82 found
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  1. On the ethics of war and terrorism.Uwe Steinhoff - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    In this book Uwe Steinhoff describes and explains the basic tenets of just war theory and gives a precise, succinct and highly critical account of its present status and of the most important and controversial current debates surrounding it. Rejecting certain in effect medieval assumptions of traditional just war theory and advancing a liberal outlook, Steinhoff argues that every single individual is a legitimate authority and has under certain circumstances the right to declare war on others or the state. He (...)
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  2.  28
    The Ethics of War and the Force of Law: A Modern Just War Theory.Uwe Steinhoff - 2020 - Routledge.
    This book provides a thorough critical overview of the current debate on the ethics of war, as well as a modern just war theory that can give practical action-guidance by recognizing and explaining the moral force of widely accepted law. Traditionalist, Walzerian, and "revisionist" approaches have dominated contemporary debates about the classical jus ad bellum and jus in bello requirements in just war theory. In this book, Uwe Steinhoff corrects widely spread misinterpretations of these competing views and spells out the (...)
  3. Rights, Liability, and the Moral Equality of Combatants.Uwe Steinhoff - 2012 - The Journal of Ethics 16 (4):339-366.
    According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate the (...)
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  4. Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment: A Philosophical Analysis.Uwe Steinhoff - 2019 - London and New York: Routledge.
    This book offers a philosophical analysis of the moral and legal justifications for the use of force. While the book focuses on the ethics self-defense, it also explores its relation to lesser evil justifications, public authority, the justification of punishment, and the ethics of war. Steinhoff’s account of the moral use of force covers a wide range of topics, including the nature of justification in general, the precise elements of different justifications, the logic of claim- and liberty-rights and of rights (...)
  5. Just Cause and 'Right Intention'.Uwe Steinhoff - 2014 - Journal of Military Ethics 13 (1):32-48.
    I argue that the criterion of just cause is not independent of proportionality and other valid jus ad bellum criteria. One cannot know whether there is a just cause without knowing whether the other (valid) criteria (apart from ‘right intention’) are satisfied. The advantage of this account is that it is applicable to all wars, even to wars where nobody will be killed or where the enemy has not committed a rights violation but can be justifiably warred against anyway. This (...)
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  6. Debate: Jeff McMahan on the moral inequality of combatants.Uwe Steinhoff - 2008 - Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (2):220–226.
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  7. (1 other version)Against equal respect and concern, equal rights, and egalitarian impartiality.Uwe Steinhoff - 2014 - In Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth?: On 'Basic Equality' and Equal Respect and Concern. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 142-172.
    I argue that the often-heard claim that all serious present-day political philosophers subscribe to the principle of equal respect and concern or to the doctrine of equal moral status or are in some other fundamental sense egalitarians is wrong. Also wrong is the further claim that the usual methods currently used in political philosophy presuppose basic equality. I further argue that liberal egalitarianism itself is wrong. There is no universal duty “of equal respect and concern” towards every person, for one (...)
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  8. Why We Shouldn’t Reject Conflicts: A Critique of Tadros.Uwe Steinhoff - 2014 - Res Publica 20 (3):315-322.
    Victor Tadros thinks the idea that in a conflict both sides may permissibly use force should (typically) be rejected. Thus, he thinks that two shipwrecked persons should not fight for the only available flotsam (which can only carry one person) but instead toss a coin, and that a bomber justifiably attacking an ammunitions factory must not be counterattacked by the innocent bystanders he endangers. I shall argue that Tadros’s claim rests on unwarranted assumptions and is also mistaken in the light (...)
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  9. Proportionality in Self-Defense.Uwe Steinhoff - 2017 - The Journal of Ethics 21 (3):263-289.
    This article considers the proportionality requirement of the self-defense justification. It first lays bare the assumptions and the logic—and often illogic—underlying very strict accounts of the proportionality requirement. It argues that accounts that try to rule out lethal self-defense against threats to property or against threats of minor assault by an appeal to the supreme value of life have counter-intuitive implications and are untenable. Furthermore, it provides arguments demonstrating that there is not necessarily a right not to be killed in (...)
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  10. Rodin on Self-Defense and the "Myth" of National Self-Defense: A Refutation.Uwe Steinhoff - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (4):1017-1036.
    David Rodin denies that defensive wars against unjust aggression can be justified if the unjust aggression limits itself, for example, to the annexation of territory, the robbery of resources or the restriction of political freedom, but would endanger the lives, bodily integrity or freedom from slavery of the citizens only if the unjustly attacked state actually resisted the aggression. I will argue that Rodin's position is not correct. First, Rodin's comments on the necessity condition and its relation to an alleged (...)
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  11. Self-Defense as Claim Right, Liberty, and Act-Specific Agent-Relative Prerogative.Uwe Steinhoff - 2016 - Law and Philosophy 35 (2):193-209.
    This paper is not so much concerned with the question under which circumstances self-defense is justified, but rather with other normative features of self-defense as well as with the source of the self-defense justification. I will argue that the aggressor’s rights-forfeiture alone – and hence the liberty-right of the defender to defend himself – cannot explain the intuitively obvious fact that a prohibition on self-defense would wrong victims of attack. This can only be explained by conceiving of self-defense also as (...)
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  12.  41
    Really Just Words: Against McGowan’s Arguments for Further Speech Regulation.Uwe Steinhoff - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (3):1455-1477.
    McGowan argues “that ordinary utterances routinely enact norms without the speaker having or exercising any special authority” and thereby not “merely cause” but “constitute” harm if harm results from adherence to the enacted norms. The discovery of this “previously overlooked mechanism,” she claims, provides a potential justification for “further speech regulation.” Her argument is unsuccessful. She merely redefines concepts like “harm constitution” and “norm enactment” and fails to explain why speech that “constitutes” harm is legally or morally problematic and thus (...)
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  13. Why "We" Are Not Harming the Global Poor: A Critique of Pogge's Leap from State to Individual Responsibility.Uwe Steinhoff - 2012 - Public Reason 4 (1-2):119-138.
    Thomas Pogge claims "that, by shaping and enforcing the social conditions that foreseeably and avoidably cause the monumental suffering of global poverty, we are harming the global poor ... or, to put it more descriptively, we are active participants in the largest, though not the gravest, crime against humanity ever committed." In other words, he claims that by upholding certain international arrangements we are violating our strong negative duties not to harm, and not just some positive duties to help. I (...)
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  14.  34
    Right Intention: A Reply to Janzen, Purves, and Jenkins.Uwe Steinhoff - 2018 - Journal of Military Ethics 17 (2-3):172-176.
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  15. The Moral Equality of Modern Combatants and the Myth of Justified War.Uwe Steinhoff - 2012 - Theoretical and Applied Ethics 1 (4):35-44.
    In the tradition of just war theory two assumptions have been taken pretty much for granted: first, that there are quite a lot of justified wars, and second, that there is a moral inequality of combatants, that is, that combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war but not vice versa. I will argue that the first assumption is wrong and that therefore the second assumption is virtually irrelevant for reality. I will (...)
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  16. Wild Goose Chase: Still No Rationales for the Doctrine of Double Effect and Related Principles.Uwe Steinhoff - 2019 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 13 (1):1-25.
    I focus on the question as to what rationale could possibly underlie the doctrine of double effect or related principles. I first briefly review the correct critiques of the claim that people who intend some evil as a means to a good must be “guided by evil,” and that this is allegedly always wrong. I then argue that Quinn’s claim that violations of the DDE express certain negative attitudes of the agent and that agents violating the DDE must make an (...)
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  17. On the Ethics of Torture.Uwe Steinhoff - 2013 - State University of New York Press.
    A detailed, clear, and comprehensive overview of the current philosophical debate on. The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding (...)
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  18. What Is War—And Can a Lone Individual Wage One?Uwe Steinhoff - 2009 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (1):133-150.
    Practically all modern definitions of war rule out that individuals can wage war. They conceive of war as a certain kind of conflict between groups. In fact, many definitions even restrict the term “war” to sustained armed conflicts between states. Instead of taking such definitions as points of departure, the article starts from scratch. I first explain what an explication of the concept of “war” should achieve. I then introduce the fundamental, and frequently overlooked, distinction between war as an historical (...)
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  19. (1 other version)Torture? : The case for dirty Harry and against Alan Dershowitz.Uwe Steinhoff - 2006 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (3):337-353.
    abstract Can torture be morally justified? I shall criticise arguments that have been adduced against torture and demonstrate that torture can be justified more easily than most philosophers dealing with the question are prepared to admit. It can be justified not only in ticking nuclear bomb cases but also in less spectacular ticking bomb cases and even in the so‐called Dirty Harry cases. There is no morally relevant difference between self‐defensive killing of a culpable aggressor and torturing someone who is (...)
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  20.  66
    Doing Away with “Legitimate Authority”.Uwe Steinhoff - 2019 - Journal of Military Ethics 18 (4):314-332.
    I argue in this paper that traditional just war theory did allow private, indeed even individual war, and that arguments in support of a legitimate authority criterion, let alone in support of the “priority” of this criterion, fail. I further argue that what motivates the insistence on “legitimate authority” is the assumption that doing away with this criterion will lead to chaos and anarchy. I demonstrate that the reasoning, if any, underlying this assumption is philosophically profoundly confused. The fact of (...)
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  21. Justifying Defense Against Non-Responsible Threats and Justified Aggressors: the Liability vs. the Rights-Infringement Account.Uwe Steinhoff - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (1):247-265.
    Even among those who find lethal defense against non-responsible threats, innocent aggressors, or justified aggressors justified even in one to one cases, there is a debate as to what the best explanation of this permissibility is. The contenders in this debate are the liability account, which holds that the non-responsible or justified human targets of the defensive measures are liable to attack, and the justified infringement account, which claims that the targets retain their right not to be attacked but may (...)
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  22. Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth?: On 'Basic Equality' and Equal Respect and Concern.Uwe Steinhoff (ed.) - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In present-day political and moral philosophy the idea that all persons are in some way moral equals is an almost universal premise, with its defenders often claiming that philosophical positions that reject the principle of equal respect and concern do not deserve to be taken seriously. This has led to relatively few attempts to clarify, or indeed justify, 'basic equality' and the principle of equal respect and concern. Such clarification and justification, however, would be direly needed. After all, the ideas, (...)
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  23. What Is Self-Defense?Uwe Steinhoff - 2015 - Public Affairs Quarterly 29 (4):385-402.
    In this paper, I will provide a conceptual analysis of the term self-defense and argue that in contrast to the widespread “instrumentalist” account of self-defense, self-defense need not be aimed at averting or mitigating an attack, let alone the harm threatened by it. Instead, on the definition offered here, an act token is self-defense if and only if a) it is directed against an ongoing or imminent attack, and b) the actor correctly believes that the act token is an effective (...)
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  24. The Liability of Justified Attackers.Uwe Steinhoff - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4):1016-1030.
    McMahan argues that justification defeats liability to defensive attack (which would undermine the thesis of the "moral equality of combatants"). In response, I argue, first, that McMahan’s attempt to burden the contrary claim with counter-intuitive implications fails; second, that McMahan’s own position implies that the innocent civilians do not have a right of self-defense against justified attackers, which neither coheres with his description of the case (the justified bombers infringe the rights of the civilians) nor with his views about rights (...)
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  25.  99
    Bennett, intention and the DDE – The sophisticated bomber as pseudo-problem.Uwe Steinhoff - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):73-80.
    Arguing against the doctrine of double effect, Bennett claims that the terror bomber only intends to make his victims appear dead. An obvious reply is that he intends to make them appear dead by killing them. I argue that the alleged refutations of this reply rest on a mistaken test question to determine what an agent intends, as Bennett's own test question confirms, and that Bennett is misled by confusing metaphorical death and literal death. Moreover, Bennett's argument is half-hearted anyway, (...)
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  26. Helen Frowe’s “Practical Account of Self-Defence”: A Critique.Uwe Steinhoff - 2013 - Public Reason 5 (1):87-96.
    Helen Frowe has recently offered what she calls a “practical” account of self-defense. Her account is supposed to be practical by being subjectivist about permissibility and objectivist about liability. I shall argue here that Frowe first makes up a problem that does not exist and then fails to solve it. To wit, her claim that objectivist accounts of permissibility cannot be action-guiding is wrong; and her own account of permissibility actually retains an objectivist (in the relevant sense) element. In addition, (...)
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  27. Shalom on the Impermissibility of Self-Defense against the Tactical Bomber.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    A standard example of a justified aggressor is the tactical bomber who is about to destroy an ammunitions factory in a proportionate, justified military attack, full well knowing that an innocent civilian bystander will also be killed by his attack (“collateral damage”). Intuitively it seems hard to believe that the innocent bystander threatened by the tactical bomber is morally prohibited from killing him in self-defense. Yet, Stephen R. Shalom indeed endorses such a prohibition. I shall argue that all the examples (...)
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  28. Is There a Duty to Militarily Intervene to Stop a Genocide?Uwe Steinhoff - 2017 - In Christian Neuhäuser & Christoph Schuck (eds.), Military Interventions: Considerations From Philosophy and Political Science. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.
    Is there is a moral obligation to militarily intervene in another state to stop a genocide from happening (if this can be done with proportionate force)? My answer is that under exceptional circumstances a state or even a non-state actor might have a duty to stop a genocide (for example if these actors have promised to do so), but under most circumstances there is no such obligation. To wit, “humanity,” states, collectives, and individuals do not have an obligation to make (...)
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  29.  46
    The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas: A Critical Introduction.Uwe Steinhoff - 2009 - Oxford University Press.
    Jürgen Habermas seeks to defend the Enlightenment and with it an "emphatical", "uncurtailed" conception of reason against the post-modern critique of reason on the one hand, and against so-called scientism (which would include critical rationalism and the greater part of analytical philosophy) on the other. His objection to the former is that it is self-contradictory and politically defeatist; his objection to the latter is that, thanks to a standard of rationality derived from the natural sciences or from Weber's concept of (...)
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  30.  58
    Border Coercion and ‘Democratic Legitimacy’: On Abizadeh’s Argument Against Current Regimes of Border Control.Uwe Steinhoff - 2020 - Res Publica 26 (2):281-292.
    Arash Abizadeh claims that ‘[a]nyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries’. He bases this conclusion on the premise that ‘to be democratically legitimate, a state’s regime of border control must result from political processes in which those subject to it—including foreigners—have a right of democratic participation’. I shall argue that this premise, even if it were correct, does not support the conclusion since ‘democratic legitimacy’ is (...)
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  31.  54
    Renzo's Attempt to Ground State Legitimacy on a Right to Self‐Defence, and the Uselessness of Political Obligation.Uwe Steinhoff - 2016 - Ratio Juris 29 (1):122-135.
  32. When May Soldiers Participate in War?Uwe Steinhoff - 2016 - International Theory 8 (2):262-296.
    I shall argue that in some wars both sides are (as a collective) justified, that is, they can both satisfy valid jus ad bellum requirements. Moreover, in some wars – but not in all – the individual soldiers on the unjustified side (that is, on the side without jus ad bellum) may nevertheless kill soldiers (and also civilians as a side-effect) on the justified side, even if the enemy soldiers always abide by jus in bello constraints. Traditional just war theory (...)
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  33. (1 other version)The Secret to the Success of the Doctrine of Double Effect : Biased Framing, Inadequate Methodology, and Clever Distractions.Uwe Steinhoff - 2018 - The Journal of Ethics 22 (3-4):235-263.
    There are different formulations of the doctrine of double effect, and sometimes philosophers propose “revisions” or alternatives, like the means principle, for instance. To demonstrate that such principles are needed in the first place, one would have to compare cases in which all else is equal and show that the difference in intuitions, if any, can only be explained by the one remaining difference and thus by the principle in question. This is not the methodology defenders of the DDE and (...)
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  34.  8
    The Case against compulsory vaccination: the failed arguments from risk imposition, tax evasion, ‘social liberty’, and the priority of life.Uwe Steinhoff - forthcoming - Journal of Medical Ethics.
    Arguments for mandatory or compulsory vaccination must justify the coercive infringement of bodily integrity via the injection of chemicals that permanently affect a body’s inner constitution. Four arguments are considered. The allegedly libertarian argument declares unvaccinated persons a threat; accordingly, vaccination could take the form of justifiable defence of self and others. This argument conflates material and statistical threats. The harsh coercive measures permissible in defence against the former are not permissible in prevention of the latter. The argument from tax (...)
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  35. Drowning the Shallow Pond Analogy: A Critique of Garrett Cullity's Attempt to Rescue It.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    Garrett Cullity concedes that saving a drowning child from a shallow pond at little cost to oneself is not actually analogous to giving money to a poverty relief organization like Oxfam. The question then arises whether this objection is fatal to Peters Singer's argument for a duty of assistance or whether it can be saved anyway. Cullity argues that not saving the drowning child and not giving money to organizations like Oxfam are still morally analogous, that is, not giving money (...)
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  36.  44
    Précis of the Ethics of War and the Force of Law: A Modern Just War Theory.Uwe Steinhoff - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (5):2301-2306.
  37. The indispensable mental element of justification and the failure of purely objectivist (mostly “revisionist”) just war theories.Uwe Steinhoff - 2020 - Zeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie (1):51-67.
    The “right intention” requirement, in the form of a requirement that the agent must have a justified true belief that the mind-independent conditions of the justification to use force are fulfilled, is not an additional criterion, but one that constrains the interpretation of the other criteria. Without it, the only possible interpretation of the mind-independent criteria is purely objectivist, that is, purely fact-relative. Pure objectivism condemns self-defense and just war theory to irrelevance since it cannot provide proper action guidance: it (...)
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  38. For Free Speech, “Religious Offense,” and “Undermining Self-Respect”: A Reply to Bonotti and Seglow.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    Recent arguments trying to justify further free speech restrictions by appealing to harms that are allegedly serious enough to warrant such restrictions regularly fail to provide sufficient empirical evidence and normative argument. This is also true for the attempt made by Bonotti and Seglow. They offer no valid argument for their claim that it is wrong to direct “religiously offensive speech” at “unjustly disadvantaged” minorities (thereby allegedly undermining their “self-respect”), nor for their further claim that this is not the case (...)
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  39. Reply to Ferzan’s Review of Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    This brief reply to Ferzan shows that her recent review of Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment is incoherent and completely misrepresents a central claim of mine (to the point of attributing to me the opposite claim than the one I am actually and quite clearly and explicitly making). Her other criticisms fall flat too.
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  40. Self-Defense and the Necessity Condition.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    Rights forfeiture or liability are not a path to the permissibility of self-defense (not even barring extraordinary circumstances), and the necessity condition is not intrinsic to justified self-defense. Rather, necessity in the context of justification must be distinguished from necessity in the context of rights forfeiture. While innocent aggressors only forfeit their right against necessary self-defense, culpable aggressors also forfeit, on grounds of a principle of reciprocity, certain rights against unnecessary self-defense. Yet, while culpable aggressors would therefore not be wronged (...)
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  41. How Can Terrorism Be Justified?Uwe Steinhoff - 2004 - In Igor Primoratz (ed.), Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 97--109.
     
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  42. Self-Defense and Imminence.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    This paper argues that there is a significant moral difference between force applied against (imminent) attackers on the one hand and force applied against “threatening” people who are not (imminent) attackers on the other. Given that there is such a difference, one should not blur the lines by using the term “self-defense” (understood as including other-defense) for both uses of force. Rather, only the former is appropriately called self-defense, while for the latter, following German legal terminology, the term “justifying defensive (...)
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  43. McMahan, Symmetrical Defense and the Moral Equality of Combatants.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    McMahan’s own example of a symmetrical defense case, namely his tactical bomber example, opens the door wide open for soldiers to defend their fellow-citizens (on grounds of their special obligations towards them) even if as part of this defense they target non-liable soldiers. So the soldiers on both sides would be permitted to kill each other and, given how McMahan defines “justification,” they would also be justified in doing so and hence not be liable. Thus, we arrive, against McMahan’s intentions, (...)
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  44. Waldron on the “Basic Equality” of Hitler and Schweitzer: A Brief Refutation.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    The idea that all human beings have equal moral worth has been challenged by insisting that this is utterly counter-intuitive in the case of individuals like, for instance, Hitler on the one hand and Schweitzer on the other. This seems to be confirmed by a hypothetical in which one can only save one of the two: intuitively, one clearly should save Schweitzer, not Hitler, even if Hitler does not pose a threat anymore. The most natural interpretation of this intuition appeals (...)
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  45. Shortcomings of and Alternatives to the Rights-Forfeiture Theory of Justified Self-Defense and Punishment.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    I argue that rights-forfeiture by itself is no path to permissibility at all (even barring special circumstances), neither in the case of self-defense nor in the case of punishment. The limiting conditions of self-defense, for instance – necessity, proportionality (or no gross disproportionality), and the subjective element – are different in the context of forfeiture than in the context of justification (and might even be absent in the former context). In particular, I argue that a culpable aggressor, unlike an innocent (...)
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  46. The Uselessness of Rawls’s “Ideal Theory”.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    Over the years a few authors have argued that Rawls’s ideal theory of justice is useless for the real world. This criticism has been largely ignored by Rawlsians, but in the light of a recent accumulation of such criticisms, some authors (in particular Holly Lawford-Smith, A. John Simmons, Zofia Stemplowska and Laura Valentini) have tried to defend ideal theory. In this article I will recapitulate the precise problem with Rawls’s ideal theory, argue that some of Rawls’s defenders misconceive it, and (...)
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  47. Just Cause and the Continuous Application of Jus ad Bellum.Uwe Steinhoff - forthcoming - In Larry May May, Shannon Elizabeth Fyfe & Eric Joseph Ritter (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook on Just War Theory. Cambridge University Press.
    What one is ultimately interested in with regard to ‘just cause’ is whether a specific war, actual or potential, is justified. I call this ‘the applied question’. Answering this question requires knowing the empirical facts on the ground. However, an answer to the applied question regarding a specific war requires a prior answer to some more general questions, both descriptive and normative. These questions are: What kind of thing is a ‘just cause’ for war (an aim, an injury or wrong (...)
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  48. A Critique of David Miller's Like Minded Group and Cooperative Practice Models of Collective Responsibility.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    Many authors writing about global justice seem to take national responsibility more or less for granted. Most of them, however, offer very little argument for their position. One of the few exceptions is David Miller. He offers two models of collective responsibility: the like-minded group model and the cooperative practice model. While some authors have criticized whether these two models are applicable to nations, as Miller intends, my criticism is more radical: I argue that these two models fail as accounts (...)
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  49. Against Pogge's 'Cosmopolitanism'.Uwe Steinhoff - 2013 - Ratio 26 (3):329-341.
    Thomas Pogge labels the idea that each person owes each other person equal respect and concern ‘ethical cosmopolitanism’ and correctly states that it is a ‘non-starter’. He offers as an allegedly more convincing cosmopolitan alternative his ‘social justice cosmopolitanism’. I shall argue that this alternative fails for pretty much the same reasons that ‘ethical cosmopolitanism’ fails. In addition, I will show that Pogge's definition of cosmopolitanism is misleading, since it actually applies to ethical cosmopolitanism and not to social justice cosmopolitanism. (...)
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  50. Quong on Agent-Relative Prerogatives to Do Harm: A Very Brief Refutation.Uwe Steinhoff - manuscript
    In a recent paper, Jonathan Quong tries to offer further support for “the proposition that there are sometimes agent-relative prerogatives to harm nonliable persons.” In this brief paper, I will demonstrate that Quong’s argument implicitly relies on the premise that the violinist in Thomson’s famous example has a right not to be unplugged. Yet, first, Quong provides no argument in support of this premise; and second, the premise is clearly wrong. Moreover, throughout his paper Quong just question-beggingly and without argument (...)
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