The Goals of War

The Ethics of War

In this course Professor Victor Tadros (University of Warwick) explores the ethics of war. In the first module, we examine the goals of war and evaluate how difficult such goals are to justify. In the second module, we look at the principles of necessity and proportionality in a justified war and review different ideas about what constitutes a proportionate reason to go to war. In the third module, we turn our attention to what might make somebody liable to be killed and how notions of liability can be applied in proportionality calculations concerning war. In the fourth module, we enquire further into what makes someone liable to be killed, using thought experiments to test our intuitions about liability. In the fifth module we explore the relationship between combatants and non-combatants in the ethics of war by applying our knowledge about responsibility, culpability and liability. In the sixth and final module, we look at the laws of war and compare these laws with the morality of war as explored in previous lectures.

The Goals of War

In this module, we examine the goals of war, focusing in particular on (i) the pacifist position that nothing can justify going to war (ii) the central case for a justified war: to prevent more killing from happening overall (iii) the responsibility of a state in protecting its own state and other states in order to achieve this central goal (iv) secondary goals of war like developing just institutions and economic considerations.