Abstract
How one responds to the flaws in just war thinking set out in the last chapter depends on which moral theory one holds. Theories within the just war tradition are concerned with justifying what is done in war in terms of rights and duties. Thus, one may think, for instance, that one should reexamine what the right of self-defense and the duty not to kill innocent people involves. Other moral theories, for example utilitarianism, treat rights and duties in a different way or they do not use these concepts at all. Either there are other ways of deciding on right and wrong action, or there are other concepts to be considered, such as those of good or bad character, that are more important. In the following chapters of this book, I shall be presenting a new ethics of war that makes use of the concept of a virtuous person instead of those of rights and duties. In this chapter, I will provide a contrast between deontological ethics and virtue ethics in order to make clear what the shift from rights to virtues means in terms of moral theory.1
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Notes
For an account of noncombatant immunity of this kind, see Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 123–44.
There has been much discussion about the right to kill an innocent threat or an innocent bystander in self-defense. See for instance, Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Self-Defense,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991), pp. 283– 310. And I raise the question about how uncertainty regarding the threat may affect the right of self-defense in “Self-Defense and Possible Threats” (unpublished manuscript).
This is the subject of David Rodin’s book, War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), which I discussed and used in the last chapter.
This rights-based account of just war is found in David Luban, “Just War and Human Rights,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (1980), pp. 160–81. Luban uses the account to justify humanitarian interventions.
Critics such as Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 73–4, point out that many activities that are distinctive of humans compared to other species are not morally good, including the destructive activities of war, weapons design and environmental denigration.
Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Martha C. Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 13, ed. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr. and Howard K. Wettstein (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 32–53.
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© 2012 David K. Chan
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Chan, D.K. (2012). From Rights to Virtues. In: Beyond Just War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263414_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263414_4
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