
Help!
The Ethics of Rescue
Helen Frowe(Author)
Oxford University Press
Will be published approx. on 31. October 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-19-892940-6 (ISBN)
Description
Most people agree that we can have duties to prevent harm to others. But there is significant disagreement about what these duties demand of us and what they permit others to do to us. In Help! The Ethics of Rescue, Helen Frowe develops an account of the theoretical underpinnings of the duty to rescue. She rejects the influential view that the limits of the duty to rescue are explained by agent-relative prerogatives to care more about our own interests than the interests of others. In its place, she defends an agent-neutral account of the duty to rescue, grounded in the limits of the duty to use ourselves as a means for the benefit of others. Her account provides a unified, non-consequentialist account of the duty to rescue that tightly connects our right to refrain from saving to the wrongness of others forcing us to save. Frowe explores the implications of this agent-neutral account for a number of key debates in the ethics of rescue, such as the duty to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming, the moral significance of property rights over harm-preventing resources, and the permissibility of forming agreements to save. She also considers its implications for applied aspects of the duty to rescue, including the ethics of abortion, the ethics of war, and duties to refugees.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-892940-6 (9780198929406)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Helen Frowe is Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar at Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. Her books include Defensive Killing, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction, 3rd edn. and, with Derek Matravers, Stones and Lives: The Ethics of Protecting Heritage in War. She is the co-editor of Heritage in War: Ethical Issues, Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War and How We Fight: Ethics in War. She was the recipient of the 2023 Elizabeth D. Rockwell Prize and 2019 Marc Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy.
Content
- Chapter 1: What This Book Is (Not) About
- Chapter 2: The Limits of the Duty to Rescue
- Chapter 3: Forcing Others to Rescue
- Chapter 4: Defending Agent-Neutrality
- Chapter 5: The Duty to Enact Lesser-Evil Rescues
- Chapter 6: The Duty to Minimise Harm When Saving
- Chapter 7: Harm-Preventing Resources
- Chapter 8: Agreements to Suboptimally Save
- Chapter 9: War as Suboptimal Saving
- Chapter 10: Assisting the Assisters
- Chapter 11: Offsetting the Cost of Rescue
- Chapter 12: Offsetting and Refugee Resettlement