I'll admit that I got the idea for this offbeat debate question after watching the Liz Taylor version of Cleopatra.

Was the assassination of Julius Caesar justified?

The conspirators clearly thought that he was a danger to the Roman Republic. On the other hand, their actions failed badly at preventing the Empire from taking its place.

To broaden the question a bit:

Is assassination ever justified?

Are there tyrants who are simply too dangerous to live?

Is assassination ever justified?
Well I believe that is the reason why we have our right to bear arms. In theory we can rise up against a corrupt government. We have been lucky so far that our system of checks and balances have not forced us to this point.

Vikti

This is a good question, and I just happen to be reading 'The Conquest of Gaul' by Julius Caesar.

Was the assassination of Julius Caesar justified?

With the benefit of hindsight, I'd have to say yes. Although it provoked a time of internal conflict, I believe the republic was doomed and Augustus made a far better emporer than Caesar ever would have.


Is assassination ever justified?

By what criteria? Morals are relative to culture and circumstance. If a dictator or other leader is known to be a credible threat to his state then I'd say yes, even if it was illegal then assassination would be justified if it prevented a greater evil from being comitted.

I'm not quite so sanguine with respects to assassinating other people though. It seems to me that the argument can just as easily be made that assassinating a minor politician, or even just a common man in order to prevent a greater evil from being carried out is justified but in such cases I'd say that the threat posed by such non leaders can never be so great as to warrant murder.

If I had a time machine I might go back in time and assassinate Adolf Hitler, but if I did, then would it be justified? once Hitler was dead then he would have died an innocent man and I would be a murderer and I would have removed my own justification for assassinating him.

Perhaps Vonnegut was right. People die and are killed. So it goes.

Its left for the individual to decide whether or not they feel justified in assassinating a leader. Then the rest of us can decide if we feel justified in punishing the assassin.

Was the assassination of Julius Caesar justified?

This, of course, depends on who you ask. Caesar, I am quite sure, would have answered no.

Is assassination ever justified?


This is one of the classic type questions found in The Book of Questions, which contains a variety of moral and ethical questions which have no right answer, but do make you think alot about where your values lie. This is just a subset of the general ends vs. means argument--is doing a bad thing to achieve a greater good justified? Personally, I do find that the ends can justify the means, and therefore assassination is sometimes justified. Digging deeper, then, under what circumstances? I would say when the person is clearly inflicting great harm on many people, and no other method of resolving that exists.

PS--Many thanks to Moif for allowing me to 'usurp' his avatar (no assassination was necessary) I looked at many different Hobbes avatars, but his previous one was naturally the best. Thanks, Moif--Hobbes, as his avatar shows, is now dancing with joy.

Was the assassination of Julius Caesar justified?

Blimey. I hate to think what question you'll come up with next time you catch Dumbo or maybe even Zombie Flesh Eaters on cable!

In the narrow context of the time, I'm not sure that it was justified, because all he really did was usurp the authority of the other two members of his Triumvirate - the Senate (and hence the Republic) had already ceded much of it's power to them in something akin to a modern State of Emergency.

However, in the overall historical scheme of things, can we be sure that Republican Rome or a Julian (!) Empire would have created and retained the sum of its territorial possessions (we couldn't call it an "Empire") the way that the Augustan Empire did? And had that not happened, would the history of Europe, and the Christian Church, have worked out the same? Would we be here having this discussion now? In something we would recognise as English? I don't know. I can't imagine that things would be any better or worse overall, but I also can't imagine that they would f necessity be very different, so perhaps with this kind of perspective, Julius Caesar had to die on those steps that day.

Is assassination ever justified?
In the narrow context, I think states can sometimes justify assassination, but the people who carry it out are always murderers, since my understanding of what assassination is means that is must always happen in cold blood. In other words at least two lives are sacrificed for the greater good, not just one.

And ultimately the justification has to be carried out in hindsight as well as in advance. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, we don't know what we don't know, until we know it. Assassinating OBL might seem like a great idea now, until we find out the day after his death that he had discovered the cure for all known diseases but hadn't had chance to write it down yet. (This is no more of an intellectual reach than deciding that the world would be a better place had the Roman Empire never existed.)