-
3Reply to CriticsPhilosophia 51 (5): 2357-2377. 2023.This article provides a response to the contributors of this symposium. Notably, I respond to the following objections: that my list of just war criteria is too long on an “ideal” level and too short for practical purposes; that in particular my rejection of legitimate authority is misguided; that I am wrong in claiming that in just war theory the conditions of proportionality and necessity, which are separate in the self-defense justification, must be merged; that my “social practice view” – wh…Read more
-
14Précis of the Ethics of War and the Force of Law: A Modern Just War TheoryPhilosophia 51 (5): 2301-2306. 2023.
-
111Torture? : The case for dirty Harry and against Alan DershowitzJournal of Applied Philosophy 23 (3): 337-353. 2006.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…Read more
-
255Recent 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 t…Read more
-
14The Ethics of War and the Force of Law: A Modern Just War TheoryRoutledge. 2020.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 competi…Read more
-
15Lazar on “Moral Sunk Costs” and the “Discount View”Ratio Juris 35 (1): 21-29. 2022.Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 21-29, March 2022.
-
27Really Just Words: Against McGowan’s Arguments for Further Speech RegulationPhilosophia 50 (3): 1455-1477. 2022.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…Read more
-
361This 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.
-
11The Secret to the Success of the Doctrine of Double Effect (and Related Principles): Biased Framing, Inadequate Methodology, and Clever DistractionsThe Journal of Ethics 22 (3-4): 235-263. 2018.There are different formulations of the doctrine of double effect (DDE), 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…Read more
-
35Doing Away with “Legitimate Authority”Journal of Military Ethics 18 (4): 314-332. 2019.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 confu…Read more
-
510The indispensable mental element of justification and the failure of purely objectivist (mostly “revisionist”) just war theoriesZeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie (1): 51-67. 2020.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 irrelevan…Read more
-
89Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment: A Philosophical AnalysisRoutledge. 2020.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-ri…Read more
-
385The 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 to unequal moral wo…Read more
-
43Border Coercion and ‘Democratic Legitimacy’: On Abizadeh’s Argument Against Current Regimes of Border ControlRes Publica 26 (2): 281-292. 2020.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 corre…Read more
-
18Right Intention: A Reply to Janzen, Purves, and JenkinsJournal of Military Ethics 17 (2-3): 172-176. 2018.
-
46Against a “Combined Liability-Lesser-Evil Justification”Philosophia 47 (2): 533-553. 2018.Jeff McMahan has recently proposed what he calls a “combined liability-lesser-evil justification.” Its core idea is that the fact that someone has no right against the infliction of a certain lesser harm makes it easier for the necessity or lesser evil justification to justify inflicting a greater harm on him. This idea has been taken up by authors like Saba Bazargan or Helen Frowe. I will argue that McMahan’s basic idea is implausible to begin with, leads to counter-intuitive results, and seems…Read more
-
135The Secret to the Success of the Doctrine of Double Effect : Biased Framing, Inadequate Methodology, and Clever DistractionsThe Journal of Ethics 22 (3-4): 235-263. 2018.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 of re…Read more
-
109Wild Goose Chase: Still No Rationales for the Doctrine of Double Effect and Related PrinciplesCriminal Law and Philosophy 13 (1): 1-25. 2019.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 additional morally problematic presumption re…Read more
-
78Bennett, intention and the DDE – The sophisticated bomber as pseudo-problemAnalysis 78 (1): 73-80. 2018.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,…Read more
-
17Against Pogge's ‘Cosmopolitanism’Ratio 26 (3): 329-341. 2013.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 …Read more
-
27Online Exclusive: Torture Can Be Self-defense: A Critique Of Whitley KaufmanEthics and International Affairs 22 (1). 2008.In this online response, Uwe Steinhoff argues that Whitley Kaufman's denial that torturing the "ticking bomb terrorist" can be justifiable is incorrect.
-
37Legalizing Defensive TorturePublic Affairs Quarterly 26 (1): 19-32. 2012.Since people have a right even to kill a culpable aggressor if, in the circumstances, this is a proportionate and necessary means of self–defense against an imminent or ongoing attack, and since most forms of torture are not as bad as killing, people must also have a right to torture a culpable aggressor if this, too, in the circumstances, is a proportionate and necessary means of self–defense against an imminent or ongoing attack.But can torture really ever be a form of self–defense? Yes, it ca…Read more
-
1036What Is War—And Can a Lone Individual Wage One?International Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (1): 133-150. 2009.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 wa…Read more
-
318Jonathan Quong proposes the following “Stringency Principle” for proportionality in self-defense: “If a wrongful attacker threatens to violate a right with stringency level X, then the level of defensive force it is proportionate to impose on the attacker is equivalent to X.” I adduce a counter-example that shows that this principle is wrong. Furthermore, Quong assumes that what determines the stringency of a person’s right is exclusively the amount of force that one would have to avert from som…Read more
-
329The guerrilla strikes back: a comment on Yvonne ChiuDiametros 30 61-75. 2011.In a recent article Yvonne Chiu argues that nonuniformed combat is impermissible. However, her argument that by fighting without uniforms nonuniformed guerillas coerce civilians into participating in the armed conflict and thus into surrendering their immunity (their right not to be attacked) fails: there is no coercion, no participation, and no surrendering of immunity. Yet even if this argument of hers were correct, it would still not show that such “coercion” would amount to a rights infringe…Read more
-
370In a recent paper, McMahan argues that his ‘Responsibility Account’, according to which ‘the criterion of liability to attack in war is moral responsibility for an objectively unjustified threat of harm’, can meet the challenge of explaining why most combatants on the unjustified side of a war are liable to attack while most civilians (even on the unjustified side) are not. It should be added, however, that in the light of his rejection of the ‘moral equality of combatants’, McMahan would als…Read more
-
994Rights, Liability, and the Moral Equality of CombatantsThe Journal of Ethics 16 (4): 339-366. 2012.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 th…Read more
-
89Saba Bazargan proposes a novel “hybrid” justification for the killing of minimally responsible threats (MRTs). His account allegedly combines two elements, namely “the complex account of liability” and “the lesser-evil discounting view.” I argue that Bazargan’s conclusion that minimally responsible threats can sometimes be killed as well as certain other conclusions that Bazargan regards as a particular advantage of his hybrid account are single-handedly generated by one element of the “hybrid a…Read more
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |