Homicide and Love

Philosophy and Theology 5 (3):259-276 (1991)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

For perspicuous comparison and evaluation of moral positions on life-and-death issues, it is necessary to take into account the different meanings that killing and getting killed can bear in the two dimensions of dealing with persons (intention meeting intention) and handling them. A homicidal scenario in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows the possibility of courteous dealing coinciding with lethal handling. The extreme possibility of lovingly affirming persons while killing them, suggested by the Augustinian “kindly severity” ideal for state-sponsored punitive killing, requires the killers’ affirmation of a fleshliness and fallibility shared with their victims; but love can accept killing only provisionally, since it postulates freedom from the constraints that are felt to require killing.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Killing, wrongness, and equality.Carlos Soto - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (2):543-559.
A Defense of St. Thomas and the Principle of Double Effect.Daniel F. Montaldi - 1986 - Journal of Religious Ethics 14 (2):296 - 332.
Killing humans and killing animals.Peter Singer - 1979 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 22 (1-4):145 – 156.
Killing and dying.Dan Moller - 2006 - American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3):235-247.
Love’s Vision.Troy Jollimore - 2011 - Princeton University Press.
Epicurus, Death, and the Wrongness of Killing.Mikel Burley - 2010 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (1):68-86.
Self-Defence and the Principle of Non-Combatant Immunity.Helen Frowe - 2011 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 8 (4):530-546.
The basis of moral liability to defensive killing.Jeff McMahan - 2005 - Philosophical Issues 15 (1):386–405.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-01-09

Downloads
30 (#457,099)

6 months
1 (#1,028,709)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references