Not All Killings Are Equally Wrong

Utilitas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-394
Author(s):  
Todd Karhu
Keyword(s):  
Jeff Mcmahan

AbstractMany people believe that the wrongness of killing a person does not depend on factors like her age, condition, or how much she has to lose by dying – a view Jeff McMahan calls the ‘Equal Wrongness Thesis’. This article argues that we should reject the Equal Wrongness Thesis on the basis of the moral equivalence between killing a person and knocking her unconscious.

War and moral stupidity

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Jane Addams ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Moral Intelligence ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Morality Of War

AbstractThis article uses the example of Wittgenstein’s decision to go to war in 1914 to frame a contrast between two different ways of thinking about moral stupidity and moral intelligence in relation to war, those of Jeff McMahan and Jane Addams. The article clarifies how pathways for thinking about the morality of war are blocked and enabled not only by different accounts of justice but also by different understandings of war. It is argued that if we want to be morally intelligent in our judgments about the ethics of war we should follow the pathway marked out by Addams and think less about justice and more about war.

Defending Defensive Killing: Reply to Barry, McMahan, Ferzan, Renzo, and Haque

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 750-766
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Defensive Harm

This article responds to objections to the account of permissible harming developed in Defensive Killing, as raised by Christian Barry, Jeff McMahan, Kimberly Ferzan, Massimo Renzo and Adil Ahmad Haque. Each paper deserves much more attention than I can give it here. I focus on Barry’s important observations regarding the liability to defensive harm of those who fail to rescue. In response to McMahan, I grant some of McMahan’s objections to my rejection of the moral equivalence of threats and bystanders, but reject his analysis of my Shield cases. I welcome much of Ferzan’s development of my account of ‘futile’ defence, but offer some concerns regarding her own view of when honour can be appropriately defended. I argue that Renzo’s objections to my account of bloodless invasions are unpersuasive, and identify some problems with Renzo’s own view. Finally, I defend my account of civilian liability against Adil Haque’s critique.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War Theory

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lazar
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Noncombatant Immunity ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Military Objective ◽  
The Military ◽  
Morality Of War ◽  
Modern Analytical

Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist school of just war theory, led by Jeff McMahan, has radically undermined Walzer's defense of these principles. This essay situates Walzer's and the revisionists’ arguments, before illustrating the disturbing vision of the morality of war that results from revisionist premises. It concludes by showing how broadly Walzerian conclusions can be defended using more reliable foundations.

Jeff McMahan, Killing In War

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
Jeff Mcmahan

scholarly journals Global Consequentialism and the Morality and Laws of War

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Hilary Greaves
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Global Form ◽  
Empirical Fact ◽  
Henry Shue

Rights-based and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. This is entirely understandable, since to say that X has a (moral) right to Y is in part to assert that there are (moral) reasons to provide X with Y even if doing so foreseeably will not lead to better consequences. However, a ‘global’ form of consequentialism raises the possibility of some sort of reconciliation: it could be that the best framework for the regulation of international affairs (say) is one that employs a notion of rights, but if so, that (according to global consequentialism) is the case because regulating international affairs in that manner tends, as a matter of empirical fact, to lead to better consequences. By way of case study, this chapter applies these ideas to a recent dispute about the morality and laws of war, between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue.

scholarly journals Animals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Henrique de Freitas Coelho
Keyword(s):  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan

A tradução enviada para publicação corresponde a um artigo publicado como capítulo de livro. Nome do livro: A Companion to Applied Ethics. Obra organizada por: R.G. Frey e Christopher Heath Wellman. Capítulo traduzido: Animals. Autor do capítulo: Jeff McMahan. (Capítulo 39, páginas 525 a 536).

scholarly journals Duty and Liability

Utilitas ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
VICTOR TADROS
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Unjust Threat ◽  
Responsibility Criterion

In his recent book, Killing in War, Jeff McMahan sets out a number of conditions for a person to be liable to attack, provided the attack is used to avert an objectively unjust threat: (1) The threat, if realized, will wrongfully harm another; (2) the person is responsible for creating the threat; (3) killing the person is necessary to avert the threat, and (4) killing the person is a proportionate response to the threat. The present article focuses on McMahan's second condition, which links liability with responsibility. McMahan's use of the responsibility criterion, the article contends, is too restrictive as an account of liability in general and an account of liability to be killed in particular. In order to defend this claim, the article disambiguates the concept of liability and explores its role in the philosophical analysis of the permission to cause harm to others.

Killing in War, by Jeff McMahan.

Mind ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 119 (474) ◽  
pp. 511-515
Author(s):  
L. K. McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Jeff Mcmahan
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