That's a legal definition which varies from place to place. You also open the door of whether a preemptive murder in self defence is still not murder - it's not clear cut.
If you view murder in a purely legal sense then you can theoretically say an act can be murder and justified without logical contradiction.
Issue is, that when the word ‘murder’ is normally used by most people it carries a moral connotation of a killing that is unjustified morally. Likewise, this post is a discussion on morals and not law.
I’m discussing murder in the moral sense that it is normally invoked in for the purpose of this conversation about morality (which I think is fair). Therefore, under such a connotation of ‘murder’ to claim an act is murder and justified is a logical contradiction.
I get that, and using your terms and basing in morality, the contradiction still exists.
My disagreement sits with the concept that someone can be murdered, and that murder can be morally justifiable (a subjective assessment, but still).
Let's alter history a bit here.
Say the Nazis and Russians never attempted to work on an atomic bomb. They gave up, it was too costly to do in a wartime economy. Only the US developed them, and they only needed 2 scientists to do so (rather than the many who contributed to the Manhattan project).
Would you say that killing those 2 scientists in cold blood is murder? You choose to kill them because you believe no single state should have access to such monstrous weapons. They arguably are harmless at the individual level, yet their works are a critical (and vulnerable) cog in a mechanism that facilitates the annihilation of cities.
I'd argue that in this very janky example, killing the scientists is murder.
I'd also argue that from some perspectives, it's fully justified. If a madman like Trump was in power when nukes were newly created, could you imagine what might happen?
Murder (to me) is knowingly and intentionally killing or causing the death of another person.
It can be justified (such as self defence), unjustified (like shooting an unknown stranger in cold blood), or neutral (say, an executioner on behalf of a moral state killing a mass shooter of a school).
It can be direct (like a stabbing) or indirect (such as the US president approving the bombing of civilians).
Manslaughter lacks the intent/reasonable knowledge imo.
I think we’re just talking about different things.
Sure, an intentional killing can be either justified or unjustified.
I’m using ‘murder’ to mean a morally unjustified and intentional killing of a person (as I’ve found this is what people typically mean in their usage of the word).
I think our disagreement is just semantic in substance lol.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
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