Nagel, "War and Massacre"

Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1(2), `972: 123-44.

Absolutism is associated with a view of oneself as a small being interacting with others in a large world. The justifications it requires are primarily interpersonal. Utilitarianism is associated with a view of oneself as a benevolent bureaucrat distributing such benefits as one can control to countless other beings, with whom one may have various relations or none. The justifications it requires are primarily administrative. The argument between the two moral attitudes may depend on the relative priority of these two conceptions.

Two categories of moral reason:
1. Utilitarian: gives primacy to what will happen (to people as a result of one’s action)
2. Absolutist: gives primacy to what one is doing (to people by acting). An “absolute” requirement is one that rules out even calculating the good/bad results of its violation (i.e. not just untrumpable)

Absolutist principle: hostile treatment of any person must be justified in terms of something about that person which makes the treatment appropriate. Hostility is a personal relation, and it must be suited to its target.

Underlying idea: whatever one does to another person intentionally must be aimed at him as a subject, with the intention that he receive it as a subject.

Principle generates two kinds of restriction, each of which has more specific applications:
1. One may treat only certain people with hostility. E.g. non-combatants are not the appropriate target of military action.
2. One may treat even the appropriate targets of hostility in certain ways. E.g. may not use weapons designed to main or disfigure or torture opponent rather than merely stop her.

Tags: war, utilitarianism, using people, treating people as ends