Double effect and Proportionalism

• Aquinas says that killing in self-defence is justified as long as it wasn't intended and was an unavoidable result of the amount of necessary force it took to save your own life
• killing in self-defence has two effects: you are alive, and you have killed someone
• The defence must be proportional to the harm caused by the offence.
• When unnecessary violence is used, it is an unlawful action
• Louis Pojman (1935-2005) said that Aquinas's position and the natural moral law tradition are in absolute
• The doctrine of double effect has was put together as a neat algorithm for solving moral disputes in which an act has two effects: one good and one bad
• The doctrine of double effect:

  1. The nature of the act condition
  2. The means-end condition
  3. The right-intention condition
  4. The proportionality condition
• The nature of the act condition:

  • Action must be morally good or indifferent/ neutral
  • Lying/ intentionally killing an innocent person are never morally permissible
• The means-end condition

  • The bad effect must not be the means by which the good effect is achieved
  • E.g. Robin Hood's actions are unlawful
• The right intention condition:

  • The intention must only be to achieve the good effect
  • The bad effect must exist as an unintended side-effect
• The proportionality condition:

  • The good effect must be equal in importance to the bad effect
  • e.g. giving children vaccines and hurting them prevents them from getting diseases
• Proportionalism states that in a sufficiently unusual situation it might be right to ignore a rule