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The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life Jeff McMahan OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE ETHICS OF KILLING PROBLEMS AT THE MARGINS OF LIFE OXFORD ETHICS SERIES Series Editor: Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford The Limits of Morality Shelly Kagan Perfectionism Thomas Hurka Inequality Larry S. Temkin Morality, Mortality, Volume I Death and Whom to Save from It F. M. Kamm Morality, Mortality, Volume II Rights, Duties, and Status F. M. Kamm Suffering and Moral Responsibility Jamie Mayerfeld Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory Liam B. Murphy The Ethics of Killing Problems at the Margins of Life Jeff McMahan THE ETHICS OF KILLING PROBLEMS AT THE MARGINS OF LIFE Jeff McMahan 1 2002 3 Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2002 by Jeff McMahan Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McMahan, Jeff. The ethics of killing : problems at the margins of life / by Jeff McMahan. p. cm.—(Oxford ethics series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-507998-1 1. Murder—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Abortion—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Aged, Killing of the—Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Insane, Killing of the—Moral and ethical aspects. 5. Euthanasia—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. II. Series. HV6515.M35 2001 179.7—dc21 2001021768 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Sally, Sophie, and William This page intentionally left blank PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We all accept that killing is in general wrong, but virtually all of us also recognize certain exceptions—that is, we concede that there can be instances in which killing is permissible. In addition to accepting the obvious permissibility of killing microbes and plants (except when this is objectionable for either instrumental or impersonal reasons), most people believe that it can be permissible in a variety of circumstances to kill animals, and also that it can be permissible to kill other human beings in self- defense and in appropriate conditions in war. There are four distinct categories into which we may sort most or all instances of killing for which there may be a reasonable justification. Perhaps the most con- tentious category consists of cases in which killing would simply promote the greater good—for example, a case in which killing one person would prevent the killing, or the deaths, of a much greater number of people. Most people who believe that killing can on occasion be permissible for this sort of reason also believe that, in at least most of these instances, certain restrictions on agency have to be satisfied—for ex- ample, that the killing must be a merely foreseen side effect rather than an intended means of achieving the greater good. Although it is important, I will not be concerned with this category of possibly justifiable killings. The second category consists of cases in which an individual has done something that has lowered the moral barriers to harming him, or compromised his status as in- violable, or made him liable to action that might result in his death. Cases in which killing might be thought to be justified for this sort of reason include killing in self- defense, killing in war, and killing as a mode of punishment. This range of cases will be the topic of another book, now in progress, that will be a companion volume to this one. This book, subtitled Problems at the Margins of Life, may thus be regarded as the first volume of a two-volume work on The Ethics of Killing, of which the sec- ond volume will be the projected book on self-defense, war, and capital punishment. The third category of possibly permissible killing consists of cases in which the metaphysical or moral status of the individual killed is uncertain or controversial. Among those beings whose nature arguably entails a moral status inferior to our own are animals, human embryos and fetuses, newborn infants, anencephalic infants, congenitally severely retarded human beings, human beings who have suffered se- vere brain damage or dementia, and human beings who have become irreversibly comatose. These are all beings that are in one way or another “at the margins.” There are pressing moral questions about the permissibility, in certain circumstances, of killing individuals of these sorts, or of allowing them to die. Among the practices (whether actual or as yet hypothetical) that raise these questions are meat eating, ani- viii preface and acknowledgments mal experimentation, abortion, infanticide, embryo research, the use of living anen- cephalic infants as organ donors, the termination of life-support for the irreversibly comatose, perhaps in order to obtain their organs for transplantation, and the with- drawal of life-support for demented or incompetent patients in compliance with an earlier advance directive. I will address some, though not all, of these problems in this book, along with certain related issues, such as the morality of inflicting prena- tal injury.1 The fourth and final category comprises cases in which death would not be a harm to an individual but instead a benefit. In many such cases, the individual for whom death would be a benefit also desires to die and may request to be killed or helped to die. The practical issues that arise under this heading are suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Although my main focus in this book will be on the marginal cases, I will also discuss certain dimensions of the problems raised by the cases in this fourth category. The practical issue that I will discuss at greatest length is abortion. As this man- uscript is being completed (October 2000), it has been announced that the “abortion pill” is soon to be legally available in the United States. To many it may seem that this represents a decisive victory for those who favor the legal permissibility of abortion and that the practice of abortion will become socially invisible and thus eventually cease to be a matter of public controversy. It may therefore seem that to publish a book on abortion at this point is rather like writing on the morality of slavery, an issue that is now primarily of academic interest. But, although I defend the permissibility of abortion and thus welcome the introduction of the abortion pill, I do not believe the debate should end until we have the kind of intellectual and moral certainty about abortion that we have about slavery. It is important to notice that the ostensible victims of abortion—fetuses—are not parties to the debate, while of those who are involved in it, the only ones who have a significant personal interest or stake in the outcome are those who would benefit from the practice. There is therefore a danger that abortion could triumph in the political arena simply because it is favored by self-interest and opposed only by ideals. We should therefore be wary of the possibility of abortion becoming an unreflective practice, like meat eating, simply because it serves the in- terests of those who have the power to determine whether it is practiced. The argu- ments in the public debate that focus narrowly, and implausibly, on “choice” reveal a tendency to try to convert abortion from a question of ethics into a question of inter- ests. This book, although it offers a novel, complex, and, I hope, plausible defense of the permissibility of abortion, nevertheless seeks to keep us focused on ethical rather than merely political considerations. This is a long book and may require some effort from general readers. I have tried to go deep, which means that in places the argument can become complex. But I have also tried to write simply and clearly and to avoid language and arguments that might be described as technical. Thus, if there are passages in the book that some readers may find difficult, I hope that the difficulty is in the depth of the ideas themselves and not in their articulation. Indeed, I have in places—particularly in chapter 1—given a certain priority to accessibility over thoroughness in argument, in that I have con- sciously refrained from trying to make the argument absolutely watertight by plung- ing into arcane matters of technical philosophy. I have also avoided some of the te- Preface and Acknowledgments ix dious apparatus of academic books, such as footnotes or endnotes freighted with sub- stantive material. The notes to this book contain only textual citations, with an occa- sional brief comment on one of the pieces referred to. Finally, it is perhaps worth not- ing that the book should get easier as it progresses, since the earlier chapters contain arguments in metaphysics and ethical theory that provide the foundations for the later, more immediately accessible material on practical issues. I have been working on this book, albeit intermittently, since the late 1980s. Over this period, ideas or arguments that I had developed have occasionally appeared in- dependently in the published work of others. This is especially true of the material in chapter 1 on personal identity, some of which, I confess, has begun to seem a trifle musty even to me, though it seemed fresher in the late 1980s when I first developed the position I defend here.

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