A new translation into modern American English directly from the original Russian manuscript. This edition contains an Afterword by the translator, a timeline of Tolstoy's life and works, and a glossary of philosophic terminology used throughout Tolstoy's literature and philosophy. In "Thou Shalt Not Kill", Tolstoy addresses issues of violence, war, and the sanctity of life, providing a condemnation of the Socialist Revolution. He strongly condemns the act of killing, delving deep into the moral implications of warfare and any form of violence. The essay is influential in pacifist movements and discussions on the ethics of war and violence.

In this fascinating and rare little book, a leading Italian feminist philosopher and the Archbishop of Milan face off over the contemporary meaning of the biblical commandment not to kill. The result is a series of erudite and wide-ranging arguments that move from murder and suicide to just war and drone strikes, from bioethics and biopolitics to hermeneutics and philology, from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, from Torah and Scripture to art and literature, from the essence of human dignity and the paradoxes of fratricide to engagements with Levinasian ethics. Less a direct debate than a disputation in the classical sense, Thou Shalt Not Kill proves to be a searching meditation on one of the unstated moral premises shared by otherwise bitterly opposed political factions. It will stimulate the mind of the novice while also reminding more advanced readers of the necessity and desirability of thinking in the present.

Today society is faced with many ethical problems concerning the taking of life: capital punishment, killing in war, suicide, euthanasia, abortion. Catholic moral theologians have always tried to clarify the principles involved before turning to the particular cases. The author investigates the principles here, and in the light of them discusses capital punishment and the ethics of war. The key point in his argument is the principle of double effect: a good end does not justify evil means, but a good action may be performed under certain conditions despite unavoidable evil side-effects. He admits that some contemporary Catholic moral theologians are critical of this principle, but he defends it persuasively. He hopes to deal in another book with suicide, euthanasia and abortion.

More than any other contemporary collection, this startling work demands a visceral reaction to the agony and horror of the war in Iraq and war in general. The immediacy of Thou Shalt Not Kill Unless Otherwise Instructed calls to mind Wilfred Owen's words, "Above all, I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is war." The main theme of war contrasts with a variety of unconventional observations on the concerns and vicissitudes of everyday life.

Includes: American Institute of Christian Philosophy. Proceedings of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy.