Brains, Persons, and Society *** ABSTRACTS    Cervelli, Persone e Società ***ABSTRACTS

Helen Frowe
University of Reading                                              

Why We can Kill Innocent Threats

 Questions about what one is permitted to do in self-defence raise issues in both ethics and the political sphere.  This is particularly topical in our current political climate.  Since the attacks on the World Trade Centre, there have been numerous examples of

the killing of innocent people in the course of anti-terrorist action.  Most people acknowledge the permissibility of killing a person who culpably threatens one’s own life, or the lives of others.  More controversial is the claim that one can permissibly kill a person who innocently threatens one’s life.  In this paper I argue against Michael Otsuka’s claim that it is impermissible to kill an innocent threat in self-defence.  Otsuka claims that killing an innocent threat is morally equivalent to killing an innocent bystander.  A threat and a bystander share a lack of control over what threatens the potential victim, and cannot be said to lack the right not to be killed.[1] 

 Otsuka argues that killing an innocent threat in self-defence is morally equivalent to killing a bystander by using her as a human shield.  By killing a threat in self-defence, Otsuka claims that one uses the threat as a means to one’s own self-preservation.  I show that there is a sleight of hand here by Otsuka.  In human shield cases, it is the bystander herself who is used as a means.  But in the case of self-defence against an innocent threat, it is the killing of the threat which is a means to self-preservation, not the threat herself.  Drawing on recent work by Derek Parfit, I suggest that the wrongness of treating the shield as a means stems in part from the attitude that it reveals on the part of the agent who so employs her.  This agent profits from the presence of a bystander.  He prefers the bystander’s presence to her absence: he is glad that the bystander is there to enable him to save his own life.  If this were not his attitude, he would not use her as a shield at.  But it is false that in killing someone who threatens one’s life, one profits from the presence of the threat.  In the absence of the threat, it would not be necessary to defend oneself at all.

 I also demonstrate that Otsuka’s equation of innocent threats with innocent bystanders on the grounds of a shared lack of agency is unworkable.  Otsuka’s argument is illustrated by Robert Nozick’s Ray Gun case, which innocent Threat is blown down a well, and will land on innocent Victim unless stopped.  Victim will be crushed to death, but his body will cushion Threat’s landing and thus Threat will survive.  However, Victim is in possession of a ray gun, with which he can vaporise Threat.  Otsuka claims that Victim cannot vaporise Threat, since Threat is innocent – she lacks control over the fact that she threats Victim.  I offer a revised case in which Threat also has a ray gun, which she can use to vaporise herself. Now Threat can exercise control over whether or not she poses a threat.  I suggest that she would be morally required to cause her own death rather than cause the death of an innocent victim. 

 If Otsuka denies that Threat must vaporise herself, his claim that it is the lack of control which makes killing an innocent threat impermissible is undermined.  If, on the other hand, Otsuka concedes that Threat would be required to kill herself, then his claim that it is impermissible for Victim to kill Threat is undermined.  In killing Threat, Victim does only that which Threat herself would have a duty to do, were she  able.  The fact that in an actual case a threat may not be able to kill herself does not affect the permissibility of killing the threat in self-defence. 

 I argue that rather than citing a lack of agency as the relevant factor, we should consider what threatens a person as the proper criterion of permissibility in cases of self-defence.  Adopting this rationale equates innocent threats with culpable threats for the purposes of self-defence.  I can thus account for the pervasive intuition that one may kill even the innocent if they will otherwise cause one’s death.