Seth Lazar, Philosopher and Photographer

This paper grew out of a working paper I  wrote in summer 2010. It attempts an analysis of the concept of necessity as it applies in self-defence and war–too often philosophers assume that necessity is either unimportant or immediately perspicuous; but it is neither. Read on for the introduction. This paper has just been accepted by Philosophy & Public Affairs, for their Winter 2012 edition, and is part of a broader project on Necessity and Noncombatant Immunity. Continue reading »

Paper for the new Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law, edited by Andrei Marmor. Publication scheduled for March 2012.

Extract from the conclusion:

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My working paper on the aftermath of war has led to a publication in a volume edited by Larry May with Andrew Forcehimes, to be published in June 2012, by Cambridge University Press. The book is called Morality, Jus Post Bellum and International Law, you can read about it here.

Here’s the introduction:

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6000 word entry focusing on the discussion of war in contemporary analytical philosophy. Distinguishes that approach from historical just war theory because of the former’s overriding emphasis on the importance of individual human rights to the ethics of war. Characterises Walzer’s principal contributions to jus ad bellum and jus in bello as his orientation of those questions around human rights: we may fight to protect fundamental rights, but in doing so we must not violate others’ rights. Identifies the principal criticisms of Walzer’s elaboration of these themes, but notes that few critics question whether it is really possible to render the ethics of war consistent with individual rights in this way. Indicates the possible direction of travel for those who think that a rights-respecting war is an unattainable ideal. Invited submission for the Wiley Blackwell International Encyclopaedia of Ethics. Publication has been delayed, but there is some promise of the 9 volume megalith hitting the shelves in 2012 (see here for more).

Review of Larry May’s edited volume. http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/120/479/895.short?rss=1

This paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co-citizenship.The sort of duties that are specially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these duties — indeed, that it gives us little reason to treat compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners, with all the practical consequences that this would entail. I suggest that on a specific conception of liberal citizenship we can, in fact, defend associative duties, but that these extend only to the duty to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship. Duties of justice and favouritism, I maintain, cannot be particularised to one’s compatriots.

You can see the paper here: A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to Compatriots.

Jeff McMahan’s theory of permissible killing in war, developed over the last 15 years and most recently developed in his Killing in War (OUP, 2009), faces two objections. The contingent pacifist objection asserts that his restrictive conception of the basis for individual liability to lethal attack—moral responsibility for an objectively unjustified threat—renders it impossible to fight even the most justified wars justly, since we cannot distinguish between those who are, and are not liable. The total war objection argues that, by making responsibility the basis of liability, rather than the fact one poses a threat, his account threatens to make too many noncombatants permissible targets of lethal force. Killing in War seeks to address both of these objections, but I argue that McMahan’s response to each contradicts the other. The contingent pacifist objection is rebutted by expanding the scope of liability, so no combatants on the unjust side will escape. But expanding liability only gives the total war objection greater purchase. This paper defends this core objection, which I call the ‘responsibility dilemma’ both for McMahan, and for any philosopher who wants to ground liability to be killed in war in responsibility for unjustified threats.

You can read the paper here: The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War.

Combatants in war kill and maim perfect strangers, committing acts that would be, in almost any other context, paradigmatically unjust. Conventional just war theory holds that they can avoid injustice, provided they only kill those who threaten their lives. This permissive standard has been much criticised. In particular, some argue that combatants can only justly kill enemies who are responsible for an unjustified threat to their lives. Initially, it was thought that responsibility should rise to the level of culpability; this standard has proved too restrictive, however, as even unjustified combatants are often blameless for the threat they pose. Responding to this concern, Jeff McMahan, David Rodin, and others have proposed that mere agent responsibility is sufficient to establish liability—if combatants meet the minimum standards of responsible agency, and they acted voluntarily in creating the unjustified threat, then they can be liable to be killed, even if they are wholly blameless. McMahan in particular has developed a detailed defence of this position, arguing that where A’s voluntary conduct—however blameless—imposes risks on B, A should lose his right not to bear the costs when those risks eventuate in B being forced to choose between their lives. In this paper, I set out and criticise McMahan’s position, arguing in particular that agent responsibility for the imposition of risks does not adequately differentiate between A and B, since B will also be agent-responsible for imposing risks on A. In the absence of any asymmetry between A and B, there are no grounds for either becoming liable to be killed in self-defence. This relaxation of the standard of liability is, in my view, a retrograde step: potential combatants should not imagine that they can main and kill without injustice.

This paper was published in the July 2009 edition of Ethics, and can be viewed here: Responsibility, Risk, and Killing in Self-Defense.

Associative duties are non-contractual duties owed in virtue of a valuable relationship. General duties are owed to people simply in virtue of their humanity. In this paper, I ask what should be done when we can perform either an associative duty or a general duty, but not both. There are two types of solutions to this question, which will be called compatibilist and incompatibilist. Compatibilist responses deny any real tension between associative and general duties, in two ways. The first, compossibilist, variant rejects the terms of the question, arguing that tradeoffs cannot occur, because each set of duties can be fully discharged without compromising the other. The second, generalist, variant of compatibilism concedes that sometimes tradeoffs may be necessary. However, it contends that these tradeoffs are always easily resolvable, because there is a clear priority ordering between the two sets of duties: general duties always trump their associative counterparts. Incompatibilist responses hold that associative and general duties are genuinely in tension with one another: that is, (1) contra the compossibilist, there will indeed be tradeoffs between associative and general duties, and (2) contra the generalist, sometimes the associative duty will win out. My aim, in this paper, is first to pinpoint the terrain on which the debate between these three positions should be held, and then to show that, once on that terrain, incompatibilism looks more plausible than the alternatives.

This paper was published, January 2009, in Journal of Political Philosophy. You can view it here: Do Associative Duties Really Not Matter?.

This paper, drawn from my M.Phil. thesis on corrective justice, explicates a concept of injury as right-violation, which can be used as a foundation for distinguishing between setbacks to interests that should, and should not, be the concern of justice, and as the object of a theory of corrective justice. It begins by introducing a hybrid theory of rights, grounded in (a) the mobilisation of our moral equality to (b) protect our most important interests, and shows how violations of rights are the concern of justice, while setbacks where one of the twin grounds of rights is defeated are not. It then looks more closely at the substantive moral components of injury, namely harm and wrong. It argues that, on the hybrid conception, harm and wrong are individually necessary and jointly sufficient components of injury, and that the disvalue of neither is reducible to the other—in particular, it is a mistake to make the disrespect identified by wrong into another damaged interest. Finally, it distinguishes between the public and private dimensions of injury, and makes some preliminary suggestions as to whether the probable remedy for these different dimensions should lie in criminal, distributive, or corrective justice.

This paper won Res Publica’s 2008 postgraduate essay prize, and was published in their Autumn 2009 edition. You can view it here: The Nature and Disvalue of Injury.

In this paper, drawn from my M.Phil. thesis on corrective justice, I ask how – and whether – the rectification of injury at which corrective justice aims is possible, and by whom it must be performed. I split the injury up into components of harm and wrong, and consider their rectification separately. First, I show that pecuniary compensation for the harm is practically plausible, because money acts as a mediator between the damaged interest and other interests. I then argue that this is also a morally plausible approach, because it does not claim too much for compensation: neither can all harms be compensated, nor can it be said when compensation is paid that the status quo ante has been restored. I argue that there is no conceptual reason for any particular agent paying this compensation. I then turn to the wrong, and reject three proposed methods of rectification. The first aims to rectify the wrong by rectifying the harm; the second deploys punitive damages; the third, punishment. After undermining each proposal, I argue that the wrong can only be rectified by a full apology, which I disaggregate into the admission of causal and moral responsibility, repudiation of the act, reform, and, in some cases, disgorgement and reparations, which I define as a good faith effort to share the burden of the victim’s harm. I argue, further, that only the injurer herself can make a full apology, and it is not something that can be coerced by other members of society. As such, whether rectification of the wrong can be a matter of corrective justice is left an open question.

This paper was published in the August 2008 edition of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, a philosophy journal published by Springer-Kluwer. You can see it here: Corrective Justice and the Possibility of Rectification.