Defensive Killing

by Helen Frowe

Overview

Most people believe that it is sometimes morally permissible for a person to use force to defend herself or others against harm. In Defensive Killing, Helen Frowe offers a detailed exploration of when and why the use of such force is permissible. She begins by considering the use of force between individuals, investigating both the circumstances under which an attacker forfeits her right not to be harmed, and the distinct question of when it is all-things-considered permissible to use force against an attacker. Frowe then extends this enquiry to war, defending the view that we should judge the ethics of killing in war by the moral rules that govern killing between individuals. She argues that this requires us to significantly revise our understanding of the moral status of non-combatants in war. Non-combatants who intentionally contribute to an unjust war forfeit their rights not to be harmed, such that they are morally liable to attack by combatants fighting a just war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191058097
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	10/23/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	440 KB

About the Author

Helen Frowe is Wallenberg Academy Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Stockholm, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. She is the author of The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction (Routledge, 2011), and co-editor of How We Fight: Ethics in War (OUP, 2014).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Aims and Methods 1

Part I Self-Defence 19

1 Threats and Bystanders 21

1.1 The Orthodox View 22

1.2 The Problem of Obstructors 25

1.3 Culpable Bystanders? 26

1.4 A New Taxonomy 31

1.5 'Threat' as a Non-moralized Notion 40

1.6 Direct and Indirect Threats 43

1.7 Summary 45

2 Killing Innocent Threats 46

2.1 Thomson's Account of Self-Defence 47

2.2 The Moral Equivalence Thesis 48

2.3 Ways of Killing 51

2.4 Quong's Account of Permissible Defence 54

2.5 Direct Threats 63

2.6 Summary 70

3 Moral Responsibility and Liability to Defensive Harm 72

3.1 Agential Responsibility and Moral Responsibility 74

3.2 Moral Responsibility 75

3.3 Mistakes and Reasonable Opportunities 80

3.4 Summary 86

4 Liability and Necessity 88

4.1 Accounts of Liability 88

4.2 Internalism and Externalism, and the Importance of Liability 91

4.3 Moral Luck 94

4.4 Ineffective Force 97

4.5 Insufficient Force 99

4.6 The Pluralist Account 102

4.7 Against Punitive Justifications for Harming 106

4.8 Honour-Based Justifications for Harming 109

4.9 Prohibitions on Counter-Defence 115

4.10 Honour and Necessity 116

4.11 Liability and Proportionality 118

4.12 Summary 119

Part II War 121

5 War and Self-Defence 123

5.1 Fust Cause and ad bellum Proportionality 124

5.2 Responsibility for Mediated Harms 129

5.3 The Revised Defence Account 135

5.4 Political Interests and Reductivism 139

5.5 Proportionality and a Reasonable Prospect of Success 147

5.6 An Essentially Political Requirement? 156

5.7 Summary 160

6 Non-combatant Liability 162

6.1 The Principle of Non-combatant Immunity 164

6.2 Intervening Agency 166

6.3 McMahan's Account of Non-combatant Liability 172

6.4 Ignorance 181

6.5 Risks of Threatening, and Risks That One's Threat Is Unjust 184

6.6 Summary 186

7 Non-combatant Immunity 188

7.1 Broad Liability and Narrow Liability 189

7.2 The Identification Problem 195

7.3 The Isolation Problem 196

7.4 Summary 197

8 Implications and Objections 198

8.1 Terrorism 198

8.2 The Red Cross Objection 202

8.3 The Unlimited Casualties Objection 207

8.4 Taxation 209

8.5 Summary 213

Bibliography 215

Index 219

Editorial Reviews

"Defensive Killing is a scintillating exemplar of contemporary moral philosophy. Though its conclusions are at times bracing, Frowe's ubtlety and intellectual honesty are unmatched ... It is a pathbreaking contribution not only to the ethics of war, but to deontological moral theory." — Seth Lazar, Australian National University

"a sophisticated and meticulously argued wake-up call ... Frowe's book clearly deserves a privileged place in the pantheon of works on the morality of war ... It is required reading for anyone interested in contemporary theories of defensive violence and the morality of war." — Australasian Journal of Philosophy

"Frowe's intricately argued, insightful, and challenging book. I have benefited enormously from thinking as carefully as I am able about the positions she defends and the arguments she gives for them. I am confident that the same will be true of others who read this splendid book." — Ethics

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