The threat of wrong

Extract

Like Goodwin's collection, McMahan's book is entirely and Hare and Joynt's book largely concerned with the merits and demerits of nuclear deterrence; and so is one contribution (Edward Rogers') to Sims' collection. This latter work, besides other essays on ethical topics, is also concerned with international law and institutions, as is Geoffrey Best's essay in Goodwin. But the three works dealing with the ethics of deterrence are more internally cohesive, and prone to cross swords with one another, and it is these which deserve the greatest attention. Of these three, the books by McMahan and by Hare and Joynt are valuable contributions to applied moral philosophy, embodying the rigour in argument to be expected of philosophers, while the diverse standpoints expressed by theologians, strategists and the philosopher Barrie Paskins in the Goodwin collection, produced for the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament (CCADD), are well compared and assessed in the volume's 'Concluding Comments' by Ronald Hope-Jones.