Download PDF (185kb)

There are compelling reasons to accept Revisionism in just war theory, i.e., the view, roughly, that combatants fighting on the unjust side of a war have no moral right to kill combatants fighting on the just side. This seems to imply that participating in an unjust war as an ordinary soldier is gravely immoral. Indeed, it’s hard to see why such soldiers aren’t the moral peers of the low-level Holocaust perpetrators who have been found guilty of many counts of aiding and abetting murder. This article explores the implications of Revisionism for the moral culpability and blameworthiness of unjust combatants. I argue that (i) some unjust combatants who respect the rules of war are as culpable, and may be just as blameworthy, as low-level Holocaust perpetrators; however, (ii) there remain good grounds for thinking that such perpetrators are often more blameworthy than ordinary unjust combatants even if Revisionism is true.

Keywords: just war; revisionism; moral equality of combatants; responsibility; Holocaust; atrocity