The responsibility of soldiers and the ethics of killing in war

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 229, 2007, Pages 558-572

  Benbaji, Yitzhak ^a  

^a BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48749091165     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. For culpability-based accounts of self-defence, see J. Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 84-5
2. P. Montague, 'Self-Defense and Choosing among Lives', Philosophical Studies, 40 (1981), pp. 207-19
3. J. McMahan, 'Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker', Ethics, 104 (1994), pp. 252-90
4. See J.J. Thomson, 'Self-Defense', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 20 (1991), pp. 283-310
5. See, most notably, M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 34-41
6. See also my 'Culpable Bystanders, Innocent Threats and the Ethics of Self-Defense', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 35 (2005), pp. 585-622
7. In this respect McMahan follows M. Otsuka, 'Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23 (1994), pp. 74-94
8. See McMahan, 'The Ethics of Killing in War', Ethics, 114 (2004), pp. 693-733
9. L. McPherson, 'Innocence and Responsibility in War', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 34 (2004), pp. 485-506
10. G. Overland, 'Killing Soldiers', Journal of Moral Philosophy (forthcoming)
11. See McMahan, 'The Ethics of Killing in War', p. 723
12. I rely here on McMahan, 'The Basis of Moral Liability to Defensive Killing', Philosophical Issues, 15 (2005), pp. 386-405
13. McMahan, 'Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker', p. 260
14. McMahan, 'Killing in War: a Reply to Walzer', Philosophia, 34 (2006), pp. 47-51, at p. 47
15. J. MacFarlane, 'Future Contingents and Relative Truth', The Philosophical Quarterly, 53 (2003), pp. 321-36
16. Here I follow Thomson in two respects. First, I claim that although mere responsibility might be morally significant, it has nothing to with agency in particular: see her discussion of moral luck in her The Realm of Rights, p. 240
17. and cf. B. Williams, 'Moral Luck', repr. in his Moral Luck (Cambridge UP, 1981), pp. 20-39
18. Secondly, I take intention to be irrelevant to per-missibility: see Thomson, 'Self-Defense', pp. 294-5
19. See D. Davidson, 'Agency', in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford UP, 1980), pp. 43-62
20. For the problems posed for a natural-rights theory by risk-imposing activity, see R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 74-5
21. D. McKerlie, 'Rights and Risks', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 16 (1986), pp. 239-51
22. I follow D. McCarthy, 'Rights, Explanation, and Risks', Ethics, 107 (1997), pp. 205-26
23. and 'Liability and Risk', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 25 (1996), pp. 238-63
24. I would like to thank Hagit Benbaji, Ira Schnall, Daniel Statman, Michael Walzer and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier versions. I am especially indebted to Jeff McMahan for his critique of this paper