McMahon, Jeff

Introduction

In his moral and social philosophy, Jeff McMahan has focused on issues surrounding rights to life and the ethics of killing. He is the leading figure in a group of scholars seeking to significantly revise the received moral and legal norms that govern the ethics of war. He has also written extensively in the field of biomedical ethics, particularly on abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and related issues. Taken as a whole, his work provides normative arguments on the nature and boundaries of moral status across a range of topics in applied ethics, probing the entailments for both policy and personal conduct.

Killing in War

In the philosophy of law, McMahan’s most influential writings concentrate on the moral bases for killing in war. His account of permissible killing contains both critical and constructive elements. As the foremost member of the so-called “revisionist school” of thought on the ethics of war, McMahan has offered forceful critiques of the standard account...