‘If someone attacks me, isn't it obvious that I am allowed to defend myself?’ This was the initial reaction of some people, including several philosophers, when told that I was engaged in a philosophical inquiry into the justification of homicide in self-defence. Perhaps this response should have been unsurprising. Self-defence is widely regarded and cited as a paradigm of morally permissible private homicide. Often this view of self-defence has wider application where the permissibility of self-defence is held to ground the justification of defence of others and the justification of defensive warfare.

Compared with controversial issues such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, warfare, nuclear deterrence, animal rights, famine relief, and our obligations to future people, homicide in self-defence has received limited attention as an issue in its own right in the voluminous recent philosophical literature concerned with moral problems of life and death. Undoubtedly this comparative neglect of self-defence is chiefly due to the assumption that the moral justification of homicide in self-defence is straightforward and, hence, philosophically uninteresting. This often uncritical assumption is mistaken, as those relatively few philosophers who have addressed the issue in any depth would, I'm sure, attest.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES

So, what is philosophically problematic and interesting about the justification of homicide in self-defence? Why should the comparative neglect of this issue in practical ethics be remedied? The content of this book answers these two questions in the context of the book's central aim, which is to set out and discuss the principles relevant to justified homicide in self-defence.