In the first instance it is murder to intentionally cause the death of another person when 'e does not want to die, or to intentionally cause the death of 'er body when 'e has expressed the wish that 'er body should be kept alive. This is why active involuntary euthanasia is murder. There is no conceivable case in which it can be justified. Even if someone's well-being is threatened in that 'er future life is going to be 'utterly hellish' this is no reason to override 'er autonomy as a person. No-one knows for sure that a life, or a future life, will on balance be more unhappy than happy, and even if it is, it is only in utilitarianism the sole thing that counts. Nonutilitarians may come to a different decision, and so may utilitarians, because even inconsistence does not override personhood. Insofar as it does not harm the integrity of other people, people do even have the extrinsic right to lead 'utterly hellish' lives. In the event that the human, or other sentient, being in question 'cannot grasp what it will be like', it is either no person or a person who does not accept someone else's advice. If it is not a person (but, for example, a small infant), then the act of euthanasia is not involuntary but nonvoluntary; if it is a person who does not accept another person's advice, then it is 'er extrinsic right not to accept the authority of other people, even when this would be foolish.

If active involuntary euthanasia is wrong, that is, the intential killing of people who are ill (if not fatally ill), injured (if not severely injured) or whose well-being is threatened by external factors (if not seriously threatened), then intentionally killing other people against their will who are not fatally ill, not severely injured and whose well-being is not seriously threatened by external factors, is definitely wrong, one would say. It is wrong, then, both from a metadoctrinal and from a doctrinal point of view, and as such plain murder. Or, is it? If it is indeed murder per se, then assassination, killing people in times of war and executions are murders too. Absolute pacifists may agree with this. But absolute pacifists or not, there is something that requires our special attention in questions of killing others against their will. This is that the reason why it is wrong to kill them is primarily based on their extrinsic right to life and our extrinsic duty not to interfere with them. But what when someone else contemptuously flouts the rules of the extrinsic right-duty constellation? 'E may be in good health, 'e may not have any injuries, and 'er well-being may not be threatened by any external factor, least of all by us.

The situation is analogous to that in questions of discrimination: we must not discriminate between people, but we may make a distinction between people who do and people who do not discriminate. Similarly, we must not interfere with other people's freedom against their will, but we may interfere with the freedom of other people who interfere with other people's freedom against their will. Those who discriminate deliberately cannot appeal to the norm of inclusivity, or to a principle of relevance, in order not to be discriminated against themselves; and those who deliberately infringe the rules of the extrinsic right-duty constellation cannot appeal to the right to personhood, to a metadoctrinal principle, or to a principle of liberty, in order to be left alone themselves. But this means that not all cases of killing another person who does not want to die, are wrong, even not all cases of intentionally killing such a person. The clearest cases that it is not, are killings in self-defense in which the person attacked has not provoked the attack. (Provoked in the sense that 'e 'imself first interfered with the right to personhood of the person killed.) But even these cases have their complications. May you solely kill another person in self-defense when you are completely sure that 'e wants to kill you personally, and when you have never in any way interfered with 'er right to personhood before? May you kill another person if 'e 'only' wants to enslave (but not kill) you? May you kill another person if 'e merely attempts to occupy a negligible part of what is your property in terms of the extrinsic right-duty constellation (the loss of which will not affect your material well-being at all)? The doctrinal counterpart of these primarily metadoctrinal questions is should you kill such a person?

The most simplistic answer to the may questions is that one may not, or must not, kill such a person, and that only 'the state' or 'the government' may do so, with the possible exception of that form of killing which is needed for immediate self-defense. This is a legalist position which takes no notice of the fact that the questions posed are independent, normative questions. What this means, becomes clear at once, when 'the state' or 'the government' itself is the person, or personified being, that must be able to justify 'er own acts of killing. This applies then both to the killing of 'er own citizens or residents and to that of foreigners, that is, armed or unarmed citizens or residents of other countries. May a country A kill persons of another country B if they only want to enslave the citizens and residents of country A? May this country A kill persons of country B if they only want to occupy a negligible part of what is A's territory in terms of the extrinsic right-duty constellation? And if so, should it?

In the above questions, in which we have personified 'the state' and 'the government', we have assumed that that government itself is somehow legitimate. But what if a government murders its own citizens or residents, for example, citizens who have always respected the extrinsic rights of other people, both with regard to their bodies and with regard to their external possessions? Such a government cannot be legitimate, unless it takes appropriate measures to undo the evil done (if possible). In the above questions we have also assumed that a person or country would take property away which belongs to another person or country according to the metadoctrinal principle. But what if a supposedly legitimate government legally considers something the property of a resident, or of its own, which is not 'er, or its, property in the normative sense of the extrinsic right-duty constellation? Also such a government interferes with the freedom of other 'persons' (the citizens, residents or countries whose valid claims are ignored) before its own freedom is interfered with.

If a person or country has not violated any extrinsic right to one's own body or any extrinsic right to one's own external possessions, then killing such a person against 'er will and on purpose is murder, and then attacking such a country is an unjust war or terrorism. But in all other cases the aforementioned problems illustrate very well how hard it is to prove that the killing of a particular person against 'er will is just or unjust, or that the killing of more or less arbitrary members of a particular group against their will is just or unjust (unless --again-- the person or group concerned have not violated any right to one's own body and any right to one's own external possessions on the same metadoctrinal principle). It is relatively easy to provide some answer to each question, what makes it difficult is to remain consistent throughout -- a necessary criterion for both truth and relevance.

Suppose that it is agreed that a cruel tyrant, who keeps 'er subjects in great poverty by stealing from them what normatively belongs to them, may be killed ('assassinated') to liberate 'er subjects, even tho 'e is not directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of other people. Does it not follow that a legitimate government may execute a person for committing a crime which need not be as serious as murder? If not, why not? It is plausible to assume that someone who has never killed another person against 'er will other than in self-defense must never be killed 'imself against 'er will other than in self-defense. (What is defended must then be one's body or life, not one's external property.) In practise a dictator will probably be at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of other people, and cannot appeal to the right to life, but if 'e were solely responsible for cruelties other than murder, 'e could on this interpretation still appeal to the right to life. All that could be done, is to expose 'im to the same cruelties and/or to take all 'er external possessions, while disallowing 'im to make use of anyone else's. This would amount to imprisonment with or without corporal punishment. Should 'e try to prevent this by killing, or attempting to kill, 'er opponents, 'e will forfeit 'er right to life. It is then, indeed, that 'e may be killed in spite of what was the case before.

Often we do not need to have an answer to the metadoctrinally Ananormative may question before being able to tackle the neutral-inclusivist should question. We merely need to know the answer to the may question when the answer to the should question is in the affirmative. One would say that it is particularly those who profess that wars are 'required by the world spirit' or that wars are 'sublime' or that all murderers 'must die', who always need the solution to the additional may question. However, these people are usually the very people who cannot be bothered by the difference between doctrinal and metadoctrinal considerations: their (doctrinal) should is held to be automatically a (metadoctrinal) may, and vice versa. (Incidentally, the philosopher who said that 'even if a society were to dissolve itself, the last murderer remaining in prison had first to be executed', was the same one as the one allowing the killing of children born of parents not married to each other. It would seem therefore that his murderers did not refer to unmarried mothers killing their children, nor to executioners.)

As neutralists we reject any idea of the sublimity or necessity of war, and as neutralists we reject the obsession with punitive retribution or the theodemonist law of retaliation which requires retaliative punishment. On our view also murderers and thieves are happiness-catenal and living beings, and if they should be killed or otherwise punished in spite of considerations of happiness-catenality and life, then only when we can be sure that this will in the long run serve, or also serve, people's respect for each other as persons. Under certain circumstances retaliation may be a necessary evil to prevent reoccurrence or to restore an equilibrium, but it must never degenerate into an end in itself. If a person may be killed against 'er will, because 'e has killed another person against 'er will who never violated anyone's right to personhood, then it is still the case that this person should not be killed, unless 'er killing has a stronger crime-preventive function, or is a much more effective crime deterrent than, for example, life imprisonment. (An execution is said to be a crime-preventive measure if, and insofar as, the person excuted would have committed other crimes; it is said to be a crime-deterrent if, and insofar as, it frightens off other persons from also committing a crime.) The 'crime' we are talking about must then be a crime in the normative sense of the extrinsic right-duty constellation. It is not a 'crime' like witchcraft or cursing one's parents which used to deserve the death penalty in ancient religious times, nor a 'crime' in the factual-modal sense of the law of the land (according to which, in certain countries or states, even passive euthanasia performed by a doctor at the request of a terminally ill patient might be designated "a crime" and made illegal).

The question if, and to what extent, capital punishment does prevent and deter real crimes is an empirical question, the answer to which may vary from place to place and from time to time. But if it cannot be made very plausible at a particular time and place that the number of lives saved due to the existence of the death penalty at that time and place clearly exceeds, and continues to exceed, the number of executions, then capital punishment is definitely murder. It is then murder not necessarily because no-one may be executed, but because no-one should be executed. And no-one should be executed, because it is the killing of a living being and the killing of a happiness-catenal being, and because of its bad, if not horrible, side-effects.

If assassination is defined as deliberate, nonlegal killing of a particular person against 'er will for impersonal motives, then assassination is not (necessarily) murder, that is, not wrong by definition. It has been pointed out that the issue of assassination in this sense closely resembles that of execution. Thus, as with execution, the bad side-effects of assassination are sufficient in themselves to set severe limits to any policy of simply maximizing the number of lives saved (the assumption being that the death of one particular, public figure would at least save the lives of two or more other people). Unlike impartial executions, however --if they exist--, political, or other ideological, killings set a precedent --as has been rightly argued-- ' which can soon build up a tradition of attempts to change society by violence rather than by persuasion'. The same applies to an even greater extent to terrorist killing whose targets are more or less arbitrary members of particular groups. Add to this the fallibility of assassination and terrorist killing in bringing about the change aimed at, and it is evident that a public figure or members of certain groups should solely be killed against their will under exceptional circumstances, and solely if they may be killed because of their serious violation or violations of other people's rights of personhood. (Violations which are either their personal responsibility or their shared responsibility as members of a certain group.) Consequently, saving exceptional circumstances and conditions, assassination and terrorist killing are murder.