Liability, Proportionality, and the Number of Aggressors

Jeff McMahan

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War, Ethics, and Justification Philosophical Ethics and Theory Violence, Religion, and Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract Traditionalist Just War theorists and those revisionists (who are not contingent pacifists) agree that most unjust combatants are liable to be killed during war. It seems, moreover, that all those who are liable to be killed may permissibly be killed, for a person’s liability to suffer a harm provides a complete justification for the infliction on him of that harm. Of those unjust combatants who satisfy the conditions of liability to be killed, there therefore seems to be no limit to the number that it can be permissible to kill. Yet this seems implausible in cases in which the goals of the unjust war are modest and the great majority of unjust combatants are at most minimally culpable for their participation in the war. This chapter challenges the prevailing view that there is no proportionality constraint on the number of unjust combatants it can be permissible to kill in war.

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2018Subjective Proportionality 2018Against a “Combined Liability-Lesser-Evil Justification”2023The Demands of Necessity

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