Abstract

Objective considerations of justice can justify self-defense-many already grant this. I argue that subjective considerations are also relevant in justifying self-defense, not merely in excusing wrongful killing. By "subjective considerations" I mean agents' epistemic limitations and agents' intentions . Subjective considerations help us reach the following significant conclusions: you may sometimes kill when killing is not necessary in the traditional sense; nevertheless, you may not kill an agent who genuinely appears to be attacking you but who is in fact not a threat at all; also, you may sometimes kill an agent to avoid a threat that the agent did not cause provided that the agent did attempt to cause this kind of a threat. These conclusions carry important implications for the ethics of war. For example, combatants act wrongly whenever they kill a certain kind of enemy combatant that is indistinguishable from legitimate targets. Even so, those performing this kind of wrongful killing are possibly excused if defending against aggression