This book explores the moral response to war and aggression within the context of self-defence. Two main projects are undertaken: to explain defensive rights in their most general form, and determine whether this explanation can be used as grounds for a right of national self-defence. It contends that although a coherent account of self-defence can be built around the idea of personal rights, the attempt justify war based on the conception of self-defence faces significant obstacles and ultimately fails. Self-defence has significant consequences for the entire enterprise of normative international relations, given its position as the centrepiece of the modern jus ad bellum (the rules specifying the conditions for a just war).

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When the Bush and Blair administrations justified the 2003 war on Iraq as an act of preemptive self-defense, this was greeted in many quarters with understandable skepticism. How can the right of self-defense be legitimately invoked when no prior aggressive attack has occurred and there is no evidence that one is imminent? This question, much debated in the months leading up to the war, invites us to reflect critically on the content of the right of self-defense. Yet there is a deeper question to be asked about the idea of a war of self-defense; namely, how is it that war can be considered an act of self-defense at all? How exactly is it that the concept of self-defense can provide a justification for war? It is this question that I ask in War and Self-Defense and the answer I arrive at is a surprising one.

To think about the purpose of corporations is to think about what corporations are for. In this article, we argue that the concept of a purpose has an important role in thinking about the moral evaluation of corporations. We make three contributions. First, we distinguish different uses of the concepts of social and corporate purpose. Social purpose concerns the contribution that the corporation makes to realising societal goals. Corporate purpose concerns the goals the corporation should actively pursue. Second, we investigate whether corporations ought to serve a social purpose and whether corporations ought to actively pursue their corporate purpose. Third, we explore critically what roles the concepts of social and corporate purpose can fulfil in moral reflection on and of corporations. In particular, we distinguish the constructive, the communicative, and the critical role of social and corporate purpose.