Killing for Profit - Prof. Jeff McMahan - University of Hamburg
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- F.5 - Geisteswissenschaften
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- Reason, Reflection & Responsibility
Catalog
Killing for Profit
About the Lecture
Sometimes the leaders of a corporation learn that a product they have been selling has been killing some of those who have purchased it. It could be a car that is discovered to have a defective part or a food that is determined to be carcinogenic. The usual response of corporate leaders in these circumstances is to try to conceal or deny the evidence and in general to do all within their power to continue to profit by continuing to sell the product, thereby killing more people. How should we evaluate such people morally? How do they compare, for example, with ordinary murderers?
About the Speaker
Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on killing and death and is a leading authority on Just War Theory. His books include The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Killing in War (OUP, 2009).
Thinkers in Philosophy & Public Policy
Our precarious times call for a rethinking and renewal of the shared underpinnings of an open, diverse, and inclusive democratic society. To support this process, the Institute of Philosophy is offering a lecture series with leading thinkers who are confronting the challenges and chances that we are facing in all dimensions of life. The idea of this series is to develop a culture of reason, reflection, and responsibility by bringing fundamental global debates to the heart of the campus. The series is about connecting philosophical enquiry to pragmatic action.