Jeff McMahan Professor I Contact Information Office: Davison Hall 40 Email: Phone: (732) 932-9861 x155

Education

M.A. Oxford; Ph.D. Cambridge

Speciality

Normative Ethics, Practical Ethics (Bioethics, International Ethics), Political Phil.

Research

I work primarily in ethics and political philosophy, and occasionally in metaphysics and legal theory.

Selected Publications

Books and Monographs: British Nuclear Weapons: For and Against (London: Junction Books, 1981). Preface by Bernard Williams. Reagan and the World: Imperial Policy in the New Cold War (London: Pluto Press, 1984). Revised, updated, and expanded edition, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985. The Morality of Nationalism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Coedited with Robert McKim. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Reviews Forthcoming: The Ethics of Killing in War: The Oxford Uehiro Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). The Morality and Law of War: The Hourani Lectures (New York: Oxford University Press, series edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, forthcoming). Winner, in 2007, of the American Philosophical Association's biennial Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize for "the best unpublished essay or monograph on the philosophy of war and peace." The Ethics of Killing: Self-Defense, War, and Punishment (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Ethics and Humanity: Themes from the Writings of Jonathan Glover (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Coedited with N. Ann Davis and Richard Keshen. Articles: "Problems of Population Theory," Ethics 92, no. 1 (October 1981): 96-127. "On Nuclear Modernization in Europe," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (October 1982). "Nuclear Blackmail," in Nigel Blake and Kay Pole, eds., Dangers of Deterrence: Philosophers on Nuclear Strategy (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983): 84-111. "Deterrence and Deontology," Ethics 95, no. 3 (April 1985): 517-536. "Fact and Fantasy in Nicaragua," The American Oxonian, (Fall 1985): 164-170. "Nuclear Deterrence and Future Generations," in Avner Cohen and Steven Lee, eds., Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1986): 319-339. "The Ethics of International Intervention," in Anthony Ellis, ed., Ethics and International Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986): 24-51. Revised version in Kenneth Kipnis and Diana T. Meyers, eds., Political Realism and International Morality: Ethics in the Nuclear Age (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988): 75-101. "A Note on Pure Defense," Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 11 (November 1986): 640-641. "How Defensive Is Strategic Defense?" in Douglas Lackey, ed., Ethics and Strategic Defense (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1988): 99-106. "Death and the Value of Life," Ethics 99, no. 1 (October 1988): 32-61. "Is Nuclear Deterrence Paradoxical?" Ethics 99, no. 2 (January 1989): 407-422. "War and Peace," in Peter Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991): 384-95. "Killing, Letting Die, and Withdrawing Aid," Ethics 103, no. 2 (January 1993): 250-279. "The Right to Choose an Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 22, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 331-348. "The Just War and the Gulf War" (coauthored with Robert McKim), The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 4 (December 1993): 501-541. "Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker," Ethics 104, no. 2 (January 1994): 252-290. "Innocence, Self-Defense, and Killing in War," The Journal of Political Philosophy 2, no. 3 (September 1994): 193-221. "Revising the Doctrine of Double Effect," The Journal of Applied Philosophy 11, no.2 (1994): 201-212. "The Metaphysics of Brain Death," Bioethics 9, no. 2 (April 1995): 91-126. "Killing and Equality," Utilitas 7, no. 1 (May 1995): 1-29. "La Moralita del Causare l'esistenza di Persone" (The Ethics of Causing People to Exist), Bioetica 2 (Milan, Summer 1995): 182-200. "Realism, Morality, and War," in Terry Nardin, ed., The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996): 78-92. "Cognitive Disability, Misfortune, and Justice," Philosophy and Public Affairs 25, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 3-34. "Intervention and Collective Self-Determination," Ethics and International Affairs 10 (1996): 1-24. "The Limits of National Partiality," in McKim and McMahan, eds., The Morality of Nationalism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): 107-38. "A Challenge to Common Sense Morality," Ethics 108, no. 2 (1998): 394-418. "Preferences, Death, and the Ethics of Killing," in Christoph Fehige and Ulla Wessels, eds., Preferences (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1998): 471-502. "Brain Death, Cortical Death, and Persistent Vegetative State," in Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse, eds., A Companion to Bioethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998): 250-260. "Wrongful Life: Paradoxes in the Morality of Causing People to Exist," in Jules Coleman and Christopher Morris, eds., Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, October 1998): 208-247. Reprinted in abridged and revised form in John Harris, ed., Oxford Readings in Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). "Cloning, Killing, and Identity," Journal of Medical Ethics 25 (April 1999): 77-86. "Moral Intuition," in Hugh LaFollette, ed., Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). "Animals," in R. G. Frey and Christopher Wellman, eds., Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). "War as Self-Defense," Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 13-18. "The Ethics of Killing in War," Ethics 114, no. 4 (July 2004): 693-733. Condensed version in Philosophia 34 (2006): 23-41. "Unjust War in Iraq," The Pelican Record XLI, no. 5 (December 2004): 21-33. Available online at http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/09/the_moral_case_.html. "The Ethics of Killing: Summary," Philosophical Books 46, no. 1 (2005): 1-3. "On Harming and Killing: Replies to Hanser, Persson and Savulescu, and Wasserman," Philosophical Books 46, no. 1 (2005): 34-44. "On the Morality of Screening for Disability," Reproductive Biomedicine Online, vol. 10, supplement 1, special issue on "Ethics, Law, and Moral Philosophy of Reproductive Biomedicine" (March 2005): 129-32. "Preventing the Existence of People with Disabilities," in David Wasserman, Jerome Bickenbach, and Robert Wachbroit, eds., Quality of Life and Human Difference: Genetic Testing, Health Care, and Disability (NY and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 142-71. "Preventive War and the Killing of the Innocent," in David Rodin and Richard Sorabji, eds., The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005): 169-90. "Self-Defense and Culpability" Law and Philosophy 24, no. 6 (2005): 751-74. "The Basis of Moral Liability to Defensive Killing," Philosophical Issues 15 (2005): 386-405. "'Our Fellow Creatures,'" Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 353-380. "Causing Disabled People to Exist and Causing People to be Disabled," Ethics 116, no. 1 (October 2005): 77-99. "Just Cause for War," Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 3 (2005): 1-21. "Is Prenatal Genetic Screening Unjustly Discriminatory?", Virtual Mentor: Ethics Journal of the American Medical Association 8 (January 2006): 50-52. "Torture, Morality, and Law," Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 37, nos. 2 & 3 (2006): 241-48. "Killing in War: a Reply to Walzer," Philosophia 34 (2006): 47-51. "Liability and Collective Identity: A Response to Walzer," Philosophia 34 (2006): 13-17. "An Alternative to Brain Death," Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (Spring 2006): 44-48. Reprinted in John Arras, Alex John London, and Bonnie Steinbock, eds.. Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 7th edition (McGraw Hill, 2007). "Paradoxes of Abortion and Prenatal Injury," Ethics 116, no. 4 (July 2006): 625-55. "The Lucretian Argument," in R. Feldman, K. McDaniel, J.R. Raibley, and M.J. Zimmerman, eds., The Good, the Right, Life and Death, a Festschrift for Fred Feldman (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006): 213-26. "Morality, Law, and the Relation Between Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello," Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, (2006): 46-48. "On the Moral Equality of Combatants," Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 4 (2006): 377-93. "Killing Embryos for Stem Cell Research," Metaphilosophy 38, no. 2/3 (April 2007): 170-89. Reprinted in Lori Gruen, Laura Grabel, and Peter Singer, eds., Stem Cell Research: The Ethical Issues (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2007). "Collectivist Defenses of the Moral Equality of Combatants," Journal of Military Ethics 6, no. 1 (2007). "Infanticide," Utilitas 19 (2007): 131-59. "Justice and Liability in Organ Allocation," Social Research 74, n. 1 (2007): 101-24. "The Morality of War and the Law of War," in David Rodin and Henry Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors: The Legal and Moral Status of Soldiers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008). "Just War," in Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, eds., A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). "Child Soldiers: An Ethical Perspective," in Scott Gates and Simon Reich, eds., Building Knowledge About Children in Armed Conflict (forthcoming in the University of Pittsburgh's Ridgway/Ford security studies series). "The Sources and Status of Just War Principles," Journal of Military Ethics 6, no. 2, special issue: "Just and Unjust Wars: Thirty Years On" (2007): 91-106. "War, Terrorism, and the 'War on Terror'," in Christopher Miller, ed., "War on Terror": The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2006 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). "Aggression and Punishment," in Larry May, ed., War: Philosophical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). "Jeff McMahan" (an interview) in Thomas Petersen and Jesper Ryberg, eds., Normative Ethics: 5 Questions (New York & London: Automatic Press/VIP, 2007). "Eating Animals the Nice Way," Daedalus (Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 2008. "Challenges to Human Equality," Journal of Ethics 12:1 (2008). "Comment," in Michael Doyle, Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). "Humanitarian Aggression," in N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen, and Jeff McMahan, eds., Ethics and Humanity: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). "Laws of War," in Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas, eds., The Philosophy of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). "Précis of The Morality and Law of War," Israel Law Review 40, no. 3 (October 2007). "Contrasting Approaches to War: Some Thoughts on the Views of Fletcher, Segev, Shany, and Zohar," Israel Law Review 40, no. 3 (October 2007). "Justification and Liability in War," Journal of Political Philosophy (in press). "Radical Cognitive Impairment," in Kimberley Brownlee and Adam Cureton, eds., Disability and Disadvantage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming). "Torture in Principle and in Practice," Public Affairs Quarterly (forthcoming). "Collective Crime and Collective Punishment," Criminal Justice Ethics (forthcoming). "Collaboration and Complicity," a commentary in a symposium on Frances Kamm's Intricate Ethics, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming). "Individual Responsibility and the Law of Jus ad Bellum," Journal of Political Philosophy (forthcoming). "Torture and Collective Shame," in Anton Leist and Peter Singer, eds., Coetzee and Philosophy (forthcoming). "The Ethics of Military Occupation," Loyola International and Comparative Law Review (forthcoming). "Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist," in Melinda Roberts and David Wasserman, eds., Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem (forthcoming). "War," in David Estlund, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).