How We Fight Ethics in War

How We Fight: Ethics in War presents a substantial body of new work by some of the leading philosophers of war. The ten essays cover a range of topics concerned with both jus ad bellum (the morality of going to war) and jus in bello (the morality of fighting in war). Alongside explorations of classic in bello topics, such as the principle of non-combatant immunity and the distribution of risk between combatants and non-combatants, the volume also addresses ad bellum topics, such as pacifism and punitive justifications for war, and explores the relationship between ad bellum and in bello topics, or how the fighting of a war may affect our judgments concerning whether that war meets the ad bellum conditions. The essays take a keen interest in the micro-foundations of just war theory, and uphold the general assumption that the rules of war must be supported, if they are going to be supported at all, by the liability and non-liability of the individuals who are encompassed by those rules. Relatedly, the volume also contains work which is relevant to the moral justification of several moral doctrines used, either explicitly or implicitly, in just war theory: in the doctrine of double effect, in the generation of liability in basic self-defensive cases, and in the relationship between liability and the conditions which are normally appended to permissible self-defensive violence: imminence, necessity, and proportionality. The volume breaks new ground in all these areas.

Helen Frowe is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent.

Gerald Lang is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He held previous appointments in Reading and Oxford. He has very wide-ranging interests in moral and political philosophy.

Introduction, Helen Frowe and Gerald Lang
1. Varieties of Contingent Pacifism in War, Saba Bazargan
2. Punitive War, Victor Tadros
3. Why Not Forfeiture?, Gerald Lang
4. Self-Defence, Just War, and a Reasonable Prospect of Success, Suzanne Uniacke
5. Self-Defense, Resistance, and Suicide: The Taliban Women, Frances M. Kamm
6. Are Justified Aggressors a Threat to the Rights Theory of Self-Defence?, Adam Hosein
7. Self-Defense Against Justified Threateners, Jeff McMahan
8. Just War Theory, Intentions, and the Deliberative Perspective Objection, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
9. Risking and Protecting Lives: Soldiers and Opposing Civilians, Noam Zohar
10. Non-Combatant Liability in War, Helen Frowe
Index