Contemporary Issues in Jus in Bello: Some Problems Raised by Jeff McMahan's Killing in War

<p>The work of Jeff McMahan has revitalised discussion of just war theory with its rejection of the moral equality of combatants. The main aim of this thesis is to explore and develop McMahan’s work and recent challenges to it. I do this in four chapters. First, I outline McMahan’s account of liability to attack which subsequently shows why the moral equality of combatants is false. I defend his account of liability to attack from problems raised by Yitzhak Benbaji and Thomas Hurka. Second, I discuss developments by McMahan to the in bello condition of proportionality. I suggest that the features McMahan introduces, though innovative, do not go far enough and ultimately argue for David Rodin’s multi-factor account. Third, I defend Seth Lazar’s responsibility dilemma from objections by McMahan and Bradley Strawser. Fourth, I combine McMahan’s understanding of responsibility with Tony Honoré’s outcome responsibility and after establishing an account of collective responsibility argue that unjust noncombatants can be liable to intentional attack due to being collectively outcome responsible for the threat their state poses in war.</p>

Contemporary Issues in Jus in Bello: Some Problems Raised by Jeff McMahan's Killing in War

<p>The work of Jeff McMahan has revitalised discussion of just war theory with its rejection of the moral equality of combatants. The main aim of this thesis is to explore and develop McMahan’s work and recent challenges to it. I do this in four chapters. First, I outline McMahan’s account of liability to attack which subsequently shows why the moral equality of combatants is false. I defend his account of liability to attack from problems raised by Yitzhak Benbaji and Thomas Hurka. Second, I discuss developments by McMahan to the in bello condition of proportionality. I suggest that the features McMahan introduces, though innovative, do not go far enough and ultimately argue for David Rodin’s multi-factor account. Third, I defend Seth Lazar’s responsibility dilemma from objections by McMahan and Bradley Strawser. Fourth, I combine McMahan’s understanding of responsibility with Tony Honoré’s outcome responsibility and after establishing an account of collective responsibility argue that unjust noncombatants can be liable to intentional attack due to being collectively outcome responsible for the threat their state poses in war.</p>

THE RULE OF LAW AND THE LIMITS OF ANARCHY

Anarchy is often contrasted with law, order, or security. But anarchist societies, by which I mean societies that lack a monopoly of coercive force, need not be lawless. They can develop sophisticated legal systems that regulate the behavior of their members and protect their rights. International law, market anarchism, and other models of anarchism such as the one proposed by Chandran Kukathas already exhibit or could plausibly exhibit complex legal rules and institutions. I will show that insofar as these models rely on consent, they all share similar structural flaws, namely, that they cannot meet basic rule-of-law values such as equality before the law and access to legal remedies for wrongs that embody and respect individual moral equality, even minimally conceived. The implication of this argument is not to vindicate state-based legal systems. Rather it is to show that legal systems, state-based or not, must have a strong nonconsensual, coercive element: the process of making, applying, and enforcing law must, to some extent, be severed from consent if law is to perform its function of providing for minimal justice.

Agonism, Democracy, and the Moral Equality of Voice

Agonism emerged three decades ago as an assault on the overemphasis in political theory on justice and consensus. It has now become the norm. But its character and relation to core values of democracy are not as unproblematic today as is often thought, an issue that becomes more pressing as contemporary politics increasingly seem locked into notions of unrelenting conflict between “friends” and “enemies.” This essay traces alternative ontological roots and ethical implications of agonism, distinguishing between “imperializing” and “tempered” modes. The former, exemplified in the popular Schmitt-Mouffe formulation, is shown to be fundamentally flawed in its failure to conceive politics in a fashion that does not allow the dynamic of friend–enemy to imperially trump appeals to democratic norms. In a world of insurgent white nationalism in democratic polities, this is no small fault. “Tempered” agonists, such as William Connolly and Bonnie Honig, offer ontologies where democratic norms can gain traction. Despite the admirable qualities of these alternatives, their formulations are nevertheless not fully persuasive. The difficulty lies in their underarticulated accounts of equality. I suggest an alternative formulation of agonism that embraces a central role for the idea of the moral equality of voice, a value that resides in the seam between notions of difference, resistance, and conflict emphasized by agonists, on the one hand, and the idea of fairness emphasized by notions of democratic justice, on the other.

War and post-truth: Moral equality of combatants and inculpable ignorance in just war theory

This paper aims to explain the effect of the post-truth on revisionism in Just War Theory. Revisionism in JWT is based on the claim that Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello cannot be separated and that only combatants who fight on the just side are morally justified in killing. Presupposition of this argument is that combatants can and ought to know the moral status of their side. This paper will demonstrate that it is impossible to demand combatants to know whether their side is just by investigating the implications of post-truth in modern conflicts. By demonstrating the practical impossibility of combatants to know whether their side is just, author will show that the assumption of inculpable ignorance in war must remain the essence of JWT. Posttruth phenomenon only fortifies the necessity of separating Jus ad Bellum from Jus in Bello and upholding the principle of moral equality of combatants in contemporary wars.

Beyond Empathy and Inclusion

Beyond Empathy and Inclusion: The Challenge of Listening in Democratic Deliberation considers how to improve democracy under the politically divided conditions we currently face. The book argues that while democracy does not require that citizens reach an agreement, it does require that they listen to one another. The book goes on to offer a systematic theory of listening acts to explain the democratic force of listening. Modeled after speech act theory, Scudder’s listening act theory shows how we do something in listening, independent of the outcomes of listening. In listening to our fellow citizens, we recognize their moral equality of voice. Being heard by our fellow citizens is what ensures we have a say in the laws to which we are held. The book offers a realistic view of listening, one that does not assume it will always produce empathy or even understanding. Listening is not the answer to all of our problems. In fact, listening can even produce certain undemocratic effects. The book argues that despite these challenges and risks, listening is a key responsibility of democratic citizenship. It also tackles questions regarding the limits of toleration in a democratic society. Do we owe listening even to democracy’s enemies? The book shows how listening can be used defensively, to protect against threats to democracy. The democratic listening this book prescribes is admittedly hard, especially in pluralistic societies. This volume investigates how to motivate citizens to listen seriously, attentively, and humbly even to those with whom they disagree.

Introduction

According to John Locke, all people are morally equal self-owners. This commitment introduces a tension at the heart of Locke’s property theory. Since all people own themselves and, consequently, their labor, individuals have the moral power to acquire private property from the common world. But the use of this moral power threatens to generate concentrations of economic power capable of subjecting some people to others’ wills, in violation of equal moral standing. The thesis of this book is that four largely forgotten nineteenth-century Lockeans developed two distinct, internally consistent, and mutually incompatible resolutions to this tension within Lockean property theory. In one camp, Thomas Hodgskin and Lysander Spooner—the libertarian radicals—argued that although we each hold an equal negative liberty to claim pieces of the world, there is no positive common right to the world. Consequently, the demands of moral equality can be satisfied under conditions of enormous economic inequalities. In the other camp, John Bray and Henry George—the egalitarian radicals—argued that since all people are morally equal, each of us has a positive right to share the world with everyone else. Consequently, the demands of moral equality cannot be met except under substantially (though not totally) egalitarian economic conditions. It is important to work through the argumentative successes and failures of these relatively unknown thinkers in order to understand how contemporary arguments about equality and property developed and, consequently, how we might apply them to contemporary problems.

Why the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame fails

It is commonly believed that blamees can dismiss hypocritical blame on the ground that the hypocrite has no standing to blame their target. Many believe that the feature of hypocritical blame that undermines standing to blame is that it involves an implicit denial of the moral equality of persons. After all, the hypocrite treats herself better than her blamee for no good reason. In the light of the complement to hypocrites and a comparison of hypocritical and non-hypocritical blamers subscribing to hierarchical moral norms, I show why we must reject the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame.