8 February to 15 February

What is a proportionate response to violence?

It is agreed that responses to attack, by individuals or countries, must, morally, be proportionate. A year after the Gaza war, let us ask what this means. "Proportional to the harm done" would allow both too much, by permitting proportionate revenge, and too little, by not allowing defence against a serious future threat, as in Gaza. "Doing less harm than the enemy would" also fails: a person whose life is threatened by two people must, given the duty to protect innocent life, including one's own, kill them both rather than be killed. So the response must be proportionate to the threat. The problem is to decide how genuine and how grave a threat is: to react too soon may produce a needless conflict, to react too late may be disastrous. Also, if violence is a last resort, we have to decide when other ways of defusing the situation, often though not always possible, have failed.

But this assumes that violence in self-defence and in defence of others is, as a last resort, a right and a duty. So I believe; but it would be good to hear the other side. Will anyone out there defend a thoroughgoing pacifism and non-violence?

Harry Lesser, Centre for Philosophy, University of Manchester