The Morality of Defensive Force

This book provides an account of the central moral principles that regulate the permissible use of defensive force. The book argues that we cannot understand the morality of defensive force until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more general account of justice and moral rights. In developing this view the book offers original accounts of liability, proportionality, and necessity. It also argues, contra the dominant view in the literature, that self-defence can sometimes be justified on the basis of an agent-relative prerogative to give greater weight to one’s own life and interests. The book also provides a novel conception of individual rights against harm. Unlike some, who believe that our rights against harm are fact-relative, Quong argues that our rights against being harmed by others must, in certain respects, be sensitive to the evidence that others can reasonably be expected to possess. The final chapter provides an extended defence of the means principle, a principle that prohibits harmfully using other persons’ bodies or other rightful property unless those persons are duty bound to permit this use or have otherwise waived their claims against such use.