Download or read book Defensive Killing written by Helen Frowe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Defensive Killing written by Helen Frowe and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2014 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Frowe offers a new account of when and why it is morally permissible for a person to use force to defend herself or others against harm. She explores the use of force between individuals before extending the enquiry to war, to argue that we should judge the ethics of killing in war by the moral rules that govern killing between individuals.
Download or read book Justified Killing written by Whitley R. P. Kaufman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The right of self-defense is seemingly at odds with the general presupposition that killing is wrong; numerous theories have been put forth over the years that attempt to explain how self-defense is consistent with such a presupposition. In Justified Killing: The Paradox of Self-Defense, Whitley Kaufman argues that none of the leading theories adequately explains why it is permissible even to kill an innocent attacker in self-defense, given the basic moral prohibition against killing the innocent. Kaufman suggests that such an explanation can be found in the traditional Doctrine of Double Effect, according to which self-defense is justified because the intention of the defender is to protect himself rather than harm the attacker. Given this morally legitimate intention, self-defense is permissible against both culpable and innocent aggressors, so long as the force used is both necessary and proportionate. Justified Killing will intrigue in particular those scholars interested in moral and legal philosophy.
Download or read book Permissible Killing written by Suzanne Uniacke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do individuals have a positive right of self-defence? And if so, what are the limits of this right? Under what conditions, if any, does this use of force extend to the defence of others? These are some of the issues explored by Dr Uniacke in this comprehensive philosophical discussion of the principles relevant to self-defence as a moral and legal justification of homicide. She establishes a unitary right of self-defence and defence of others, one which grounds the permissibility of the use of necessary and proportionate defensive force against culpable and non-culpable, active and passive, unjust threats. Particular topics discussed include: the nature of moral and legal justification and excuse; natural law justifications of homicide in self-defence; the Principle of Double Effect and the claim that homicide in self-defence is justified as unintended killing; and the question of self-preferential killing. This is a lucid and sophisticated account of the complex notion of justification, revolving around a critical discussion of recent trends in the law of self-defence.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death written by Steven Luper and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume discusses the philosophical issues connected with the nature and significance of life and death, and the ethics of killing. It will be of interest to all those taking courses on the philosophy of life and death, applied ethics covering abortion, euthanasia, and suicide, and ethics and metaphysics.
Download or read book Killing in Self Defence written by Fiona Leverick and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-12-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive analysis of the criminal defence of self-defence from a philosophical, legal and human rights perspective. The primary focus is on self-defence as a defence to homicide, as this is the most difficult type of self-defensive force to justify. Although not always recognised as such, self-defence is a contentious defence, permitting as it does the victim of an attack to preserve her life at the expense of another. If one holds that all human life is of equal value, explaining why this is permissible poses something of a challenge. It is particularly difficult to explain where the aggressor is, for reasons of non-age or insanity for example, not responsible for her actions. The first part of the book is devoted to identifying the proper theoretical basis of a claim of self-defence. It examines the classification of defences, and the concepts of justification and excuse in particular, and locates self-defence within this classification. It considers the relationship between self-defence and the closely related defences of duress and necessity. It then proceeds critically to analyse various philosophical explanations of why self-defensive killing is justified, before concluding that the most convincing account is one that draws on the right to life with an accompanying theory of forfeiture. The book then proceeds to draw upon this analysis to examine various aspects of the law of self-defence. There is detailed analysis of the way in which, on a human rights approach, it is appropriate to treat the issues of retreat, imminence of harm, self-generated self-defence, mistake and proportionality, with a particular focus on whether lethal force is ever permissible in protecting property or in preventing rape. The analysis draws on material from all of the major common law jurisdictions. The book concludes with an examination of the implications that the European Convention on Human Rights might have for the law of self-defence, especially in the areas of mistaken belief and the degree of force permissible to protect property.
Download or read book The Ethics of Self Defense written by Christian Coons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteen new essays collected in this volume address questions concerning the ethics of self-defense, most centrally when and to what extent the use of defensive force, especially lethal force, can be justified. Scholarly interest in this topic reflects public concern stemming from controversial cases of the use of force by police, and military force exercised in the name of defending against transnational terrorism. The contributors pay special attention to determining when a threat is liable to defensive harm, though doubts about this emphasis are also raised. The legitimacy of so-called "stand your ground" policies and laws is also addressed. This volume will be of great interest to readers in moral, political, and legal philosophy.
Download or read book The Ethics of Killing written by Jeff McMahan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-03 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This magisterial work is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of killing, where the moral status of the individual killed is uncertain. Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, McMahan looks carefully at a host of practical issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.
Download or read book The Morality of Defensive Force written by Jonathan Quong and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When is it morally permissible to engage in self-defense or the defense of others? Jonathan Quong defends a variety of novel ideas in this book about the morality of defensive force, providing an original philosophical account of the central moral principles that should regulate its use. We cannot understand the morality of defensive force, he reasons, until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more general account of justice and moral rights. In developing this stance, Quong presents new views on liability, proportionality, and necessity. He argues that self-defense can sometimes be justified on the basis of an agent-relative prerogative to give greater weight to one's own life and interests, contrary to the dominant view in the literature. Additionally Quong develops a novel conception of individual rights against harm. Unlike some, who believe that our rights against harm are fact-relative, he argues that our rights against being harmed by others must, in certain respects, be sensitive to the evidence that others can reasonably be expected to possess. The book concludes with Quong's extended defense of the means principle, a principle that prohibits harmfully using other persons' bodies or other rightful property unless those persons are duty bound to permit this use or have otherwise waived their claims against such use.
Download or read book Self Defense Necessity and Punishment written by Uwe Steinhoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a philosophical analysis of the moral and legal justifications for the use of force. While the book focuses on the ethics self-defense, it also explores its relation to lesser evil justifications, public authority, the justification of punishment, and the ethics of war. Steinhoff’s account of the moral use of force covers a wide range of topics, including the nature of justification in general, the precise elements of different justifications, the logic of claim- and liberty-rights and of rights forfeiture, the value of human life and its limits, and the principles of reciprocity and precaution. While the author’s analysis is primarily philosophical, it is informed by a metaethical stance that also places heavy emphasis on existing law and legal scholarship. In doing so, the book appeals to widely shared moral intuitions, precepts, and concepts grounded in criminal law. Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of the ethics of self-defense. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in applied ethics and moral philosophy, philosophy of law, and political philosophy.
Download or read book Targeted Killing written by Thomas B. Hunter and published by Thomas Hunter. This book was released on 2009 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an objective, strategic assessment of the role, usefulness, and logistical concerns posed by state-sponsored targeted killing and its overall efficiency in the current war on global terrorism.
Download or read book Stand Your Ground written by Caroline Light and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.
Download or read book Acts Intentions and Moral Evaluation written by Craig M. White and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-27 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the moral quality of an act comes from the agent’s inner states. By arguing for the indispensable relevance of intention in the moral evaluation of acts, the book moves against a mainstream, "objective" approach in normative ethics. It is commonly held that the intentions, knowledge, and volition of agents are irrelevant to the moral permissibility of their acts. This book stresses that the capacities of agency, rather than simply the label "agent," must be engaged during an act if its moral evaluation is to be coherent. The author begins with an ontological argument that an act is a motion or a causing of change in something else. He argues that the source of an act’s moral meaning is in the agent: specifically, what the agent, if aware of relevant facts around her, aims to accomplish. He then moves to a series of critical chapters that consider arguments for mainstream approaches to act evaluation, including Thomson’s dismissal of the agent knowledge and volition requirements, Scanlon’s arguments for a derivative relevance of intentions to permissibility, Frowe’s "causal roles" of agents in the moral evaluation of acts, and Bennett’s explicit defense of the objective approach. The book concludes by offering the author’s preferred replacement for the objective approach, an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts. Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, just war theory, the ethics of self-defense, and philosophy of action.
Download or read book Moral Dilemmas of Modern War written by Michael L. Gross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide for policy makers, military officers, students, and anyone else interested in asymmetric conflicts.
Download or read book A Crime of Self Defense written by George P. Fletcher and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-06-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legal expert George Fletcher uses the celebrated trial of New York's "Subway Vigilante", Bernhard Goetz, as a springboard to probe the profound relationship between this defensive action, the public's understanding of it, and the court's interpretation of it according to the law.
Download or read book Targeted Killings written by Claire Finkelstein and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war on terror is remaking conventional warfare. The protracted battle against a non-state organization, the demise of the confinement of hostilities to an identifiable battlefield, the extensive involvement of civilian combatants, and the development of new and more precise military technologies have all conspired to require a rethinking of the law and morality of war. Just war theory, as traditionally articulated, seems ill-suited to justify many of the practices of the war on terror. The raid against Osama Bin Laden's Pakistani compound was the highest profile example of this strategy, but the issues raised by this technique cast a far broader net: every week the U.S. military and CIA launch remotely piloted drones to track suspected terrorists in hopes of launching a missile strike against them. In addition to the public condemnation that these attacks have generated in some countries, the legal and moral basis for the use of this technique is problematic. Is the U.S. government correct that nations attacked by terrorists have the right to respond in self-defense by targeting specific terrorists for summary killing? Is there a limit to who can legitimately be placed on the list? There is also widespread disagreement about whether suspected terrorists should be considered combatants subject to the risk of lawful killing under the laws of war or civilians protected by international humanitarian law. Complicating the moral and legal calculus is the fact that innocent bystanders are often killed or injured in these attacks. This book addresses these issues. Featuring chapters by an unrivalled set of experts, it discusses all aspects of targeted killing, making it unmissable reading for anyone interested in the implications of this practice.
Download or read book Law and Morality at War written by Adil Ahmad Haque and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The laws are not silent in war, but what should they say? What is the moral function of the law of armed conflict? Should the law protect civilians who do not fight but help those who do? Should the law protect soldiers who perform non-combat functions or who may be safely captured? How certain should a soldier be that an individual is a combatant rather than a civilian before using lethal force? What risks should soldiers take on themselves to avoid harming civilians? When do inaccurate weapons become unlawfully indiscriminate? When does 'collateral damage' to civilians become unlawfully disproportionate? Should civilians lose their legal rights by serving, voluntarily or involuntarily, as human shields? Finally, when should killing civilians constitute a war crime? These are the questions that Law and Morality at War answers, contributing to a cutting-edge international debate. Drawing on the concepts and methods of contemporary moral and legal philosophy, the book develops a normative framework within which the laws of war and international criminal law can be evaluated, criticized, and reformed. While several philosophical works critically examine the moral status of civilians and combatants, this book fills a gap, offering both an account of the laws of war and war crimes, and proposing how the law could be improved from a moral point of view.
