How We Fight : Ethics in War

How We Fight: Ethics in War contains ten groundbreaking essays by some of the leading philosophers of war. The essays offer new perspectives on key debates including pacifism, punitive justifications for war, the distribution of risk between combatants and non-combatants, the structure of 'just war theory', and bases of individual liability in war.

How We Fight: Ethics in War presents a substantial body of new work by some of the leading philosophers of war. The ten essays cover a range of topics concerned with both jus ad bellum (the morality of going to war) and jus in bello (the morality of fighting in war). Alongside explorations of classic in bello topics, such as the principle of non-combatant immunity and the distribution of risk between combatants and non-combatants, the volume also addresses ad bellum topics, such as pacifism and punitive justifications for war, and explores the relationship between ad bellum and in bello topics, or how the fighting of a war may affect our judgments concerning whether that war meets the ad bellum conditions. The essays take a keen interest in the micro-foundations of just war theory, and uphold the general assumption that the rules of war must be supported, if they are going to be supported at all, by the liability and non-liability of the individuals who are encompassed by those rules. Relatedly, the volume also contains work which is relevant to the moral justification of several moral doctrines used, either explicitly or implicitly, in just war theory: in the doctrine of double effect, in the generation of liability in basic self-defensive cases, and in the relationship between liability and the conditions which are normally appended to permissible self-defensive violence: imminence, necessity, and proportionality. The volume breaks new ground in all these areas.