Alexander Pruss's Blog

One of the central insights of Western philosophy, beginning with Socrates, has been that few if any things are as bad for an individual as ...

I’ve been wondering whether it is possible for a country to count as pacifist and yet wage a defensive war. I think the answer is positive, ...

Imagine a moderate pacifist who rejects lethal self-defense, but allows non-lethal self-defense when appropriate, say by use of tasers. Now...

Narrow pacifists (about lethal violence) hold that it is wrong to intentionally kill. Depending on the correct answer to Double Effect quest...

Suppose I see a sniper sniping at innocents, and if not stopped, she will kill a dozen innocents. Near the sniper are three enemy personnel ...

Pacficists who think that all lethal violence is wrong have a moral imperative to think creatively about ways in which the innocent can be p...

I've argued that typically the person who is hiding Jews from Nazis and is asked by a Nazi if there are Jews in her house tells the tru...

In the standard trolley case, a runaway trolley is heading towards five innocent people, but can be redirected onto a side-track where there...

The pacifist believes that one ought not engage in problematic violence in war even if all the standard jus ad bellum conditions...

I once ran a panel discussion between an Islamic theologian and a philosopher of art. The Islamic theologian was defending what s...