In the above mentioned conversation with her brother, though, Xena says that maybe her problem was that she did not feel enough after their other brother's death. She tells how she methodically raised an army to defend their hometown, then took over the neighboring towns to form a buffer, and somewhere along the way just lost touch with both why she was doing all this and her emotions. As to a legal and moral comparison between Toris' wish to murder Cortese and Xena's past acts as a marauding warlord, it can be argued that Xena's actions which constituted going into a situation where battle was near impossible to avoid, could be considered a premeditated act, just as culpable as Toris' wish and the Penal Code's trichotomy concerning homicide by the creation of risk. The specific intent to kill is not required, only a conscious disregard for the risk of death. Xena's view is also related to the difference between the notions of causality in criminal versus tort law.
Proximate cause asks what is the degree of connection between the defendant's conduct and the harm.
The difference between the criminal and tort law concepts of proximate cause is how strong that link must be for proximate cause to hold. Because criminal law is primarily about moral blameworthiness, it entails a stronger link than tort liability. Xena feels remorse despite his attacking her from behind. She responds by telling him that you love with your mind and your soul, not actually with your heart. Such a false distinction between thinking and feeling views these activities as being oppositional and exclusive instead of being complementary and inclusive.