Augustine famously defends the justice of killing in certain public contexts such as just wars. He also claims that private citizens who intentionally kill are guilty of murder, regardless of their reasons. Just as famously, Augustine seems to prohibit lying categorically. Analyzing these features of his thought and their connections, I argue that Augustine is best understood as endorsing the justice of lying in certain public contexts, even though he does not explicitly do so. Specifically, I show that parallels between (...) his treatments of killing and lying along with his “agent (auctor)–instrument (minister)” distinction, in which God is the true agent or “author” of certain acts and humans are merely God's instruments, together imply that he would regard certain instances of public lying as permissible and even obligatory. I buttress my argument by examining several key but neglected passages and by responding to various objections and rival interpretations. Throughout, I challenge standard interpretations of Augustine's ethics of killing and lying and seek to deepen our overall understanding of these dimensions of his thought. In so doing, I contribute to ongoing discussions of public and private lying and to the task of relating Augustine's thought to contemporary debate and deliberation on war, killing, and lying. (shrink)

The Roe v. Wade decision was overturned in the United States in 2022. This implies that while abortion remains legal in most jurisdictions, it is no longer a constitutional right, thus paving the way for making it illegal. Ever since the Roe v. Wade decision, there have been bombings and other violent attacks against abortion providers and abortion clinics, claiming some fatal victims. The overwhelming majority of anti-abortion activists condemn such violence. At the same time, most anti-abortion activists consider the (...) fetus a person, and ultimately believe that abortion is a form of murder. In this article, I argue that if abortion is murder, then anti-abortion violent activists have moral license to bomb abortion clinics. To do so, I rely on the principles of Just War theory. Ultimately, I rely on a modus tollens argument to prove that abortion is not murder: if abortion is murder, then activists have moral justification in bombing abortion clinics; activists do not have moral justification in bombing abortion clinics; therefore, abortion is not murder. Apart from attempting to prove that abortion is not murder, I also attempt to show the incoherence of the anti-abortion view. (shrink)