Dignity, Self-Respect, and Bloodless Invasions
'Who Should Die?: The Ethics of Killing in War'. Eds.: Bradley Jay Strawser, Ryan Jenkins, Michael Robillard, Oxford University Press 2018
27 Pages Posted: 10 Jan 2018
Date Written: 2017
Abstract
In Chapter 7, “Dignity, Self-Respect, and Bloodless Invasions”, Saba Bazargan-Forward asks How much violence can we impose on those attempting to politically subjugate us? According to Bazargan-Forward, “reductive individualism” answers this question by determining how much violence one can impose on an individual wrongly attempting to prevent one from political participation. Some have argued that the amount of violence one can permissibly impose in such situations is decidedly sub-lethal. Accordingly, this counterintuitive response has cast doubt on the reductive individualist project. Bazargan-Forward argues, however, that political subjugation involves an institutionally embodied form of disrespect that has been altogether missed. A proper appreciation of this sort of disrespect, he contends, morally permits much greater defensive violence against those attempting to politically subjugate us or others.
Keywords: just war theory, dignity, self-respect, oppression, self-defense
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