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Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Few moral principles have been more widely and viscerally affirmed. But in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Seth Lazar aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law. He develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in the debate.
About the author
Seth Lazar has worked on the philosophy of war, self-defence, and risk, since his DPhil in Political Theory at the University of Oxford. After postdoctoral work in Oxford and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he joined the School of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences, at the Australian National University, where he is now a Senior Research Fellow. He has published articles on war, self-defence, and risk in journals such as Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, and Journal of Political Philosophy.
Summary
Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Few moral principles have been more widely and viscerally affirmed. But in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Seth Lazar aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law. He develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in the debate.
Additional text
This book will make a difference in the future of just war theory. It is an important challenge to the basic assumptions of the leading contemporary just war theorists, and it is an indictment against their starting points. It is well written and its readability is enhanced by its avoidance of the technical language of most contemporary discussions of just war theory. The author can avoid technical and specialist language because his challenge is at a primitive level, factually and maybe logically prior to the level of most contemporary work in the field. Moreover, this book is innovative concerning how to do applied ethics more generally. Everyone in ethics will be interested in the author's discussions.
