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Review

"Jeff McMahan has written a genuinely revolutionary book. He has uncovered a flaw in standard just-war theory.... Once advanced, McMahan's thesis seems obvious, and it is his considerable philosophical merit to make us realize how obvious it is. McMahan is a very careful philosopher; as soon as he states a thesis, he thinks of qualifications, objections, and rebuttals.... He does not operate from a general theory but proceeds from case to case, weaving an intricate web of subtle distinctions. Killing in War is a distinguished contribution to moral theory."-The Mises Review
"This book seems to me superb: highly important, gripping to read, and wholly convincing."-- Derek Parfit, University of Oxford
"Killing in War makes you wonder why the conventional wisdom about the ethics of killing in war has stood for so long. With persuasive arguments, lucidly stated, McMahan mounts a devastating critique of centuries-old orthodoxies. To wage war on a sound ethical basis is much more difficult than we previously thought. Everyone contemplating fighting in a war, or ordering others to do so, should read this book."--Peter Singer, Princeton University


Product Description
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.