Defensive Harm and Measured Aggression

Abstract

Chapter 3 concerns how we might justify effectively dealing with those who pose dangerous threats supposing they do not deserve to be harmed. Wrongly posing a threat, by contrast with deserving harm for posing the threat, is proposed as the core condition for what I call robust liability to defensive killing, a liability that agent A has just in case A poses a threat to agent B as a result of which B and third parties are prima facie morally permitted to intentionally kill A to defend B from that threat. A non-retributive measured aggressive stance appropriately facilitates taking defensive action. Such an emotional stance, if it presupposes only that its target wrongly poses a threat, accords with skepticism about free will, and is also better for those called upon to confront injustice than the alternatives.