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.

Liability

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-57
Author(s):  
Jonathan Quong
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Defensive Harm

Chapter 2 develops and defends an original account of liability to defensive harm: the moral status account. On this view, a person renders himself liable to defensive harm when the evidence-relative permissibility of his act depends on the assumption that others lack certain moral rights that they in fact possess, and his act threatens, or reasonably appears to threaten, those rights. The chapter also provides criticisms of competing accounts of liability, in particular, the moral responsibility account influentially developed by Jeff McMahan, among others. The chapter concludes by addressing a number of objections that might be pressed against the moral status account.

‘The moral irrelevance of moral coercion’

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
Correct Account ◽  
Defensive Harm

AbstractAn agent A morally coerces another agent, B, when A manipulates non-epistemological facts in order that B’s moral commitments enjoin B to do what A wants B to do, and B is motivated by these commitments. It is widely argued that forced choices arising from moral coercion are morally distinct from forced choices arising from moral duress or happenstance. On these accounts, the fact of being coerced bears on what an agent may do, the voluntariness of her actions, and/or her accountability for any harms that result from her actions (where accountability includes liability to defensive harm, punishment, blame and compensation). This paper does not provide an account of the wrongness of moral coercion. Rather, I argue that, whatever the correct account of its wrongness, the mere fact of being coerced has no bearing on what the agent may do, on the voluntariness of her action, or her accountability for any resultant harm, compared to otherwise identical cases arising from duress and happenstance.

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.

Responsibility and Liability

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-159
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Luck Egalitarian ◽  
Broad Consensus

There is a broad consensus that something like responsibility or choice impacts on a person’s liability to defensive harm. But beyond that, there is little consensus. This chapter considers several influential views about the significance of responsibility. Some, such as the luck egalitarian view, are found to be badly incomplete. Others, such as the protective value of choice, fail to explain the significance of a person’s relationship with a threat for liability. However, the chapter broadly defends the significance of choice in some cases of culpable and non-culpable threat-causing conduct.

Rights and Evidence

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Jonathan Quong
Keyword(s):  
Moral Rights ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Defensive Harm

Some philosophers endorse a fact-relative account of moral rights against harm. According to this view, if B’s ϕ‎-ing would contravene A’s right not to be harmed if B had access to all the facts, then B contravenes A’s right by ϕ‎-ing regardless of her epistemic position. Chapter 6 argues that moral rights against harm are not fact-relative, but must rather be sensitive, to a certain extent, to the evidence that duty-bearers can reasonably be expected to possess. The chapter argues that this conception of moral rights against harm has important implications for liability to defensive harm. In particular, people who pose fact-relative wrongful harm are not always liable to defensive harm, since such people may not threaten anyone’s moral rights via their actions.

scholarly journals Morally Permissible Risk Imposition and Liability to Defensive Harm

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-408
Author(s):  
Susanne Burri
Keyword(s):  
Defensive Harm ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

AbstractThis paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so.

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.

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