What Is So Wrong with Killing People?
Author(s): Robert Young
Source: Philosophy , Oct., 1979, Vol. 54, No. 210 (Oct., 1979), pp. 515-528
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy
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What is so Wrong with Killing
People?
ROBERT YOUNG
If killing another human being is morally wrong on at least some occasions
(as it clearly is), what precisely makes it wrong on those occasions? I have
framed the question thus to indicate that I shall not be considering the view
that killing another human being is always and everywhere morally wrong.
I take it as read that there are at least some morally justifiable killings (for
instance, in self-defence where no other means of disarming one's attacker
is available). Once it is clear what is wrong with killing on some occasions
it should become possible to explain why it is not wrong on others. My
immediate concern is with the killing of another human being, and with
applying my answer to cases of voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, but
light will be shed on whether and, if so, why it is wrong to kill oneself, to
kill unborn human beings, and to kill non-human animals especially those
whose life has most in common with the life of human beings.
I
Consider first the suggestion that killing another human being is wrong on
certain occasions because it involves violating the right to life. Even if we
set aside difficulties about whether there is such a moral or human right,1
others remain. To begin with there is dispute among those who believe in
a right to life about which human beings may properly be bearers of such
a right. Michael Tooley2 holds that there is a conceptual connection between,
on the one hand, the rights an individual can have and the circumstances
under which they can be violated, and, on the other, the existence in the
person of the corresponding desires. To violate a right is, in general, to
frustrate the corresponding desire. In accordance with this view of rights
he argues for the conclusion that:
1 I have tried to elaborate on them in 'Dispensing with Moral Rights', Political
Theory 5 (I977).
2 'A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide' as revised and reprinted in The
Problem of Abortion, J. Feinberg (ed.) (Belmont, Calif.: 1973), 5 i-9i. For critical
discussion see S. Benn, 'Abortion, Infanticide and Respect for Persons', ibid.,
92-104, and B. Brody, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: a Philosophical
View (Cambridge, Mass. and London: I976), 85ff.
Philosophy
54
1979
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515
Robert Young
... 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, is capable of
possessing the concept of a continuing subject of experiences and other
mental states, is itself such an entity, and possesses self-consciousness, or
at least the capacity for self-consciousness (p. 72).
So, on Tooley's account, until an organism has been brought to conscious-
ness, and until it envisages a future for itself, and has hopes and desires
about such a future, one does not violate anyone's right to life by destroying
the organism (since it lacks any such right). Where, however, an individual
has a right this places others under a prima facie obligation not to prevent
his satisfying his corresponding desire to continue to exist as a subject of
experiences and other mental states. Tooley goes to great pains (pp. 60-67)
to make clear that there are a number of circumstances where persons have
rights to life which should be safeguarded though they lack the relevant
occurrent desires. He has in mind persons who become emotionally un-
balanced and whose occurrent desires are unrepresentative of their dispositional ones, persons temporarily unconscious and who thus presumably
have no occurrent desires, those whose occurrent desires have been
conditioned in certain specifiable ways and who would subsequently wish
they had not been subject to such conditioning, persons who lack certain
relevant information and so on. In sum, if there is some time at which a
person is or will be capable of wishing that an action which violates his
rights had not occurred, and at which he wvould so wish if he had all the
relevant information and had not been subject to influences that distorted
his preferences, we ought not to allow his rights to be violated. While Tooley
believes this commits us to taking account both of future and potential
desires, he claims we are not to consider the desires an individual would
have if he were to exist at certain times at which he will not in fact exist.
So we have at least one subscriber to a right to life who refuses to accord
the right to all human beings and who thus countenances the moral
acceptability of killing certain infants. Nevertheless, Tooley's argument
cannot be regarded as decisive, and hence cannot be employed to overturn
the suggestion that the wrongness of killing another human being resides
in its violating the other's right to life. Tooley's argument is indecisive
because it seems rather arbitrarily to accord weight to the fact that some
human beings, namely those falling within any of his various exceptional
categories, have in the past had the desire to continue to exist as subjects
of experiences and other mental states and are expected to have these desires
again, while refusing to set any store by the desires which some others, very
young infants, will come to have. (Of course, if the arguments of Benn and
Brody against Tooley are thought to be successful they provide further
grounds for rejecting his restrictions on who may bear a right to life.)
5I6
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
Moreover, it is of some note that Tooley, along with virtually all writers
on the nature and status of an alleged human right to life, considers it to
be only a prima facie right. Once this is conceded the possibility looms of
conflicts between the rights to life of various individuals. In cases of selfdefence, killing in war, and so on, we will obtain no help in determining
which killings are morally wrong and which are not, by considering the
rights to life of the individuals involved, for these are held in common if
they are held at all. Notwithstanding this point my subsequent proposal as
to why some killings are morally wrong could be adopted by those who hold
that there is a right to life and used to resolve such conflicts.
A second suggestion as to why killing another human being is wrong on
at least some occasions is that it unwarrantedly prevents the realization
either of an individual's life-purposes, or such life-purposes as the individual may reasonably have been expected to resume or to come to have.
Several points in this formulation need elaboration. First, life-purposes
must be understood widely enough to include objects of other proattitudes-convictions as to duty and the like-as well as desires. Second,
my use of 'life-purpose' has to be construed widely enough to cover a purely
contemplative existence, since this may be all that is open to some severely
physically handicapped persons. Third, the second disjunct in the formulation is intended to avoid the problems which we saw exercised Michael
Tooley in his attempt to restrict the scope of a human right to life. According
to this suggestion if an individual has no life-purposes and there is no
reasonable expectation that he or she will come to have them, it is not
morally wrong to kill that individual. The point can be brought out by
considering the following two cases.
i. Smith is comatose after an accident and has no occurrent life-purposes.
However, Smith lives in an age which has an advanced and generally
available medical technology capable of correcting his condition. So Smith
can reasonably be expected to regain or come to have life-purposes and it
would, therefore, be morally wrong to kill him.
2. Smithers is just like Smith except that he lives in an age which does
not have (and will not have for at least ioo years) technology capable of
correcting his condition. It is not wrong, according to the present suggestion,
to kill Smithers.
The most obvious, though not the only, difficulty with this present
suggestion is that it is circular. What is supposed to make certain killings
morally wrong is that they unwarrantedly prevent the realization of lifepurposes or reasonably expectable life-purposes. An improved formulation
is, however, not hard to discover. Were the reference not to 'unwarranted
interferences' but to 'unjust interferences' the circularity would be eliminated. Even though I take justice to be rather more like a deontological than
a teleological ingredient in determining which acts are morally right, given
the propensity of most act-utilitarians to furnish a reductivist account of
5I7
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Robert Young
'justice' in terms of a certain configuration of consequentialist considerations,
the revised formulation would seem to have the advantage of being fairly
neutral between the more prominent normative ethical theories.
Still, even the revised proposal will not do. According to it, for example,
the wrongful imprisonment of a person for life would have to be regarded
as just as morally reprehensible as killing the person if the imprisonment
resulted in the total loss of all his or her life-purposes. And granted the allconsuming and highly specific character of the life-purposes of some people,
imprisonment might well render impossible the fulfilment of those purposes. While we do speak figuratively of a happening of this kind as a 'fate
worse than death' it does seem counter-intuitive that any plausible analysis
should generate such a conclusion. Nor can the point be met by claiming
that most people put in such a predicament would either find a new purpose
in seeking to establish their innocence or in the manner of 'the birdman of
Alcatraz'. For if one case of the sort I mentioned is consistently describable
the proposed analysis has been defeated.
At this point a further modification suggests itself. Even if unjust
imprisonment for life would as a matter offact result in the destruction of
the life-purposes of some people by restricting opportunity (e.g. to go to
medical school), it would still make sense to say of such people that they
may come to engage themselves with new life-purposes. When a person is
killed all such hope is irretrievably lost. An adequate analysis of the wrongness of killing another human will have to incorporate a recognition of this
critical asymmetry for it is its irrevocable character which makes it the most
morally serious of all interferences with people's life-purposes.
This suggests that what makes killing another person morally wrong on
occasions is its character as an irrevocable, unjust preventing of the realization either of the victim's life-purposes or of such life-purposes as the
victim may reasonably have been expected to resume or to come to have.
Unfortunately even this proposal will not quite do as it stands if we allow
the admissibility of cases, real or imagined, necessitating a morality of triage.
An illustrative case is that of the innocent fat man. A fat man gets stuck
with his face out in the only exit of a cave which is rapidly filling with water
from the sea. The man in question is leading a group of twelve explorers
out of the cave and clearly the whole party, with the exception of the fat man,
will drown if he is not prised loose. After all other avenues have been tried
the group has recourse to the one remaining possibility, namely using a
stick of gelignitC, which one of them happens to have, to blast a hole
through the cave. The only spot where this can be successfully managed is
in the exit blocked by the fat man. If the gelignite is set off he will be killed
but the other members of the exploration party will be able to get out
safely. To kill the fat man is surely unjust to him. But for none of the
twelve to do anything to save the trapped persons is unjust to them. It
would seem that killing the fat man would be morally permissible. The
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
justification given would be one in terms of doing the minimally unjust
act, or perhaps in terms of the need to introduce some relatively less significant injustice to avert overwhelmingly bad consequences that would
otherwise directly ensue. Because I am taking it that it is not killing as such,
but killing under certain specified conditions which is morally wrong, we
cannot hope to decide which killings involving 'scapegoats' are justified
without giving consideration to the injustices and consequences generated
by particular cases. One need not go along with the claim made by Bernard
Williams that maintaining one's personal integrity is morally more needful
than the avoidance of widespread, harmful consequences to others. No
doubt there are circumstances where we should resist the temptation to use
some people as means to benefiting others. But where this is so it will be
because of the balance of justice and consequences in the particular circumstances in question.3
One further modification needs to be made, therefore, to the proposed
analysis to cope with cases of this sort. I shall refer in it only to the idea
of the maximally unjust action since to mention disjunctively in each
instance that there are not present any overwhelmingly significant redeem-
ing consequences would render the proposal rather clumsy. According to
my account, then, what makes killing another human being wrong on
occasions is its character as an irrevocable, maximally unjust prevention of
the realization either of the victim's life-purposes or of such life-purposes
as the victim may reasonably have been expected to resume or to come to
have.
II
The best way to see whether the proposed analysis does the job we need is
to consider how it lines up with our considered views about cases of morally
justifiable killings and then to see whether it sheds any light on the more
disputed cases. In these latter cases it seems likely that the dispute arises
precisely because there is no reliable moral consciousness against which to
test our views, and to that extent the position I defend may have to be seen
as involving moral pioneering rather than moral cartography.
If we begin with cases of killing in self-defence to stave off a lethal attack it
seems clear that the proposed analysis is on the right track. The attacker, who
3 See J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: I973), 98. J. Bennett's 'Whatever the Consequences', Analysis z6
(i965-6), 83-102, is relevant to Williams's remarks and to the more recent
discussion of similar matters in J. Harris, 'The Survival Lottery', Philosophy 50
(I975), 8i-87 and the replies by Carolyn Morillo, 'As Sure as Shooting',
Philosophy 51 (1976), 80-89, and Peter Singer, 'Utility and the Survival Lottery',
Philosophy 52 (1977), 2I8-222.
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Robert Young
acts without provocation, threatens unjustly to take the life of the pursued.
The person whose life is under threat is being treated maximally unjustly
(there being no mitigating considerations). Where there is no other way of
stopping such an irrevocable, naximally unjust interference with the
victim's life-purposes, killing is morally justified. This brings out, too,
that the extent to which we may morally properly interfere with the lifepurposes of others depends on the gravity of any attack they wage on
others' life-purposes and on whether any means of preventing them from
doing so, which falls short of the ultimate step of killing them, is open to
us. Some would object that there are cases of justifiable killing in selfdefence where there is no threat to the life of the person under attack.
Suppose Thompson tries to rape Jacobson. Jacobson kills in self-defence
because there was no other way of preventing the rape, though not only
was there in reality no threat to her life, but Jacobson did not believe that
there was one. Thompson's attempted rape may not have been a grave
attack on Jacobson's ability to realize her life-purposes. My reply is that
even though we might regard the attempted rape as a mitigating circumstance in any consideration of the wrongfulness of Jacobson's act, a wrong
act it remains.
As well as cases of killing in self-defence to stave off a lethal attack, there
are cases of killing in self-defence which may be justified to ward off what
Nozick4 has termed 'innocent threats'. The case of the innocent fat man
falls within this category, though others could be cited, like ones involving
the life-threatening activities of a small child and where the threat can only
be averted by killing the child. Somewhat more troublesome are the cases
of 'innocent shields of threats' referred to by Nozick. Here the innocent
persons are not themselves threats but are so situated that they will be
damaged by the only means available for stopping the threat. I believe the
principles enunciated earlier in relation to the case of the innocent fat man
still hold,5 but it would take us too far afield to consider the various sorts
of cases that could be imagined which involve innocent shields of threats.
It is one of our considered moral views that in war a person who is not
himself or herself in a classical self-defensive situation may none the less
justifiably kill another in the course of defending territory, property, the
lives of others, and so on, or pursuant to the waging of a just war.6 Again,
the proffered analysis seems to fit quite neatly. It should be noticed, though,
4 R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: 1974), 34-35.
5 They apply also to the question of whether an innocent threat or an innocent
shield of a threat may morally permissibly defend himself or herself. It should be
noticed that the case of the innocent fat man is so devised as to preclude his taking
self-defensive action. This is deliberate, and is intended to limit the factors that
one has to cope with in deciding which actions are morally permitted.
6 Cf. Richard Wasserstrom, 'On the Morality of War: A Preliminary Inquiry',
in War and Morality, Wasserstrom (ed.) (Belmont, Calif.: 1970).
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
that neither our considered view nor the analysis I have proposed commits
one to holding that any and every killing by persons fighting a war of selfdefence against an aggressor, or seeking to promote a just cause, is acceptable. There will probably be some quite gratuitous acts of killing carried
out by those judged to be acting rightfully overall. Since such atrocities
will be maximally unjust in virtue of the lack of supporting considerations
to dictate their performance, they will not be morally justifiable. It may be
thought that less tractable problems arise from the fact that persons fighting
for the side which is objectively in the wrong will none the less sometimes
believe that they, too, are fighting in a just cause. I suggest that once the
crucial distinction is drawn between act evaluation and agent evaluation
this feature of war can be handled. Persons fighting on behalf of the unjust
aggressors or for an immoral cause should be judged in relation to killings
they carry out by such considerations as their ignorance of the facts and
the culpability or otherwise of their ignorance, the degree of coercion to
which their participation was subject and so on. How they fare on such
counts determines our evaluation of them as agents, even though the acts
they performed may have been morally indefensible. (Pretty obviously we
are going to need some such distinction to cover accidental killings, too,
where, for example, the killer is judged not to be culpably negligent.)
A more troublesome case is that of capital punishment. The difficulty to
be confronted here is that those who do not argue for its retention on the
ground that it is just do so on the ground that its retention will promote
very significant consequences, namely deterrent or protective ones. It may
appear, therefore, that according to my account capital punishment would
prove to be morally justifiable killing, whereas informed reflective moral
consciousness suggests otherwise.
I shall take the latter claim first. Whether or not the death penalty is the
uniquely effective deterrent is a factual issue and a disputed one at that.
But we do know that for many homicides, which are apt to be impulsive
rather than deliberative, deterrence is likely to be low.7 Likewise, 'con-
scientious' killers such as some political terrorists are unlikely to be deterred
by any penalty. And anyway it has often been pointed out that we have
evidence that virtually identical capital crime rates are found in societies
without capital punishment as in societies with provision for the death
penalty.8 Given this lack of positive support for the practice, its dangers,
7Cf. D. F. Thompson, 'The Means of Dealing with Criminals: Social Science
and Social Philosophy', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 5 (I975), i-i6.
8 For some of the debate see e.g. E. Van den Haag, 'On Deterrence and the
Death Penalty', Ethics 78 (i968), 280-288; H. A. Bedau 'The Death Penalty as
a Deterrent: Argument and Evidence', Ethics 8o (I970), 205-217; and their
rejoinders and replies in Ethics 8i (I971), 74-76. For an interesting presentation
of it see also D. Conway 'Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Consider-
ations in Dialogue Form', Philosophy and Putblic Affairs z (I972), 431-443.
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Robert Young
especially given our inability to guarantee that only the guilty are punished,
are too great to allow of its continued use. As for the alleged protective
value of capital punishment, there are alternative measures which are not
irrevocable in operation that could equally serve to protect the community
from highly dangerous criminals. So the claim that overwhelmingly good
consequences are directly occasioned by the retention of the death penalty
is unconvincing, and fails to render suspect my analysis of why it is wrong
sometimes to kill another human being.
According to Kant capital punishment is just, because it is generally9
the only means available for restoring the imbalance created by crimes such
as murder. But once we look carefully at this metaphor it can be seen to
establish little or nothing. No restoration of balance is achieved by killing
X for killing Y, because Y is irretrievably lost and his relatives, friends and
society could hardly be said to find things back on an even keel just because
his killer has been irretrievably jettisoned. The metaphor of reciprocal
benefits and burdens fails to hold up where the death penalty is involved
(and notoriously, of course, for many other crimes like rape, pederasty and
so on). What this shows is not that the retributivist goes astray in arguing
that offenders should be given their dues or deserts but that the principle
of imposing 'like for like' is misguided. Thus as Hegel and other retributivists have urged it is necessary to keep separate arguments for a
retributivist approach to punishment from arguments aimed at determining
the exact measure of the offender's deserts.10 It is, therefore, quite reasonable to resist the claim that imposing the death penalty must be the just
thing to do in retaliation for some crimes. One who supports my analysis
of the wrongness of killing is not committed thereby to any particular moral
stance on capital punishment. That is an issue to be settled by rational
moral argument and reference to any relevant evidence about its operation
as a form of punishment (though for my part it has been settled already
since the abolitionists have the better of the argument and evidence).
Finally, it may be objected that my proposal takes insufficient account of
theological considerations, for it may well be that among some people's
life-purposes we will find included a desire to enter into an after-life. In
the case where a person wants to be translated to heaven it may seem that
on my proposal it would be permissible to kill him because even though
some of his life-purposes would thereby be frustrated others would be
fulfilled. While it is not altogether clear that killing such a person would
promote his desires to do things in and with his life the objection should not
be sidestepped on such a technicality.
9 In Philosophy of Law he admits exceptions such as the mother who commits
infanticide, the soldier who kills a fellow soldier in a duel and so on.
10 For a contemporary retributivist's view on the latter see J. Kleinig, Punishment and Desert (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoft 1973) Iz3ff.
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, at least, there is evidence to suggest
that this desire to be with God is not to be encouraged because it would
entail forsaking various other ministries which believers should desire to
fulfil. Paul, for instance (Philippians i, 21-26; 2 Corinthians v, i-iO)
indicates that he would rather light out for better pastures but recognizes
that he should stay to do his appointed tasks. Similarly, though early
Christian martyrs embraced death when its inevitability became clear they
did not actively seek it. So a Christian who actively sought death while
various ministries remained open to him would warrant some restraint in
order that opportunity might be afforded him to consider his responsibilities.
In addition to this consideration the fact that there is a degree of doubt
about the certainty of entering the after-life surely demands that we adopt
a conservative view about allowing people to seek to realize such desires
without interference. I share with other writers the position that 'weak'
paternalistic interventions are justifiable in order to protect a person's
opportunity subsequently to give more informed consent, while 'strong'
paternalistic interventions are justifiable to preserve a wider range of future
autonomy for a person. Weak paternalism would seem to be in order in a
case of the present sort.11 I suggest, therefore, that if other things are equal
my formula does not license the killing of those who long to be with God
in heaven.
III
Now that I have tested my proposal against some of our more deeply
engraved moral bench-marks and defended it against objections I want to
apply it to less familiar but topical matters, namely the morality of voluntary
euthanasia and of non-voluntary euthanasia, of suicide, of the killing of
non-human animals and of abortion.
In my discussion of voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia my concern
throughout will be with issues of killing rather than of 'letting die'. I shall
focus, therefore, on what has come to be called active euthanasia rather
than passive euthanasia. Nowadays even conservative religious groups tend
not to object to passive euthanasia where this involves the withholding or
withdrawal of so-called 'extraordinary life support measures'.12 Further,
11 Cf. G. Dworkin, 'Paternalism', The Monist 56 (1972), 64-84; R. Carter,
'Justifying Paternalism', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (I977), I33-145.
12 Vide the much publicized Karen Quinlan case. The original judgment by
Justice Muir of the Supreme Court of New Jersey refusing Karen's father's
request, which had the support of the Catholic authorities, to authorize the
discontinuance of all extraordinary means of sustaining Karen's life processes
is reprinted in Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy, T. Mappes and J.
Zembaty (eds) (New York: McGraw Hill I977), 37-42. A debate between James
Rachels and Tom Beauchamp on the moral significance of the killing-letting die
distinction is published in the same volume, pp. 62-75.
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Robert Young
since my argument will be directed only to the issue of the morality of the
killings involved in active euthanasia many further issues which surround
these topics, such as whether the incidence of error in medical diagnosis
prevents our speaking of the hopelessness or incurability of any particular
case, whether voluntary consent to euthanasia is really possible, whether
laws could be framed to cope with matters like voluntary euthanasia and the
like,'3 will not here be treated.
Advocates of active voluntary euthanasia have contended that where a
person is in fact
(i) presently incurable;
(ii) beyond the aid of any cure or restoration which may reasonably be
expected to eventuate within his life expectancy;
(iii) suffering intolerable and unmitigable pain, or has lost any distinct-
ively human existence in the process of avoiding such pain; and
(iv) of a fixed and rational desire to die (or, has previously made a
certified declaration that should his health subsequently deteriorate
in such a way as to make the first three conditions true of him)
provision should be made legally and medically for his desire to be satisfied
in a discreetly quick and painless way.
What moral judgment should wve make of a killing of a human being who
satisfies all four conditions? Here, because the individual's reflective desire
is for his life to be taken, we surely must reject the claim that taking his
life unjustly prevents the realization of those activities which he has pro-
attitudes toward doing in and with the remaining bit of it. Indeed, not to
do what he desires would be tantamount to a paternalistic rejection of the
individual's capacity rationally to determine what he really wants, given
that what he wants will harm no one else. (I take this latter as obvious since
he is in a position, we must presume, to harm others only by acts of omission.
Whether or not he can even do this will hinge on his having previously
taken all needful antecedent steps to the fulfilling of his obligations.)
Neither weak nor strong paternalism would be appropriate in relation to
candidates for voluntary euthanasia since there is ex hypothesi no question
either of providing for more informed consent to be given at a later date or
of making possible a wider range of future autonomy.
Clearly some assisted suicides will have a similar character to cases of
voluntary euthanasia and except for the number of agents involved so, too,
will some instances of suicide. Where, however, the suicide (whether
assisted or not) contrives to avoid fulfilling his clear, positive obligations to
family, friends, or society which until then he remained able to fulfil, our
13 I have discussed these matters in my 'Voluntary and Nonvoluntary
Euthanasia', The Monist 59 (I976), 264-283.
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
judgment of the act and the agent or agents involved may alter significantly.
The reason is not to do with any injustice in the killing. Rather it is that
we sometimes hold that depriving others of the services which the suicide
would have rendered had he lived occasions a greater injustice than that
which prevention of the suicide would involve. The other important case
is one where the individual would by committing suicide be acting not
against the legitimate interests of others but against his own best interest,
an interest of which he is, in fact, ignorant. When this happens the suicide
has wrongfully evaluated his interests all things considered. He has overvalued the interest he has in achieving his desire to be dead because the
importance of achieving this desire has become distorted.14 In such cases
we are justified in paternalistically intervening because our doing so will
preserve the individual's greater autonomy, albeit one that he presently
fails to recognize. As it happens those who just go ahead and commit
suicide prevent our helping them to assess what is in their best interest all
things considered. But the great majority of potential suicides approach
others (e.g. suicide counselling centres) and while signifying their intent
make possible the discussion of their interests and desires which may
sometimes lift the veil of ignorance and at other times confirm for themselves their previous intent.
Somewhat more troublesome moral problems occur in relation to nonvoluntary euthanasia because the individual is not in a position rationally
to determine what he wants. Consider the following two imaginary cases.
Case i: Suppose a man, A, has willed that his one remaining kidney is to
be used upon his death as a donation to save the life of another kidney
sufferer. He is subsequently involved in a car accident. Assume that he will
inevitably die within the next five hours. At the same hospital B has been
admitted with a kidney infection which threatens imminent failure of his
one remaining kidney. Without a transplant operation it is certain that he
will die within the next five hours. No kidney machine is available, A's
kidney is a suitable one for transplantation to B, and no other suitable one
is available. The transplant operation takes around three hours to perform
if all goes well. Should A be non-voluntarily euthanatized to provide time
for the operation?
Case 2: A child has been delivered by Caesarean section after his parents
have been killed in a car accident. The baby it turns out has a serious spina
bifida (i.e. a protruding sac filled with cerebrospinal fluid and containing
a defective spinal cord). As a consequence of this spinal cord deformity
there is no prospect of his ever having bladder and bowel control, there
will probably be kidney dysfunction, probably paraplegia and almost
certainly the child will have hydrocephalus and thus be mentally retarded.
14 Cf. L. W. Sumner, 'A Matter of Life and Death', Nouis IO (I976), I45-I7I
(esp. p. i63).
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Robert Young
Vigorous attention would prolong the child's life but it would have to be
institutionalized, with the outlook being for a pitiful existence lasting at
the most a couple of years.
In each case I believe non-voluntary euthanasia would be justified. I
think it is far clearer in the first case that it is but, in instances like case 2,
where the suffering and distress that will be involved is severe, manifest
and certain to reduce the significance for the sufferer of his life, a brief can
be given for active euthanasia.15 My concern is not, however, to dogmatize
on the issue since given sufficient assurances about the child's 'quality of
life' (e.g. in his capacity to enjoy loving relationships) I could be persuaded
that it was not the maximally just act in case z to kill. Rather it is to point
out that our difficulty in resolving cases of this sort, or even that we find
more difficulty in trying to resolve ones like case 2 than ones like case i,
does not stem from the inapplicability of the account of the wrongness of
killing, but from our ignorance of what the future holds in terms of desire-
satisfaction for some individuals. Case i is more straightforward because
these uncertainties do not plague our judgment. In this crucial respect it
resembles the case of the innocent fat man (cited in section I) where the
various possible outcomes were also starkly evident. Though in other
respects it is more straightforward than that benchmark case since, for
example, A's life-purposes can no longer be fulfilled, while the fat man's
continued to be real options right up to the time of killing him.
IV
Does my proposal as to what makes killing another human being generally
a major moral wrong in any way help us with deciding what, if anything,
is wrong with killing non-human animals and foetuses?
I believe it does help. It seems reasonable to believe that many animals
share in common with us that they have things they want to do in and with
their lives or which they may come to want (either again or for the first
time). Certain of our killings of them clearly maximally unjustly prevent
their realization of such life-purposes (or if this appears too grandiose a
term, with the desires to do things which they experience). For instance,
to kill animals which have these similarities to human beings in the course
of pointless or duplicative experimentation, in the course of providing
cosmetics, furs and other items readily producible without such killings,
or merely for sport, is morally wrong according to the account I have
proposed. Indeed to kill for food animals which it is reasonable to believe
15 The pros and cons are well brought out in Moral Problems in Medicine,
S. Gorovitz et al. (eds) (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976) in the section
on 'Birth Defects'.
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What is so Wrong with Killing People?
have such desires (and not merely interests) will be justifiable only where
no adequate alternative food supply is available and the food is needful
either immediately or for some reasonable future period if stocking up is
required by the exigencies of one's situation. Where there is no reason to
believe of some living being (say a mosquito or a tree) that it possesses the
characteristic I have been concentrating on there will on my account be
nothing intrinsically wrong in killing it. This is not to say that other
instrumentalist considerations (e.g. to do with ecological effects) will not
be relevant. Similarly, should anyone doubt that the animals human beings
typically eat for food have life-purposes (even in a rudimentary form), this
will not show that questions of morality have no relevance to our treatment
of them, since other principles such as those advocated by Peter Singer in
Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review, 1975) here assume
relevance (e.g. ones to do with the painfulness of the methods of rearing
and killing.) It is worth noticing that my proposal does not rule out killings
which have the effect overall of fostering the wants of the largest subset
of some group like a wild herd where otherwise the wants of an even larger
subset will be thwarted. Systematic cullings in the absence of feasible
alternatives, therefore, may be morally permissible.
Nevertheless, it may appear that my stand on the killing of animals
which have life-purposes generates the following difficulty. Suppose I have
been laying out an explosive charge in a field in order to break up some
rocks. I have the charge ready when I observe that my son who has
wandered off in the direction of the explosives is in the path of a stampeding
herd of horses who are still on the farther side of the explosives. The
stampede has resulted in such noise that no warning to the boy could be
heard. It might be said that on my principle it would be morally wrong to
detonate the charge (which assuredly will kill many of the horses). This is
again a case of an innocent threat and thus actions in self-defence are
permissible. Traditionally it has been held that one may act in defence
of another who is under threat and who for some reason is unable to defend
himself. It is not, therefore, necessary to get into the thickets of evaluating
the relative importance of various life-purposes. Even so I think a case
could be made out for the claim that it would not be the maximally unjust
alternative to push the detonator once the greater range of life-purposes
human beings normally have is taken into account. Despite this I would
contend that if the life-purposes of the human being are, for example,
known to put in jeopardy the life and health of other human beings, our
judgment should favour the horses. Were the person in the field not my
son but Idi Amin, I would do nothing to prevent the stampede.
Finally, how, according to my proposal, do things stand with abortions?
Since I have allowed that we should take into account the desires to do
things in and with one's life which a human being (and, given my discussion
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Robert Young
above, some non-human16 animals) may reasonably be expected to come
to have, abortion on demand seems very unlikely to be justified. This is
simply because it is antecedently improbable that the weight of other
moral considerations will always be against that of protecting the relevantly
expectable life-purposes of the foetus once it becomes a child or an adult.
There will be many cases where clearly the weight is against the foetus
(e.g. where the woman's life or health will be forfeited if an abortion is not
performed, where the pregnancy will probably, or surely, produce a
severely deformed child and so on). These cases are ones which have much
in common with that of the innocent fat man. But as in that imaginary
circumstance a preponderance of moral considerations is needed to justify
this irrevocable intervention. Where there is no such preponderance because
the expressed wish of the pregnant woman has only morally trivial or no
moral support abortion will be unjustified. It is worth remarking that even
where an abortion is morally justified it is so serious a prevention of the
realization of future possibilities that it would surely be morally preferable
not to have to perform it. This suggests that much more thought should
be put into pre-emptive action to overcome the need for abortions.
Abortions ought not, therefore, to be construed as morally indistinguishable
from appendectomies but nor should we restrict our options by doing
nothing about the preventive and leaving all to the curative stage.
V
The test for any moral proposal of worth is that it measure up to our moral
benchmarks and that it provide moral guidance in practical matters that is
both plausible and rationally defensible. My proposal as to what is so wrong
in general with killing other human beings does seem to pass this test.17
La Trobe University
16 If my discussion of the wrongness of killing certain animals was to the point,
it will also serve to undermine the contention frequently made in discussions of
abortion that once the issue of the humanity of the foetus is settled so too is that
of the justifiability of abortion.
17 J am grateful to John Campbell, John Kleinig, Bruce Langtry and Peter
Singer for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.
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