The Moral Target

Reviews / Votes

As I said, this has been a very limited of survey of these two books, which cover a wide range of topics and are extremely dense with argument...these questions are of great interest and importance. In all, there is an enormous amount for anyone interested the morality of conflict, or ethics generally, to learn from reading and thinking about these excellent books. They represent the cutting edge of work in applied ethics and moral theory. * Mind * It would be hard to praise the book too highly.... If this is your field, you simply must be familiar with her ideas.... These are staggeringly sophisticated essays...there is a tight argument or interesting distinction made on almost everyone of these 288 pages...she delivers uniformly new and interesting results.... I mean to fill the air with much full-throated and fulsome praise for this collection. * J. Carl Ficarrotta, Ethics * It is impossible to do justice, within the scope of a short review, to the breadth and depths of these papers...To those familiar with Kamm's work, this timely collection of essays brings together some of her best known recent writings on the topic as well as new material on emerging issues in just war theory. To those not familiar with it, it provides a wonderful opportunity to enjoy her unrivalled argumentative skills and her superb handling of hypothetical cases...(in this book as in all her other works) one gets a sense not just of a great mind at work on morally urgent issues, but of a profoundly honest mind too. Kamm has that rare quality, in great evidence here, of being willing to say, quite simply, that at crucial junctures she does not have answers but is merely hoping to raise some questions...To do it well, however, and in a way that is genuinely illuminating, is not easy. This book does it superbly well. * Cecile Fabre, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * Kamm manages to provide a unique and intellectually rich sence of essays in The Moral Target that help clarify important moral issues in the context of war... Kamm does not deal exclusively in the abstract netherworld of many philosophers. Instead, her writing engages the reader by dealing with real-world moral problems and related hypotheticals... By tying her analysis to such practical applications, Professor Kamm makes her writing both important for contemporary moral philosophers and accessible to the novice. * Harvard Law Review * There are deep issues of ethical theory, such as the relevance of intention to the permissibility of action, that we must understand before we can hope to understand the morality of war and terrorism. No one has done more than Frances Kamm to enhance our understanding of these issues. Her essays on war, many of which are collected in this volume, reveal better than any other work in contemporary just war theory the ways in which careful and meticulous argumentation in ethical theory can illuminate the most important issues in the morality of war. * Jeff McMahan, Rutgers University
* Kamm engages many important topics one might expect...just war theory, the killing of noncombatants, the doctrine of double effect, the morality of nuclear deterrence, group liability, terrorism, and resistance to oppression. Other essays touch on such interesting, though less-discussed topics as the requirements of justice after a war has ended. Overall, this is a collection of interesting, provocative, and carefully argued essays. * J.H. Spence, CHOICE *