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Killing in War

Online ISBN:
9780191721045
Print ISBN:
9780199548668
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Killing in War

Jeff McMahan
Jeff McMahan
Rutgers University, New Jersey
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Published online:
1 September 2009
Published in print:
23 April 2009
Online ISBN:
9780191721045
Print ISBN:
9780199548668
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? This book argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and that the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. It implies, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause, that those who fight in a just war are not legitimate targets of attack, and that some civilians may, in principle if not in practice, be morally liable to suffer certain harms in war.

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