Concept
Homicide
Overview
Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm.
Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, such as murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, assassination, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Homicide is discussed.
When the homicide is acknowledged, but legal justification is pleaded, as when a man takes an adulterer in the act, or kills another by mistake in battle, or in an athletic contest, the prisoner is tried in the court of Delphinium. If a man who is in banishment for a homicide which admits of reconciliation incurs a further charge of killing or wounding, he is tried in Phreatto, and he makes his defence from a boat…
Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Of all these things the guardians of the law must take cognizance): When a homicide of either kind has completed his term of exile, the guardians shall send twelve judges to the borders of the land; these during the interval shall have informed themselves of the actions of the criminals, and they shall judge respecting their pardon and reception; and the homicides shall abide by their judgment. But if after they…
Plato, Laws
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
But this would follow if He moved the will; for to be voluntarily moved means to be moved from within, and not by another. Therefore God cannot move the will. Obj. 3: Further, movement is attributed to the mover rather than to the one moved; wherefore homicide is not ascribed to the stone, but to the thrower. Therefore, if God moves the will, it follows that voluntary actions are not imputed to man for reward or…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
states what it is; names the idea
It is asserted that the prevalence of homicide in certain parts of the United States has had a vital influence in retarding the material growth of those sections. The Southern States have received but a very small fraction (from ten to thirteen per cent) of foreign immigration.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
names the idea; opens on it
So far from it, that I take it to be much less so from the analogy of other criminal cases, where no such restraint is ordinarily put upon them. The act of homicide is _prima facie_ criminal. The intention is afterwards to appear, for the jury to acquit or condemn. In burglary do they insist that the jury have nothing to do but to find the taking of goods, and that, if they do, they must necessarily find the party…
Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches
states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Homicide
Related ideas
- Self-control
- Caribbean
- Mental state
- Oceania
- Rule of law
- Protestantism
- Slavery
- State (polity)
- Americas
- The New York Times
- United Nations
- World War II
- War
- United States
- The Nation
- Africa
- Crime
- Rwandan genocide
- Routledge
- Europe
- Euthanasia
- Mass killing
- Classicide
Place in the tradition
Part of Thomism.