DETERRENCE NOT IMMORAL BECAUSE LIVES ARE THE MORE MORALLY IMPORTANT THAN NOT BEING THREATENED. Nuclear Deterrence and Deontology. William H. Shaw. Ethics, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Jan, 1984), pp. 248-260. Published by The University of Chicago Press. Stable URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/2380515 One could view the obligation not to threaten innocent persons as a prima facie principle, one which is outweighed in the present circumstances by the duty to preserve the lives and liberties of the innocent (assuming, what is widely believed, that reliance on nuclear deterrence has accomplished this. The difference is that one would be saying that deterrence is justified, all things considered, rather than that criminal conduct is tolerated out of necessity. Given that overridden prima facie duties continue to exert some moral weight, one would still be obliged to endeavor strenuously to extricate oneself from a situation in which the duty not to threaten had to be overridden in order to fulfill a more stringent duty. Walzer's construal of the situation places us, implausibly, in a continual state of moral emergency in which moral norms, rather than being overridden by other moral principles, are simply disregarded because of consequentialist considerations that are external to his deontological framework.
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