Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 31 No. 3, 2011.
Original scientific paper
Killing the Innocent: The Case of September 11
Neven Petrović
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
This work is an exercise in practical ethics that criticizes a decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court according to which it is unlawful to crush down a highjacked plan with hostages, which is certain to hit a building full of civilians. The argumentation strategy is to enumerate circumstances in which killing the innocent seems justified, and then to list consequentialist and deontological principles that try to show that doing this may be the right thing to do. After that it is investigated under which category does the case under the analysis belong and what would all of the listed moral principles say about it. The conclusion is that all convincing moral theories would, despite their otherwise numerous disagreements, agree that the highjacked plane with hostages should be destroyed before it hits the building. Although there is no attempt at a general theory on killing the innocent here, one hint at such a theory is offered on the basis of the present analysis.
Keywords
the doctrine of double effect; hypothetical consent; innocent shields; innocent threats; killing; number of victims; overlapping consensus; self-defense; utilitarianism
Hrčak ID:
75382
URI
Publication date:
22.11.2011.
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