Dehumanization, lesser evil and the supreme emergency exemption

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Published: Sep 1, 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.23.2010.379

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Yitzhak Benbaji

Abstract

Many believe that if the indiscriminate bombings of German cities at the beginning of World War II were necessary for preventing unlimited spread of Nazism, then the bombings were justified. For, the outcome, in which innocent Germans living in Nazi Germany are killed, was not as bad as the outcome in which the Nazis inflict ethnic cleansing and enslavement on a massive scale. Recently, however, Daniel Statman has advanced a powerful case against this type of justification. I aim in this paper to develop an enriched version of consequentialism which rescues the "lesser evil elucidation" of the Exemption.

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How to Cite
Benbaji, Yitzhak. 2010. “Dehumanization, Lesser Evil and the Supreme Emergency Exemption”. Diametros, no. 23 (September):5-21. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.23.2010.379.
Issue
No. 23 (2010)
Section
Special topic – The Ethics of War

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Author Biography

Yitzhak Benbaji

Bar-Ilan University and Shalom Hartman Institute
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