ABSTRACT
Utilitarianism gives primacy to a concern with what will happen. Absolutism gives primacy to a concern with what one is doing. The utilitarian component is straightforward by comparison, and has a natural appeal to anyone who is not a complete skeptic about ethics. Utilitarianism says that one should try, either individually or through institutions, to maximize good and minimize evil, and that if faced with the possibility of preventing a great evil by producing a lesser, one should choose the lesser evil. Utilitarianism certainly justifies some restrictions on the conduct of warfare. There are strong utilitarian reasons for adhering to any limitation which seems natural to most people–particularly if the limitation is widely accepted already. The same is true of the piecemeal wiping out of rural civilian populations in airborne antiguerrilla warfare. A positive account of the matter must begin with the observation that war, conflict, and aggression are relations between persons.
