Pg. 99: Jeff McMahan's "Killing in War"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Killing in War by Jeff McMahan.

About the book, from the publisher:

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 that 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 in most cases it is morally wrong to fight in a war that is unjust.

Learn more about Killing in War at the Oxford University Press website.

Jeff McMahan is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. His books include The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press, 2002).

The Page 99 Test: Killing in War.

--Marshal Zeringue