Who Should Die?: The Ethics of Killing in War
Bradley Jay Strawser, Ryan Jenkins, and Michael Robillard
Abstract
This academic text brings together, in one volume, the most recent and innovative accounts of liability to harm in war. The concept of liability has become a crucial wedge issue within the military ethics community, as the claim that combatants are morally equal has come under withering criticism. Scholars have been exploring the various causal factors that underlie a person’s liability to be intentionally targeted with potentially lethal violence—such as her culpable contribution to an unjust threat. These new categories of liability cut across the old equality of combatants, suggesting that ... More
This academic text brings together, in one volume, the most recent and innovative accounts of liability to harm in war. The concept of liability has become a crucial wedge issue within the military ethics community, as the claim that combatants are morally equal has come under withering criticism. Scholars have been exploring the various causal factors that underlie a person’s liability to be intentionally targeted with potentially lethal violence—such as her culpable contribution to an unjust threat. These new categories of liability cut across the old equality of combatants, suggesting that not all soldiers are equally liable to harm, and that even civilians can be liable to harm. This text offers a “who’s who” of contemporary scholars working on and rigorously debating the major ethical questions surrounding killing in war, including liability to harm, rights theory, self-defense, selective conscientious objection, obligations toward civilians, and autonomous weapons. This volume collects, expands upon, and provides new and updated analyses of these concepts that have yet to be captured in a single work. As a convenient and authoritative collection of such discussions, this title is uniquely and well suited for university-level teaching and as a scholarly reference for ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Keywords:
war,
liability,
self-defense,
killing,
just war theory,
revisionism,
ethics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190495657 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190495657.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Bradley Jay Strawser, editor
Associate Professor, Department of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School and Research Associate, University of Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict
Ryan Jenkins, editor
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Michael Robillard, editor
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut
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