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Authority and Harm in War Jonathan Parry Thesis Submitted for the of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy) June 2014 Department of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Abstract Two features of warfare are particularly ethically striking. Firstly, and most obviously, war involves killing and maiming on a grand scale. Secondly, war involves large numbers of individuals obeying the commands of those who claim to possess authority over them, such as their superior officers and political leaders. Whereas leading contemporary work on the ethics of war focuses on the former aspect, this thesis investigates the relevance of the latter. The project is orientated around a discussion of the traditional just war requirement that wars be waged by a ‘legitimate authority’, and makes three central contributions. Firstly, I argue that the authority criterion plays a much more important role within just war theory than is commonly supposed. Rather than simply imposing a necessary condition for justifying the resort to war, the criterion also plays a crucial role in judgements about the permissibility of individuals’ conduct in war. More specifically, the criterion captures the idea that individuals who fight on behalf of a certain type of entity are subject to a more extensive range of permissions to cause harm than those that apply to private actors. Secondly, I assess the extent to which the commands of authorities are capable of affecting the deontic status of acts of harming. Drawing on a ‘service-based’ account of the justification of authority, I argue for the controversial conclusion that individuals may be morally required, all- things-considered, to obey commands to cause serious harm to others, even in cases were doing so would be straightforwardly morally unjustified in the absence of the command. This argument has important revisionary implications for our understanding of both the ethics of harm and the moral limits of the duty to obey. Thirdly, I employ this argument to provide a qualified defence of the authority criterion against powerful objections raised by an influential ‘reductivist’ approach to just war theory. While they diverge in important respects, I argue that my defence is compatible with the basic commitments that motivate a reductivist view. Acknowledgements I owe thanks to many people for their help in producing this thesis. Four persons deserve special mention. My supervisors Daniel Viehoff and Jimmy Lenman have been fantastic throughout. I also greatly benefitted from the input of Jeff McMahan, who went above and beyond the call of duty in taking on the role of unofficial supervisor. I am also grateful to Helen Frowe, who first introduced me to the topics addressed in the thesis as an undergraduate and encouraged me to pursue them further. For written comments on parts of the thesis, which are incredibly time- consuming to produce, I am extremely grateful to Saba Bazargan, Yitzhak Benbaji, Ian Fishback. Jeff McMahan, Helen Frowe, Seth Lazar, Michael Neu, Jonathan Quong, Daniel Statman, and Victor Tadros. I presented material from the thesis at the following conferences and workshops: MANCEPT Annual Workshops in Political Theory (Manchester, 2011); Brave New World (Manchester, 2012); The Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference (Oxford, 2012); The Association for Legal and Social Philosophy (Stirling, 2013); and a workshop in Rogoznica, Croatia (2013). I also presented material at The University of Toronto (2014); the Oxford War Discussion Group (2013); and at several seminars at The University of Sheffield. Many thanks to audience members at these events for stimulating and helpful discussions. I also greatly benefitted from innumerable conversations, philosophical or otherwise, with my fellow graduate students at the University of Sheffield. In particular with Carl Fox, Tash McKeever, Jessica Begon, Angie Pepper, Peter Cavan, Kathy Puddifoot, Clara Sandelind, Richard Healey, Nicola Kemp, Jan Kandiyali, Angie Pepper and Stephen Wright. Special thanks to Steve, and to my parents Janette and Gareth, for proofreading portions of the thesis. Work on this thesis was supported by grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Society for Applied Philosophy, and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Sheffield. My thanks to these organisations. For everything else, and much more besides, I thank my wife Kwun Ye. Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 01 Chapter 1 – The Role of the Authority Criterion ...................................... 11 1.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 11 1.2 The Structure of Orthodox Just War Theory ............................................... 12 1.3 The Standard Interpretation of the Authority Criterion ........................ 14 1.4 The Discontinuity Thesis ..................................................................................... 18 1.5 The Demarcation Requirement ........................................................................ 23 1.6 The Revised Interpretation of the Authority Criterion .......................... 24 1.7 The (Real) Challenge of Irregular Belligerency ......................................... 28 1.8 Classical Just War Theory and the Authority Criterion .......................... 35 1.9 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 39 Chapter 2 –Scepticism Regarding the Authority Criterion ................... 40 2.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 40 2.2 Reductivism: An Overview .................................................................................. 42 2.2.1 The Continuity Thesis .................................................................................. 42 2.2.2 The Content Thesis ........................................................................................ 44 2.3 Jettisoning the Restrictive Authority Criterion .......................................... 47 2.3.1 The First Spectrum Argument .................................................................. 50 2.3.2 Deflating the Restrictive Authority Criterion .................................... 54 2.4 Jettisoning the Permissive Authority Criterion ......................................... 56 2.4.1 The Continuity Thesis .................................................................................. 57 2.4.2 Rejecting the Orthodox View .................................................................... 58 2.4.3 Rejecting the Classical View ...................................................................... 60 2.4.4 The Second Spectrum Argument ............................................................ 62 2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 64 Chapter 3 – Non-Reductivist Approaches to Just War Theory ............ 66 3.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 66 3.2 Motivating Non-Reductivism ............................................................................. 67 3.2.1 The Permissibility of Participation in Unjust Wars ........................ 67 3.2.2 The Avoidance of Pacifism ......................................................................... 68 3.3 Non-Reductivist Approaches ............................................................................. 70 3.3.1 The Collectivist View .................................................................................... 72 3.3.2 The Associative Duty View ........................................................................ 75 3.4 The Relevance of Non-Reductivism ................................................................ 77 3.5 The War Crimes Objection .................................................................................. 78 3.6 Alternative Groundings for Constraints on Targeting ............................ 84 3.6.1 Role-Based Obligations ............................................................................... 85 3.6.2 The Avoidance of Cowardice ..................................................................... 87 3.6.3 Modes of Agency ............................................................................................. 88 3.6.4 Risk ....................................................................................................................... 90 3.6.5 Vulnerability .................................................................................................... 91 3.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 97 Chapter 4 – Authority and Harm ................................................................... 99 4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 99 4.2 Authority: The Basics ............................................................................................ 100 4.3 Authority and the Ethics of Harming .............................................................. 102 4.4 The Ethics of Harm: Completeness and Immunity .................................... 104 4.5 Two Claims ...............................................................................................................