I. Is slavery always morally unacceptable?

a. The Benefit Principle: If an action or practice makes you better off than you otherwise would have been, then you have not been wronged

II. Overview:

a. Thus far:

i. History (what happened in the past, and how have people written about it?)

ii. Literature (what does a text mean?)

b. Moral philosophy: What is morally right or wrong, just or unjust, and why?

i. How do we persuade others?/What should we believe in the first place?

ii. Method: look at examples, see how we feel about them, test those reactions against proposed moral principles (such as the Benefit Principle), and adjust either our initial reactions or the proposed principles until we feel confident about what we believe.

c. Focus: moral issues of violence, power, and money in the international context, as discussed in the assigned text by Charles Beitz.

i. This lecture and the next: Is the international context is a “Hobbesian state of nature”?

ii. The following two lectures: the ideas of sovereignty and human rights.

iii. The last two lectures: issues of economic justice and “globalization.”

III. Hobbesian realism

a. The factual premise: In fact, existing relations between societies (or their governments) have all the crucial features of a Hobbesian state of nature.

b. The moral premise: In a Hobbesian state of nature, each agent has an unconditional right of self-preservation, i.e., a right to do anything it deems necessary to preserve its life, without the authorization of others.

c. Conclusion: each existing society (or its government) has an unconditional right of self-preservation, i.e., it has the right to have any foreign policy it deems necessary to preserve its life, without the authorization of others.

i. The Bush Doctrine of Preventive War: “We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States….” The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, PDF, p. 14, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

ii. Exceptionalism: the rules of international law bind everyone, except for the U.S.

IV. The moral premise

a. Assurance problems: each agent must also have assurance of reciprocal compliance: you must know that if you do your part, others will do theirs as well.

i. Pointless sacrifice

ii. Hobbes’s state of nature

1. no sovereign

2. scarcity of resources

3. general egoism or self-interestedness.

b. What about rights?

i. what people will in fact do (a “predictive,” “empirical” or “descriptive” claim)

ii. what people ought to or have the right to do (a “prescriptive” or “normative” claim)

c. Should we accept an unconditional right of self-protection, even in a state of nature?

i. Individuals

ii. Societies

V. Individuals in a state of nature

a. The mountain pass case

i. Avoidance—turn back and avoid the encounter all together;

ii. Cooperation—you smile and “make nice,” try to establish cooperation, taking your chances;

iii. Pre-emptive strike—you cooperate, unless she manifestly threatens to push you. If (but only if) she motions to push, you push her first.

iv. Preventive strike—you smile and cooperate just enough to have a chance to push her first, so that she has no chance to even threaten to push you.

b. The Principle of Wanton Destruction: You are not morally permitted to destroy lives or valuable resources merely for the sake of your own convenience. (Beitz, pp. 56-7)

c. Pacifism: you are never permitted to use violence, even if holding back causes your death.

d. The Credible Threat Principle: you cannot harm others without some evidence of a threat to you, even if attacking without evidence is the safest bet for you.

i. The Doctrine of Pre-emption: you cannot harm others without a credible, imminent threat to you, even if attacking without such evidence is the safer bet.

ii. The Doctrine of Prevention: you are permitted to attack strangers “before they are able to threaten” you. No evidence of an imminent threat is necessary.

1. Case of a sworn enemy?

2. What threat counts as “imminent”?

e. Hobbes’s Ethical Egoism: an agent only has reason to do what is in his or her own interest.

f. Following Beitz (p. 56-58), if anyone has a right of self-preservation, its content depends on what we can be reasonably expected to do for others, even at some (reasonable) cost to our own interests, as judged by informed and impartial reasoners.