Ethics
"It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to read such a probing, careful, analytical, honest, and utterly wonderful book."
The Times Literary Supplement
"There could be no better proof of the vitality of the subject of death and killing than this monumental book."
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"This is analytic philosophy par excellence. It works the mind as an arduous mountain climb works the body."
Sats: Nordic Journal of Philosophy
"McMahan is one of America's finest contemporary moral theorists. His long-awaited book is always well-argued, sophisticated and very interesting."
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie
"McMahan's book is outstanding within the present literature in virtue of its breadth, succinctness, and argumentative erudition."
Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life FROM THE PUBLISHER
"This book is a comprehensive study of the ethics of killing in cases in which the metaphysical or moral status of the individual killed is uncertain or controversial. Among the beings whose status is questionable or marginal in this way are human embryos and fetuses, neonates, animals, anencephalic infants, human beings with severe, congenital, cognitive impairments, and human beings who have become severely demented or irreversibly comatose." In an attempt to understand the moral status of these beings, Jeff McMahan develops and defends distinctive accounts of the nature of personal identity, the evaluation of death, and the wrongness of killing. He contends that the morality of killing is not unitary; rather, the principles that determine the morality of killing in marginal cases are different from those that govern the killing of persons who are self-conscious and rational.
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