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Chapter

When is it Right to Fight?

Chapter

When is it Right to Fight?

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When is it Right to Fight? book

When is it Right to Fight?

DOI link for When is it Right to Fight?

When is it Right to Fight? book

ByWilliam H. Shaw
BookUtilitarianism and the Ethics of War

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Edition 1st Edition
First Published 2016
Imprint Routledge
Pages 19
eBook ISBN 9780203538333

ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews what the great eighteenth and nineteenth-century utilitarians had to say about war. Henry Sidgwick, the last of classical utilitarians, wrote about war in his Elements of Politics and in some popular essays. In the former work, Sidgwick sought to outline the system of international rules, for which it is desirable to obtain and not unreasonable to hopegeneral acceptance. Sidgwick firmly rejects national egoism or the doctrine that states have no moral duties limiting the pursuit of their interests: For a State, for an individual, the ultimate end and standard of right conduct is the happiness of all who are affected by its actions. Like Paley contemporary the utilitarian radical William Godwin, Bentham disapproved of war more strongly than Paley appears to have done, and he sought its elimination. An anachronism in the modern world, war damages the interests of masses, forcing them to murder one another for the gratification of the avarice or pride of the few.

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