Does one have special obligations to support the political institutions of one’s own country precisely because it is one’s own? In short, does one have political obligations? This book argues for an affirmative answer, construing one’s country as a political society of which one is a member, and a political society as a special type of social group. The obligations in question are not moral requirements derived from general moral principles. They come, rather, from one’s participation in a special kind (...) of commitment: a joint commitment. This theory is referred to as the plural subject theory of political obligation since, by the author’s definition, those who are party to any joint commitment constitute a plural subject of some action in a broad sense of the term. Several alternative theories are compared and contrasted with plural subject theory, with a particular focus on the most famous — actual contract theory — according to which membership in a political society is a matter of participation in an agreement. The book offers plural subject accounts of both social rules and everyday agreements, and includes discussion of political authority and punishment. (shrink)

This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.

This book is a collection of eleven essays by one of the most interesting moral philosophers currently writing. It examines challenges to liberal thought posed by the changing circumstances of the modern world such as the conflicting tendencies toward global integration, and greater ethnic and communal identification. The author considers whether liberal principles of justice can accommodate social and global interdependencies while reaffirming the importance of individual responsibility and acknowledging the significance of people's diverse personal and communal allegiances.

This article explores the personal responsibility of soldiers for fighting in unjust wars. Its reference point is the position developed by Jeff McMahan in his recent Killing in War. I claim that McMahan fails to give sufficient importance to institutional justifications on this matter. I argue for this by developing what I call the argument to democratic duty, which I claim embodies much current thinking about the obligations of soldiers in a democratic culture. The upshot of my argument is that (...) soldiers are placed in a contradictory position, between personal and institutional obligations. This is one sense in which soldiers can be victimized by the institution of war itself. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...) is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

Every political theorist will need this book . . . . It is more 'important' than 90% of the work published in philosophy."--Joel Feinberg, University of Arizona.

Jeff McMahan urges us to reject the view, dominant throughout history, that mere participation in an unjust war is not wrong.

I try to show that agent responsibility is an inadequate basis for the attribution of liability, by discrediting the Risk Argument and showing how the Responsibility Argument in fact collapses into the Risk Argument. I have concentrated on undermining these as philosophical theories of self-defense, although I at times note that our theory of self-defense should not be predicated on assumptions that are inapplicable to the context of war. The potential combatant, I conclude, should not look to the agency view (...) to ease his conscience about the killing he will do in war. If he is to fight without violating rights, then he will need a different theory of self-defense; if there are no more defensible theories, then he must either accept pacifism—which I think is a live possibility—or seek to identify stronger countervailing reasons, which can override the great force of his victims’ rights to life. (shrink)

Contains the English version of the author's political and moral philosophy. This title also includes the English translation of "De Homine," chapters X-XV. It also features the English translation of "De Cive.".

This Hackett edition, first published in 1981, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the seventh edition as published by Macmillan and Company, Limited. From the forward by John Rawls: In the utilitarian tradition Henry Sidgwick has an important place. His fundamental work, The Methods of Ethics, is the clearest and most accessible formulation of what we may call 'the classical utilitarian doctorine.' This classical doctrine holds that the ultimate moral end of social and individual action is the greatest net (...) sum of the happiness of all sentient beings. Happinesss is specified by the net balance of pleasure over pain, or, as Sidgwick preferred to say, as the net balance of agreeable over disagreeable consciousness.... (shrink)

When is it right to go to war? The most persuasive answer to this question has always been 'in self-defense'. In a penetrating new analysis, bringing together moral philosophy, political science, and law, David Rodin shows what's wrong with this answer. He proposes a comprehensive new theory of the right of self-defense which resolves many of the perplexing questions that have dogged both jurists and moral philosophers. By applying the theory of self-defense to international relations, Rodin produces a far-reaching critique (...) of the canonical Just War theory. The simple analogy between self-defense and national defense - between the individual and the state - needs to be fundamentally rethought, and with it many of the basic elements of international law and the ethics of international relations. (shrink)

Michael J. Zimmerman offers a conceptual analysis of the moral ‘ought’ that focuses on moral decision-making under uncertainty. His central case, originally presented by Frank Jackson, concerns a doctor who must choose among three treatments for a minor ailment. Her evidence suggests that drug B will partially cure her patient, that one of either drug A or C would cure him completely, but that the other drug would kill him. Accepting the intuition that the doctor ought to choose drug B, (...) Zimmerman argues that moral obligation consists in performing the action that is ‘prospectively best,’ that is ‘that which, from the moral point of view, it is most reasonable for the agent to choose’ given the evidence available to her at the time.Zimmerman defends his Prospective View of moral obligation against two main competitors in the long, first chapter of the book. According to the Objective View, a person ought to choose what is, in fact, the best option. The doctor ought to give her patient whichever drug will actually cure him. The fact that the doctor cannot know whether this is drug …. (shrink)

Every choice we make is set against a background of massive ignorance about our past, our future, our circumstances, and ourselves. Philosophers are divided on the moral significance of such ignorance. Some say that it has a direct impact on how we ought to behave - the question of what our moral obligations are; others deny this, claiming that it only affects how we ought to be judged in light of the behaviour in which we choose to engage - the (...) question of what responsibility we bear for our choices. Michael Zimmerman claims that our ignorance has an important bearing on both questions, and offers an account of moral obligation and moral responsibility that is sharply at odds with the prevailing wisdom. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ethics. (shrink)

Most people believe that it is sometimes morally permissible for a person to use force to defend herself or others against harm. In Defensive Killing, Helen Frowe offers a detailed exploration of when and why the use of such force is permissible. She begins by considering the use of force between individuals, investigating both the circumstances under which an attacker forfeits her right not to be harmed, and the distinct question of when it is all-things-considered permissible to use force against (...) an attacker. Frowe then extends this enquiry to war, defending the view that we should judge the ethics of killing in war by the moral rules that govern killing between individuals. She argues that this requires us to significantly revise our understanding of the moral status of non-combatants in war. Non-combatants who intentionally contribute to an unjust war forfeit their rights not to be harmed, such that they are morally liable to attack by combatants fighting a just war. (shrink)

Shaping the Normative Landscape is an investigation of the value of obligations and of rights, of forgiveness, of consent and refusal, of promise and request. David Owens shows that these are all instruments by which we exercise control over our normative environment.

The traditional theory of the just war comprises two sets of principles, one governing the resort to war ( jus ad bellum) and the other governing the conduct of war ( jus in bello). The two sets of principles are regarded, in Michael Walzer’s words, as “logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a just war to be fought unjustly and for an unjust war to be fought in strict accordance with the rules.”1 Let us say that those who fight (...) in a just war are “just combatants,” while those who fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause are “unjust combatants.” (A just cause is an aim that can contribute to the justification for war and that may permissibly be pursued by means of war.)2 The most important implication of the idea that jus in bello is independent of jus ad bellum is that.. (shrink)

This paper argues that certain central tenets of the traditional theory of the just war cannot be correct. It then advances an alternative account grounded in the same considerations of justice that govern self-defense at the individual level. The implications of this account are unorthodox. It implies that, with few exceptions, combatants who fight for an unjust cause act impermissibly when they attack enemy combatants, and that combatants who fight in a just war may, in certain circumstances, legitimately target noncombatants (...) who bear a significant degree of moral responsibility for a wrong, when the prevention or rectification of that wrong constitutes a just cause for war. (shrink)

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. If any moral principle commands near universal assent, this one does. Few moral principles have been more widely and more viscerally affirmed. And yet, in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Political and military leaders seeking to slip the constraints of the laws of war have cavilled and qualified. Their complaints have been unwittingly aided by philosophers who, rebuilding just war theory from its foundations, have concluded that this principle (...) is at best a useful fiction. Sparing Civilians aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law, and the ruptured consensus. In doing so, Seth Lazar develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in normative and applied ethics. (shrink)

Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example pertaining to guilt and responsibility – (...) which hover uncomfortably close to the boundary between the observer-relative and the observer-independent. By means of a thought experiment involving an imagined Chinese society in which guilt is determined by the random throwing of sticks, I seek to show that moral concepts threaten the foundations of Searle’s philosophy of social reality. (shrink)

Introduction -- Cosmopolitanism -- Collective self-defense -- Subsistence wars -- Humanitarian intervention -- Commodified wars -- Asymmetrical wars -- Conclusion.

This article is concerned with a distinction Jeff McMahan draws between just and justified wars. It argues that this distinction does not accord with the content of McMahan’s conceptual distinction between just and justified threats; nor does it correspond with the way in which McMahan applies this distinction to the jus in bello tactical bomber scenario. McMahan claims that the tactical bomber’s conduct, assuming it foreseeably causes collateral damage, can only be justified, but not just, while war can be just (...) despite foreseeably resulting in the killing and maiming of innocent people. This claim is incoherent. The incoherence can be overcome, though, within McMahan’s own conceptual framework. For contingent reasons that have to do with the nature of at least modern warfare, justified wars are virtually always unjust. Since agents are generally morally required to prevent themselves from getting into situations in which they can (or must) perform morally justified acts that are unjust, distinguishing between these two types of war is not merely a matter of terminology. This article is a plea for the recognition of the tragedy of justified wars, a tragedy which is only authentic if it could not have been prevented by the agents who wage these wars. (shrink)

There is a debate in normative ethics about whether or not our moral obligations depend solely on either our evidence concerning, or our beliefs about, the world. Subjectivists maintain that they do and objectivists maintain that they do not. I shall offer some arguments in support of objectivism and respond to the strongest argument for subjectivism. I shall also briefly consider the significance of my discussion to the debate over whether one’s future voluntary actions are relevant to one’s current moral (...) obligations. (shrink)

Just war theory is dominated by two positions. According to the traditional view, combatants both on the just and the unjust side have an equal right to fight, which is not affected by the justice of the cause pursued by their state. According to a recent revisionist account, only combatants fighting for a just cause have such right. David Estlund has offered a sophisticated account that aims to reconcile these two views by looking at our duty to obey the order (...) of democratic political institutions. The article criticizes Estlund’s account and points at an important to be learned from it. (shrink)