TY - JOUR
T1 - The responsibility of soldiers and the ethics of killing in war
AU - Benbaji, Yitzhak
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - According to the purist war ethic, the killings committed by soldiers fighting in just wars are permissible, but those committed by unjust combatants are nothing but murders. Jeff McMahan asserts that purism is a direct consequence of the justice-based account of self-defence. I argue that this is incorrect: the justice-based conception entails that in many typical cases, killing unjust combatants is morally unjustified. So real purism is much closer to pacifism than its proponents would like it to be. I conclude that the best explanation of the common view that unjust combatants may be defensively killed relies on a rights-based conception of self-defence.
AB - According to the purist war ethic, the killings committed by soldiers fighting in just wars are permissible, but those committed by unjust combatants are nothing but murders. Jeff McMahan asserts that purism is a direct consequence of the justice-based account of self-defence. I argue that this is incorrect: the justice-based conception entails that in many typical cases, killing unjust combatants is morally unjustified. So real purism is much closer to pacifism than its proponents would like it to be. I conclude that the best explanation of the common view that unjust combatants may be defensively killed relies on a rights-based conception of self-defence.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=48749091165&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x
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AN - SCOPUS:48749091165
SN - 0031-8094
VL - 57
SP - 558
EP - 572
JO - Philosophical Quarterly
JF - Philosophical Quarterly
IS - 229
ER -