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- Title
KILLING IN SELF-DEFENSE: AN UNQUESTIONABLE OR PROBLEMATIC DEFENSE?
- Authors
Kasachkoff, Tziporah
- Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to raise some questions about self-defense, questions that have appeared in some form or another in the philosophical and legal literature and which have received various and at times conflicting answers. The paper looks at two accounts, one which claims that all justified self-defensive killings rest on an attacker's forfeiting his right not to be killed, the other claiming that in at least some cases of morally permissible self-defensive homicide the moral permission to kill one's attacker rests, at least in part, on there being no moral difference between killing one's attacker and allowing oneself to be killed. People kill in self-defense when they take a life of another human being, possibly more than one, in order to defend themselves. But the death of the person killed need not be the aim. What is necessary for a people to be said to kill in self-defense it that they intentionally and deliberately perform some act that are sufficient to cause death. The central issue in justified self-defensive homicide is whether one acted to protect oneself. Although protection of oneself is necessary for claiming as a justification for killing another human being, that one has acted in self-defense, self-protection or self-preservation is not at all that characterizes a killing as a self-defensive killing.
- Subjects
SELF-defense (Law); JUSTIFIABLE homicide; HOMICIDE; SELF-preservation; DEATH
- Publication
Law & Philosophy, 1998, Vol 17, Issue 5/6, p509
- ISSN
0167-5249
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1023/A:1006146105687