isn’t judged on the basis of consequences rather it’s judged solely on the killer’s intention. 3. Therefore, even if death isn’t bad for the one who dies, we don’t judge the killing as wrong because of the consequences.

Since both Ewin and I agree on premise 1. there will be no discussion on it.

Now relating to the second premise there’s an example which would support Ewin’s argument. Suppose we have a person who gets satisfaction when killing. He finds a person who is a lone wolf (meaning he has no friends, no relatives and no people who care about him) and suppose this person lives off the grid away from any civilization. Our killer sneaks up on that person while they are sleeping and kills them. The person feels nothing and they die while the killer gets satisfaction. Of course no one will ever know that that person died. Now if there are only positive consequences, the killer getting the satisfaction, how can we say that this is bad?

This doesn’t directly attack my argument because I didn’t claim that every act of killing has bad consequences. Rather I claimed that if killing were to become a rule, meaning it was allowed, that this would bring about bad societal consequences.

Firstly, I will point out that this example against my view of killing can be done against any moral action that we deem to be wrong on the basis of its consequences. Secondly, I will explain why this argument attacks act-consequentialism and not rule-consequentialism (my view).

These types of examples (the one with the killer and the victim) can be applied to any moral action not just killing. We can call these examples victimless crimes. For a given action we can find examples where no one suffers bad consequences from that specific action. This is a problem if we say that a given action, such as stealing or killing, always produces bad consequences.

An example with stealing: Suppose we have a very poor thief, whose children are very hungry, and a very rich man. At night the thief steals a sum of money and uses it to feed his hungry kids, which the very rich man never notices missing. So the thief’s children didn’t die of starvation and the rich man didn’t notice so there are no bad consequences. In this example we see that a moral action which we usually judge as morally wrong can be performed so that no one suffers bad consequences. How can we then claim that stealing or killing is wrong based on its consequences?

To answer this question we first need to differentiate between two versions of consequentialism. Consequentialism is a moral theory which judges moral actions as good or bad on the basis of their consequences. There are two main versions of this view, act-consequentialism and rule-consequentialism. While act-consequentialism judges specific actions rule-consequentialism judges rules which prohibit or allow certain actions. Basically, act-consequentialism asks if the consequences of an action are positive, whereas, rule-consequentialism asks if a rule prohibiting/allowing a certain (type of) action has good consequences. I’m arguing killing is bad on rule-consequentialist grounds.

Ewin’s argument claims that killing can have good consequences and, because of this, we can’t say that killing is wrong solely because of consequences. I agree that killing doesn’t necessarily have bad consequences, however, I disagree that because of this killing is judged without regard to them. Killing is judged as wrong because it being a rule would have bad societal consequences, as I have argued in the second part.

If killing led to good consequences it would be considered good

I have argued that killing is wrong because a rule allowing it would lead to bad societal consequences. But what if it caused good consequences? If this were true, then I would need to say that killing is good. This objection presumes that there exists a world where a society can exist and simultaneously allow killing.

I do accept that if a rule allowing killing would produce good societal consequences, then killing would have to be considered good. However, a society where killing is accepted as a rule seems improbable to arise (if not impossible). If killing were to become a rule it would undermine trust and security to that point that a society couldn’t function. It’s hard to imagine a society with a serious lack of security and trust, so it’s hard to imagine a society where killing is a rule.

However, throughout history there were numerous rules which didn’t strictly forbid killing. For example, killing of slaves or child sacrifice^[8]. While I claimed that societies where killing existed as a rule couldn’t arise, we can see throughout history there exist plentiful examples of such rules.

I do recognize these as actual examples where certain killings were normalized or at least weren’t punished but this doesn’t attack my argument. This isn’t a question of “is killing allowed”, rather, it is a question of moral consideration throughout history. Killing wasn’t allowed neither in the slave-owning USA nor in the Aztec empire. However, these practices were carried out because slaves and children, in those societies, weren’t in moral consideration. Killing was considered wrong but these specific subjects were killed because they were not morally considered (on the same scale as others).

In our modern society killing is regarded as wrong. However, suppose that a hundred years from now all people become vegan. Following this animals gain a moral status similar to humans and have a right to live as much as humans. Naturally, anyone who kills an animal would be treated the same as if he killed a human. Would we then need to say that killing is allowed in our society? No, because we don’t normalize killing we just ascribe different moral worth to subjects.

Conclusion

In this essay I examined the wrongness of death in an Epicurean account of death. If death is not bad for the one who dies then we need to find a different way to judge killing as morally wrong. My argument was that if killing were to be morally permissible then it would lead to bad societal consequences and that it is because of this wrong. Ewin correctly noticed that killing (in specific scenarios) produces no bad consequences. And this would be a problem for an act-consequentialist, but my argument doesn’t claim that every act of killing is wrong. Rather, a rule which would permit killing would be wrong. Secondly, if killing produced good consequences, then I would need to killing is good. While I do accept this reasoning I don’t see how it could actually come about. Most arguments against killing call upon the badness of death, however, in this essay I tried to examine how we could argue for the wrongness of killing if we couldn’t take such positions.