A detailed, clear, and comprehensive overview of the current philosophical debate on. The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding (...) this highly contentious subject. Steinhoff’s position is that torture is sometimes, under certain narrowly circumscribed conditions, justified, basing his argument on the right to self-defense. His position differs from that of other authors who, using other philosophical justifications, would permit torture under a wider set of conditions. After having given the reader a thorough account of the main arguments for permitting torture under certain circumstances, Steinhoff explains and addresses the many objections that have been raised to employing torture under any circumstances. This is an indispensible work for anyone interested in one of the most controversial subjects of our times. (shrink)

abstract Can torture be morally justified? I shall criticise arguments that have been adduced against torture and demonstrate that torture can be justified more easily than most philosophers dealing with the question are prepared to admit. It can be justified not only in ticking nuclear bomb cases but also in less spectacular ticking bomb cases and even in the so‐called Dirty Harry cases. There is no morally relevant difference between self‐defensive killing of a culpable aggressor and torturing someone who is (...) culpable of a deadly threat that can be averted only by torturing him. Nevertheless, I shall argue that torture should not be institutionalised, for example by torture warrants. (shrink)

Although people generally agree that innocent targets of culpable aggression are justified in harming the aggressors in self-defence, there is considerable disagreement regarding whether innocents are justified in defending themselves when their doing so would harm other innocent people. I argue in this essay that harming innocent aggressors and active innocent threats in self-defence is indeed justified under certain conditions, but that defensive actions in such cases are justified as permissions rather than as claim rights. This justification therefore differs from (...) that of self-defence against culpable aggressors, since defensive acts of the latter type are justified as claim rights rather than mere permissions. I argue, however, that the two justifications are alike in that both rest on considerations of distributive justice. (shrink)

In war a soldier behaving properly should take into account a universal requirement not to kill, to be applied strictly in dealing with civilians, but at the same time to support the exception of taking the life of enemy combatants as an act of selfdefense. This is the usual way to distinguish morally the proper treatment to soldiers and civilians. In this article the author criticizes it and outlines a different way to understand and justify the moral distinction mentioned.

Steinhoff defends the moral and legal permissibility of torture in a limited range of circumstances. This article criticizes Steinhoff’s arguments. The analogy between ordinary defensive violence and defensive torture which Steinhoff argues for is partly spoiled by the presence, within defensive torture, of opportunistic harm, in addition to eliminative harm. Steinhoff’s arguments that the mere legalization of defensive torture would not metastasize into a more full-fledged institutionalization of torture are also found wanting. As a minimal form of institutionalization, the mere (...) legalization of torture would already be at risk of further entrenchment and growth. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the nature of what is perhaps the most widely recognized justification for inflicting harm on human beings: the appeal to defense (self-defense and other-defense). I develop and defend a rights-based account of the appeal to defense that takes into account whether and to what degree both the aggressor and his potential victim are morally responsible for the relevant threat. However, unlike most extant rights-based accounts, mine is not a forfeiture account. That is, I do (...) not attempt to explain the permissibility of defense in terms of the aggressor’s loss of a right not to be harmed. Instead I appeal directly to the fact that defense in the relevant cases prevents the aggressor from infringing upon the rights of his potential victim. Accordingly, I call my account a “prevention account.”. (shrink)

Over the past 20 years, there has been a huge amount of work on which things you can kill in self‐defense and why. This paper surveys that work.

There’s a widespread intuition that if the only way an innocent person can stop her villainous attacker from killing her is to kill him instead, then she is morally permitted to do so. But why is it that she is permitted to employ lethal force on an aggressor if that is what is required to save her life? My primary goal in this paper is to defend David Rodin's fairly recent and under-recognized account of self-defense that answers this question. There (...) are roughly two kinds of non-consequentialist accounts of self-defense:'forced-choice' accounts and 'rights-based' accounts. I first examine what I take to be the most plausible 'forced-choice' account of self-defense and I argue that it is unable to withstand two recent criticisms. I then proceed to adjudicate between two prominent 'rights-based' accounts of self-defense: call them the Thomson/Uniacke account and the Rodinian account. Any rights-based account of self-defense must explain how it is that X, who villainously tries to kill Y, forfeits his right to life. I argue both that Thomson/Uniacke's explanation cannot account for the clear permissibility of killing a certain kind of aggressor in self-defense, and that the attempts that could be made to account for this permissibility are either ad-hoc or permit the killing of persons that are morally on par with innocent bystanders. I point out how Thomson/Uniacke can evade the seeming difficulties that I raise by only permitting lethal defensive force against culpable aggressors. But allowing defensive force to be employed only on the culpable goes against one of their central tenets. I then discuss the Rodinian account, how it evades the criticisms I raise, as well as its other virtues. I conclude that while it has difficulties of its own, it is the more plausible one to adopt. (shrink)