The lesser-evil logic measures morality against one’s own violence

Evidence

As Eyal Weizman has shown, this type of justification is essentially based on a logic of the lesser evil: “the essence of our humanitarian present, obsessed with the calculations and calibrations that seek to moderate, ever so slightly, the evils that it has largely caused itself.” He notes that Hannah Arendt too warned against this type of argument: “Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Refusing to kill is about what one becomes, not what one ought to do; Lesser-evil arguments make people forget they chose evil; Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463 (+3 more)

Related

• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil (similarity 0.91)
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power (similarity 0.88)
• Lesser-evil arguments make people forget they chose evil (similarity 0.86)
• Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good (similarity 0.84)
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties (similarity 0.83)
• Drone advocates came to believe their own claims of negligible collateral damage. (similarity 0.83)
• Private protection is a lesser evil consumed cynically (similarity 0.82)
• Refusing to kill is about what one becomes, not what one ought to do (similarity 0.82)
• Jus in bello norms applied to drones convert combat ethics into necroethics (similarity 0.80)
• The drone exemplifies the moral hazard of acting without bearing costs (similarity 0.79)
• Preemptive drone strikes rest on fragile and therefore dangerous prediction claims. (similarity 0.79)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.79)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.78)
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem (similarity 0.78)
• The fewer-collateral-victims argument is false because the alternative was no strike at all. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil #exemplifies (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties #exemplifies (0.80)