期刊名称：Reason Papers : A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies
印刷版ISSN：0363-1893
出版年度：2006
卷号：28
页码：51-60
出版社：Reason Papers
摘要：The morality of warfare is an issue that has long divided libertarians. The spectrum of libertarian opinion on the subject ranges all the way from Leonard Peikoff, who defends the use of nuclear weapons against civilian targets,1to Robert LeFevre, who denies the legitimacy of all violence, even in self-defense.2Needless to say, most libertarians fall at various points between these two extremes—though the divisions have beco me sharper since the 9/11 attacks. (One of the more ironic manifestations of these divisio ns is that French libertarians are far more likely to support current U.S. foreign policy than American libertarians are; perhaps anti-government thinkers tend to be more attracted to whatever position their own government opposes.) What view of warfare is most consistent with libertarian principles. Here I shall distinguish between libertarianism as a normative ethical theory—a theory of justice—and libertarianism as a descriptive social theory. Libertarians disagree with one another as to the extent of the former's dependence on the latter; utilitarian libertarians profess to believe the dependence total, while natural-rights libertarians profess to believe it nonexistent, but in practice both groups tend to treat the dependence as partial, and so will I.
