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>

Animals

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).

Liability

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.

Dlaczego śmierć nie jest taka zła?

Celem artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie o to, dlaczego śmierć nie jest taka zła. Autor twierdzi, że śmierć niekoniecznie musi być aż tak zła, jak to opisują Thomas Nagel czy Jeff McMahan. Według autora śmierć nie jest absolutnym złem, nie ma też śmierci lepszych i gorszych. Nie ma też powodu, by sądzić, że śmierć jest dobra (wartościowa) jedynie w tym sensie, jak to opisują Bernard Williams, czy Leon Kass. Śmierć jest dobra, ponieważ dzięki niej osoba ludzka aktualizuje swoje potencjalności (poznanie, pragnienia, miłość), osiągając pełnię życia.

Global Consequentialism and the Morality and Laws of War

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.

The Disease of Victory

The final problem just war theorists perceive with victory reflects the belief that to speak about war in terms of victory is to court an escalatory logic that undercuts the spirit of moderation that the just war tradition champions. The pursuit of victory inclines armies to set the rules aside and fight in an unrestrained manner. Turning this concern on its head, this chapter contends that while it is true that the idiom of victory tempts an escalatory logic, so too does the idea of just war. This is demonstrated by the writings of two leading contemporary just war theorists: Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan. The conclusion arising from this is not necessarily that we should back away from speaking about either victory or just war. It is, however, a reminder of both what is staked when we do engage them, and why they must always be approached with circumspection.

Not All Killings Are Equally Wrong

Many 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.

Licenza di uccidere. Per un’analisi critica delle tesi di Jeff McMahan / Licence to kill. For a critical analysis of Jeff McMahan’s theses

Questo articolo prende in esame la riformulazione del concetto di persona, proposta dal filosofo Jeff McMahan in The Ethics of Killing, come embodied mind. La proposta teorica di McMahan ha una chiara valenza pratica perché, in accordo con una prospettiva funzionalista, identifica la persona con l’acquisizione delle sue capacità cognitive, tracciando una linea discriminatoria tra esseri umani: alcuni non sarebbero persone e pertanto non potrebbero condividere gli stessi diritti che “noi” persone abbiamo. McMahan sviluppa, sulla base di questa impostazione, una gerarchia etica che rende legittima l’uccisione di tutti quegli esseri umani che, a suo avviso, non si possono considerare persone come ad esempio embrioni, feti e individui in stato vegetativo. Il saggio, che rende conto di alcune interessanti annotazioni critiche svolte dalla filosofa Eva Kittay alla proposta di McMahan, si propone di valutare la consistenza teorica di questa teoria e di porla in riferimento alla questione etica e sociale connessa con la tutela dei diritti delle persone con disabilità cognitiva grave. Sulla base delle considerazioni svolte, si è giunti alla conclusione che le teorie di McMahan, e le conseguenze che ne derivano per l’etica pratica, vadano respinte in quanto la separazione tra la nozione di persona e quella di essere umano non risulta adeguatamente giustificata, essendo fondata su una mistificazione dell’uomo privato della sua fondamentale dimensione corporea. ---------- This article takes into account the redefinition of the concept of personhood as embodied mind, proposed by philosopher Jeff McMahan in his book The Ethics of Killing. McMahan’s theoretical proposal has clear practical implications because, according with a functionalist perspective, he identifies personhood with the acquisition of sophisticated cognitive abilities, drawing a discriminatory line among human beings: some are non-persons and therefore they do not share the same rights we persons have. Based on this approach, McMahan develops an ethical hierarchy that makes legitimate the killing of all human beings who, according to his theories, can not be considered as persons, such as embryos, fetuses, and individuals in a vegetative state. The essay, which considers some interesting critical annotations made by philosopher Eva Kittay to McMahan’s proposal, intends to evaluate the theoretical consistency of his theory and to connect it to the ethical and social matter of recognizing and protecting the rights of people with severe cognitive disability. On the basis of our considerations, we concluded that McMahan’s theories, and their consequences for practical ethics, should be rejected because the disjunction between the notion of personhood and that of human being is not properly demonstrated, being based on a mystification of mankind deprived of its fundamental bodily dimension.

Health Care Rationing and the Badness of Death

According to Jeff McMahan, health care professionals ought to save an individual, A, from dying as a young adult (e.g., at age 30) rather than save some other individual, B, from dying as a newborn, even if the latter intervention would give B twice as many years of full-quality life as the former intervention would give A. Call this claim Young Adults over Newborns. In this chapter, I argue that if we accept Young Adults over Newborns, then we must reject at least one of three other more plausible claims. This constitutes a strong reason to reject Young Adults over Newborns.