Seth Lazar, Philosopher and Photographer

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.

Combatants in war lay waste the environment, destroy cultural heritage, wound, maim and kill. Most importantly, they kill. Such acts would in any other context be abhorrent. If warfare is to be permissible, these deeds must first be justified. A potential combatant might reason like this: People have general duties to one another, owed in virtue of their shared humanity. Among these, some are duties of justice, linked to rights held by the duty’s beneficiary. The general duty not to kill is a duty of justice, correlative with the right to life. Breaching the duty, so violating the right, is normally the gravest injustice one can commit. If warfare is to be justified, therefore, either the relevant duties of justice must not apply, or they must be overridden by stronger countervailing reasons. In the first instance warfare is just; in the second it is justified, though unjust.

Most philosophers believe warfare must be just to be justified. This includes Michael Walzer, whose Just and Unjust Wars was the fulcrum of debate in the late twentieth century, and the numerous analytical philosophers who have exposed flaws in Walzer’s arguments—most notable among them, Jeff McMahan. In War and Associative Duties, I argue that this consensus view is mistaken. Wars cannot be fought without breaching grave duties of justice. Part I defends this assertion; part II explores one way in which fighting may nevertheless be justified. Continue reading »