Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Robert Anderson criticizes my position in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 2004, whereinI argued for the justification of certain kinds of actions even though they involve the killing of innocents. He does not adequately assess the salient features of thekinds of cases I was defending, and he ignores my use of Philippa Foot’s distinction between the demands of justice and charity in characterizing the morally relevant principles involved in such cases. I argued that the actions involving the killing of the innocent as a side effect in such cases is not the kind of killing which justice prohibits because in such cases there is both no one who is killed unjustly and yet there are lives which charity clearly demands that we save. In this paper, I respond to Anderson’s criticism of my 2004 paper.