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INTENDING TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONDITIONALLY CAN BE
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| INTENDING TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONDITIONALLY CAN BE MORALLY OBJECTIONABLE, EVEN IF THEY ARE NEVER USED Daniel M. Farrell. Immoral Intentions Ethics, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Jan, pp. Now, I have argued elsewhere, and at some length, for the plausibility of a principle more or less equivalent to 2'. Very briefly my argument is this. When a person freely performs what she admits is an immoral action, we are in a position not merely to assess what she has done but also to assess her for having done it. We are in a position to make, that is to say, a judgment not only of the relevant action, in such cases, but also of the agent. It is tempting, of course, precisely because we are making a negative judgment about the agent for what she has done in such cases, to think of that judgment as inextricably connected with the fact that she has actually performed the presumptively immoral action. And this much, perhaps, is true the particular opprobrium an agent bears in such cases is opprobrium due to what she has done. What is also true, however, and much more important, it seems tome, is this an agent does not have to have succeeded in doing wrong, nor even to have tried and failed, in order to bear exactly the same sort of opprobrium as an agent who succeeded in doing wrong. A person who plans to do wrong, for example, but who is, through no fault of her own, prevented from putting her plans into action, will typically beheld to be liable to at least some opprobrium simply because of her plans. Similarly, someone who actually gets to the point where she is just about to do wrong , just about to pull the trigger, for example, and thus kill her hated guiltless rival-but who is prevented from doing so through circumstances that are entirely fortuitous, will be judged, in morals if not in laws, as being just as reprehensible as the person who actually manages to do the wrong that she was about to dob NUCLEAR DETERRENCE VIOLATES THE JUS IN BELLO CONDITIONS OF Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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