The Ethics of Killing Problems at the Margins of Life [Hardcover]

This magisterial work is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of killing, where the moral status of the individual killed is uncertain. Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, McMahan looks carefully at a host of practical issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

Publication of this book is a welcome event. McMahan's discussions involve analyses of more alternative views than, I suspect, anyone other than McMahan has ever imagined.The Ethics of Killingis detailed, careful, comprehensive, and innovative. [It] is an example of philosophy at the highest level. It is a genuine pleasure to have the opportunity to read such a probing, careful, analytical, honest, and utterly wonderful book. I recommend it highly. It would not be unreasonable to make it required reading for any graduate student (or anyone else) who needs to understand the nature of first-class philosophical thought. --Ethics

An enormously rich contribution to personal identity theory, ethical theory, and applied ethics. [Each of the five hefty chapters] could be a short book of scholarly significance...Chapter 2 presents the most probing investigation of the harm of death of which I am aware. --David DeGrazia,Philosophy and Public Affairs

The thoroughness and comprehensiveness with which [McMahan] has worked out [his] ideas is deeply impressive. The presentation is throughout so lucid that non-specialists should be able to profit greatly from the book. There could be no better proof of the paradoxical vitality of the subject of death and killing than this monumental book. --The Times Literary Supplement

McMahan is one of America's finest contemporary moral theorists...[His] long-awaited book combines a close attention to real-life moral issues with a solid insight into foundational matters of metaphysics and ethical theorl“­