![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Notes
[Disclosure S tatement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.]
1 See McMahan, Killing in War.
2 Here, Miller states that it may be permissible for the father of a drowning child to kill a bystander who could easily save his son from drowning, if somehow the father’s killing of the bystander resulted in the son being saved (and killing the bystander is the only way the father could save his son).
3 For example, one might ask if US citizens or their political leaders fail to fulfill their duty to aid Haitian citizens, say after an earthquake, could Haitians or friends of Haitians (who are non-US citizens) attack those US citizens or politicians in cafés or in government buildings to get them to fulfill their strong duty to aid? Miller does not address this specific scenario in his book, though he does come close in chapter 7 when he states that “South African politicians and administrators who failed to adequately assist destitute blacks in the ‘homelands’—are collectively morally responsible for omissions of the kind that might justify the use of lethal force on the part of their citizens to ensure that the rights to assistance in question are realized” (210).
4 For his discussion of the “Moral Equality of Combatants,” see 168–78.
5 Zohar, “Collective War,” 607.
6 A major criticism Miller has for the “revisionists” is that they have failed to account for “joint action and joint action in organizational settings” (82).
7 Miller, however, contends that his “institutional view offers a relational individualist analysis and, as such, sidesteps both narrowly individualist as well as collectivist accounts” (80n8). While his view might “sidestep” some issues, he has other issues to address, e.g., how to choose between the moral norms at the individual level and the collective level or how to mix them to create a new moral norm.
8 Miller, Social Action, chap. 2; Miller, “Joint Action.”
9 Combining these routes is also possible and likely a good strategy.
10 I offer examples from Grotius, Walzer, and my own work. Relatedly, George Mavrodes argues that conventions can be morally justified in war. See Mavrodes, “Conventions.”
11 Viner, “Moral Foundations,” 52–3.
12 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, xxii.
13 Viner, “Moral Foundations,” 54–7.
14 While Miller claims that his view is “teleological,” it is teleological only because his institutions serve a moral end. It does not appear to be teleological in the sense that persons or a global community will flourish or be more virtuous overall if these institutional goals further specify the norms between individuals in a state of nature, as he claims that they do.
15 One strategy or solution would be to argue that when and if both levels of war apply descriptively, i.e., the individual and collective are descriptively accurate or have enough descriptive truth, then the thing to do is to take hold of the description that gives way to the convention that does the most work for us, morally speaking. In other words, use the description and coinciding convention that would make the world better, morally speaking. Arguably, this is what Grotius, Walzer, and I are up to in supporting the moral equality of soldiers.
16 I do not think it is off target to ask the following questions: first, if legitimate institutions like the military can permissively kill innocent people, defining them as “collateral damage,” to further their collective good of national security, what other legitimate institutions, e.g., educational, medical, political, or legal, can do likewise toward achieving their collective good(s)? And second, how do they know how many innocent people they can kill indirectly to achieve their collective good? It may not even be too far afield on an institutional view to ask if a lifeguard overseeing a swimming pool at a private club can harm (in some way) non-members or visitors (who are “innocent”) if doing so is necessary to save members from drowning, since the lifeguard agreed to take on the obligations to save the lives of members, which, on the face of it, is a legitimate collective good? This may be appropriate, since, in a way, military members of one state when using violence in defense can permissibly kill innocent persons of another state, turning them into “collateral damage” when protecting their state and saving the lives of their members, i.e., their citizens.