T. A. Cavanaugh
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199272198
- eISBN:
- 9780191604157
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199272190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Consequentialists oppose while absolutists and deontologists rely upon double-effect reasoning (DER) to address hard cases in which good inextricably binds with evil (such as destroying a legitimate ...
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Consequentialists oppose while absolutists and deontologists rely upon double-effect reasoning (DER) to address hard cases in which good inextricably binds with evil (such as destroying a legitimate military target while concomitantly and foreseeably killing innocents). This book addresses the history, application, and philosophical controversy concerning DER. It traces both the origin of DER in the thought of Aquinas and its development by subsequent ethicists. Considering consequentialist criticisms, proportionalism, and recent revisions of double effect, the book argues at length for the reasonableness of DER, particularly the intended/foreseen distinction. Intent is distinguished from foresight, and this distinction is applied to the classic cases of terror and tactical bombing. Most importantly, the book establishes the ethical relevance of this distinction, grounding its import both in broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic features of action as voluntary, and in a Kantian focus on the victim as an end in himself. The book also considers typically neglected albeit intriguing issues such as DER’s application to allowings and how constitutional legal systems that incorporate exceptionless norms employ a legal analogue to DER.Less
Consequentialists oppose while absolutists and deontologists rely upon double-effect reasoning (DER) to address hard cases in which good inextricably binds with evil (such as destroying a legitimate military target while concomitantly and foreseeably killing innocents). This book addresses the history, application, and philosophical controversy concerning DER. It traces both the origin of DER in the thought of Aquinas and its development by subsequent ethicists. Considering consequentialist criticisms, proportionalism, and recent revisions of double effect, the book argues at length for the reasonableness of DER, particularly the intended/foreseen distinction. Intent is distinguished from foresight, and this distinction is applied to the classic cases of terror and tactical bombing. Most importantly, the book establishes the ethical relevance of this distinction, grounding its import both in broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic features of action as voluntary, and in a Kantian focus on the victim as an end in himself. The book also considers typically neglected albeit intriguing issues such as DER’s application to allowings and how constitutional legal systems that incorporate exceptionless norms employ a legal analogue to DER.
Nigel Biggar
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198861973
- eISBN:
- 9780191894770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198861973.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Chapter 6 observed the tendency of contemporary rights-talk to push all other moral considerations off the table—an observation adumbrated in Chapter 5, where contemporary defences of natural rights ...
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Chapter 6 observed the tendency of contemporary rights-talk to push all other moral considerations off the table—an observation adumbrated in Chapter 5, where contemporary defences of natural rights were seen to lack awareness that the exercise of such rights might be subject to moral obligations and even contingent upon duties of virtue. Chapter 1 observed the complaint of sceptics that natural, moral rights are often not distinguished from legal ones, with the consequence that the stability and security of the latter are smuggled into natural morality or ethics. Such smuggling is part of a cultural inclination to assimilate morality to law and replace conscience with procedures, in order to abolish the possibility of a failure of conscience. It expresses an aversion to risk and denial of tragedy, whose cost is a practical, moral rigidity that ranges from the imprudent to the absurd. This chapter displays the problem as it appears in ethics, by analysing David Rodin’s War and Self-Defense. Rodin’s attempt to justify killing in terms of a fundamental (natural) moral ‘right to life’, which can only be forfeited through culpable wrongdoing, fails. As he himself inadvertently acknowledges, that right is contingent on a range of moral factors external to the right-holder. Whether it exists at all depends on the situation as a whole and can only be determined at the end of a process of moral deliberation, not posited at the beginning as fundamental. Talk about a (natural) moral right, connoting stability and security, misleads.Less
Chapter 6 observed the tendency of contemporary rights-talk to push all other moral considerations off the table—an observation adumbrated in Chapter 5, where contemporary defences of natural rights were seen to lack awareness that the exercise of such rights might be subject to moral obligations and even contingent upon duties of virtue. Chapter 1 observed the complaint of sceptics that natural, moral rights are often not distinguished from legal ones, with the consequence that the stability and security of the latter are smuggled into natural morality or ethics. Such smuggling is part of a cultural inclination to assimilate morality to law and replace conscience with procedures, in order to abolish the possibility of a failure of conscience. It expresses an aversion to risk and denial of tragedy, whose cost is a practical, moral rigidity that ranges from the imprudent to the absurd. This chapter displays the problem as it appears in ethics, by analysing David Rodin’s War and Self-Defense. Rodin’s attempt to justify killing in terms of a fundamental (natural) moral ‘right to life’, which can only be forfeited through culpable wrongdoing, fails. As he himself inadvertently acknowledges, that right is contingent on a range of moral factors external to the right-holder. Whether it exists at all depends on the situation as a whole and can only be determined at the end of a process of moral deliberation, not posited at the beginning as fundamental. Talk about a (natural) moral right, connoting stability and security, misleads.
Nigel Biggar
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199672615
- eISBN:
- 9780191765087
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199672615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Theology
Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, ...
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Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice. Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Rwandan Tutsis. Against the virus of wishful thinking, anti‐military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights‐talk, therefore, In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of reflection running from Augustine to Grotius, it argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice; that morality can justify military intervention even in transgression of positive international law (e.g., Kosovo); that love and the doctrine of double effect can survive combat; and that the constraints of proportionality are sufficiently permissive to sanction Britain's belligerency against Germany in 1914‐18. Finally, in a painstaking analysis of the controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003, In Defence of War culminates in an account of how the various criteria of just war should be thought together. It also concludes that, all things considered, the invasion was justified.Less
Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice. Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Rwandan Tutsis. Against the virus of wishful thinking, anti‐military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights‐talk, therefore, In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of reflection running from Augustine to Grotius, it argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice; that morality can justify military intervention even in transgression of positive international law (e.g., Kosovo); that love and the doctrine of double effect can survive combat; and that the constraints of proportionality are sufficiently permissive to sanction Britain's belligerency against Germany in 1914‐18. Finally, in a painstaking analysis of the controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003, In Defence of War culminates in an account of how the various criteria of just war should be thought together. It also concludes that, all things considered, the invasion was justified.
