Killing in War

The dominant view throughout history has been that mere participation in an unjust war is not wrong. Soldiers are not to blame for the unjustness of the military actions into which their leaders throw them. The principles governing what is permissible in war apply equally to any combatants.
Jeff McMahan argues powerfully that this dominant view must be overturned. Combatants who fight for an unjust cause are acting wrongly and are themselves morally responsible for their own wrongdoings. If a soldier fighting for an unjust cause kills an opposing soldier, he is killing an innocent person and is morally responsible for that killing.
This is a highly controversial view, which threatens to undermine the moral standing of military personnel in many contexts around the world today. McMahan shows that the view is nevertheless one which common sense can see to be demanded by our basic moral intuitions. We must rethink our attitudes to the moral role of the individual in war.

Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? Jeff McMahan argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. McMahan argues, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause.

1 - The Morality of Participation in an Unjust War
2 - Arguments for the Moral Equality of Combatants
3 - Excuses
4 - Liability and the Limits of Self-Defense
5 - Civilian Immunity and Civilian Liability

Jeff McMahan is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He works primarily in ethics and political philosophy, and occasionally in metaphysics and legal theory.