Yitzhak Benbaji
Biographic Data
| ID | 1401909 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yitzhak Benbaji |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yitzhak |
| FAMILY NAME | Benbaji |
| SIGNATURE | BENBAJI Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tel Aviv University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1472-3894 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Just Independence Wars and the October 7th Massacre
This essay explores a view held by many critics of Israel, which posits that the October 7th massacre is a war crime that is part of a just war of independence, fought by Palestinians against Israel for over a century. Raef Zreik recently presented such a view in these pages. However, this essay argues that a proper understanding of traditional just war theory renders this view false. Even if Zionism is considered a colonial wrong, Palestinians d…
Kantian Rights and the Zionist Settlement in Palestine
Zionism aimed to establish a national home for Jews in Palestine. It involved settlement of Zionist Jews in the region, despite facing resistance from many local Arabs. Was the unilateral Zionist settlement morally permissible, or was it an instance of wrongful colonialism? Three objections will be discussed here and they all stem from the Kantian ethics of state-building and the minimalistic conception of statehood that follows from it. Accordin…
Response to Five Critics
Against Moral Taint
Costly authority and transferred responsibility
Zionism and Political Liberalism
This Article offers a defense of egalitarian Zionism that, unlike Chaim Gans’s argument for this view, does not appeal to the Jewish problem in justifying the Zionist requirement for a state with a dominant Jewish community. The argument extracts from the egalitarian principles that underlie John Rawls’s political liberalism, a conception of global justice according to which members of a scattered nation are entitled to a fair opportunity to esta…
Welfare and Freedom
Civilian Immunity Without the Doctrine of Double Effect
Civilian Immunity (‘Immunity’) is the legal and moral protection that civilians enjoy against the effects of hostilities under the laws of armed conflict and according to the ethics of killing in war. Immunity specifies different permissibility conditions for directly targeting civilians on the one hand, and for harming civilians incidentally on the other hand. Immunity is standardly defended by appeal to the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). We s…
Commonsense Morality and the Ethics of Killing in War
The morality of killing in war, which has been the subject of debate among philosophers and legal scholars, focuses on two main approaches: the “traditional” and the “revisionist.” The traditional approach argues for symmetry: soldiers of both sides are liable to be killed, whether or not the war they fight is just; civilians are immune from being harmed whether or not they are responsible for the evil against which the just side fights. Recently…
Justice in Asymmetric Wars
This Article aims to extend contractarianism in just war theory to the case of asymmetric war of independence. Its main thesis is that within asymmetric wars, the traditional rule of noncombatant immunity has no contractarian justification: It systematically discriminates against the weak part to the conflict, and thus it is unfair. On the other hand, a rule that allows those who take themselves to be freedom fighters to threaten civic life, yet …
The War Convention and the Moral Division of Labour
My claim is that despite powerful arguments to the contrary, a coherent moral distinction between the jus in bello code and the jus ad bellum code can be sustained. In particular, I defend the traditional just war doctrine according to which the independence between the in bello and ad bellum codes reflects the moral equality between just and unjust combatants and between just and unjust non‐combatants. In order to establish this, I construe an i…
The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War
Journal Article The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War Get access Yitzhak Benbaji Yitzhak Benbaji Bar‐Ilan University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 229, October 2007, Pages 558–572, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x Published: 02 April 2007
Sufficiency or Priority?
A New Puzzle about Believed Fallibility
I shall consider the phenomenon of believing ourselves to have at least one false belief: a phenomenon I call believed fallibility. I shall first present a paradoxical argument which appears to show that believed fallibility is incoherent; second, note that this argument assumes that we are committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs; third, sketch a more intuitive notion of commitment in which we are not committed to the conjunction of all o…
The Doctrine of Sufficiency
This article proposes an analysis of the doctrine of sufficiency. According to my reading, the doctrine's basic positive claim is ‘prioritarian’: benefiting x is of special moral importance where (and only where) x is badly off. Its negative claim is anti-egalitarian: most comparative facts expressed by statements of the type ‘x is worse off than y’ have no moral significance at all. This contradicts the ‘classical’ priority view according to whi…
Using Others' Words and Drawing the Limits of the Thinkable
Considérons la «thèse d'inexprimabilité» (TI) : un locuteur incapable de formuler dans ses propres mots la pensée que p est incapable d'avoir cette pensée. On peut remettre en question la TI, puisqu'un locuteur peut se servir des mots d'autrui pour exprimer des pensées qu'il serait sinon incapable d'exprimer. La première partie de cet article montre qu'en faisant ressortir la pratique jusque-lè négligée consistant à utiliser les mots d'autrui, on…
The Doctrine of Sufficiency
This article proposes an analysis of the doctrine of sufficiency. According to my reading, the doctrine's basic positive claim is ‘prioritarian’: benefiting x is of special moral importance where (and only where) x is badly off. Its negative claim is anti-egalitarian: most comparative facts expressed by statements of the type ‘x is worse off than y’ have no moral significance at all. This contradicts the ‘classical’ priority view according to whi…
Commonsense Morality and the Ethics of Killing in War
The morality of killing in war, which has been the subject of debate among philosophers and legal scholars, focuses on two main approaches: the “traditional” and the “revisionist.” The traditional approach argues for symmetry: soldiers of both sides are liable to be killed, whether or not the war they fight is just; civilians are immune from being harmed whether or not they are responsible for the evil against which the just side fights. Recently…
The War Convention and the Moral Division of Labour
My claim is that despite powerful arguments to the contrary, a coherent moral distinction between the jus in bello code and the jus ad bellum code can be sustained. In particular, I defend the traditional just war doctrine according to which the independence between the in bello and ad bellum codes reflects the moral equality between just and unjust combatants and between just and unjust non‐combatants. In order to establish this, I construe an i…
The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War
Journal Article The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War Get access Yitzhak Benbaji Yitzhak Benbaji Bar‐Ilan University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 229, October 2007, Pages 558–572, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x Published: 02 April 2007
Using Others' Words and Drawing the Limits of the Thinkable
Considérons la «thèse d'inexprimabilité» (TI) : un locuteur incapable de formuler dans ses propres mots la pensée que p est incapable d'avoir cette pensée. On peut remettre en question la TI, puisqu'un locuteur peut se servir des mots d'autrui pour exprimer des pensées qu'il serait sinon incapable d'exprimer. La première partie de cet article montre qu'en faisant ressortir la pratique jusque-lè négligée consistant à utiliser les mots d'autrui, on…
The Doctrine of Sufficiency
This article proposes an analysis of the doctrine of sufficiency. According to my reading, the doctrine's basic positive claim is ‘prioritarian’: benefiting x is of special moral importance where (and only where) x is badly off. Its negative claim is anti-egalitarian: most comparative facts expressed by statements of the type ‘x is worse off than y’ have no moral significance at all. This contradicts the ‘classical’ priority view according to whi…
Sufficiency or Priority?
A New Puzzle about Believed Fallibility
I shall consider the phenomenon of believing ourselves to have at least one false belief: a phenomenon I call believed fallibility. I shall first present a paradoxical argument which appears to show that believed fallibility is incoherent; second, note that this argument assumes that we are committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs; third, sketch a more intuitive notion of commitment in which we are not committed to the conjunction of all o…
The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War
Journal Article The Responsibility of Soldiers and the Ethics of Killing in War Get access Yitzhak Benbaji Yitzhak Benbaji Bar‐Ilan University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 229, October 2007, Pages 558–572, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.497.x Published: 02 April 2007
The War Convention and the Moral Division of Labour
My claim is that despite powerful arguments to the contrary, a coherent moral distinction between the jus in bello code and the jus ad bellum code can be sustained. In particular, I defend the traditional just war doctrine according to which the independence between the in bello and ad bellum codes reflects the moral equality between just and unjust combatants and between just and unjust non‐combatants. In order to establish this, I construe an i…
Justice in Asymmetric Wars
This Article aims to extend contractarianism in just war theory to the case of asymmetric war of independence. Its main thesis is that within asymmetric wars, the traditional rule of noncombatant immunity has no contractarian justification: It systematically discriminates against the weak part to the conflict, and thus it is unfair. On the other hand, a rule that allows those who take themselves to be freedom fighters to threaten civic life, yet …
Commonsense Morality and the Ethics of Killing in War
The morality of killing in war, which has been the subject of debate among philosophers and legal scholars, focuses on two main approaches: the “traditional” and the “revisionist.” The traditional approach argues for symmetry: soldiers of both sides are liable to be killed, whether or not the war they fight is just; civilians are immune from being harmed whether or not they are responsible for the evil against which the just side fights. Recently…
Civilian Immunity Without the Doctrine of Double Effect
Civilian Immunity (‘Immunity’) is the legal and moral protection that civilians enjoy against the effects of hostilities under the laws of armed conflict and according to the ethics of killing in war. Immunity specifies different permissibility conditions for directly targeting civilians on the one hand, and for harming civilians incidentally on the other hand. Immunity is standardly defended by appeal to the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). We s…
Zionism and Political Liberalism
This Article offers a defense of egalitarian Zionism that, unlike Chaim Gans’s argument for this view, does not appeal to the Jewish problem in justifying the Zionist requirement for a state with a dominant Jewish community. The argument extracts from the egalitarian principles that underlie John Rawls’s political liberalism, a conception of global justice according to which members of a scattered nation are entitled to a fair opportunity to esta…
Welfare and Freedom
Against Moral Taint
Costly authority and transferred responsibility
Response to Five Critics
Just Independence Wars and the October 7th Massacre
This essay explores a view held by many critics of Israel, which posits that the October 7th massacre is a war crime that is part of a just war of independence, fought by Palestinians against Israel for over a century. Raef Zreik recently presented such a view in these pages. However, this essay argues that a proper understanding of traditional just war theory renders this view false. Even if Zionism is considered a colonial wrong, Palestinians d…
Kantian Rights and the Zionist Settlement in Palestine
Zionism aimed to establish a national home for Jews in Palestine. It involved settlement of Zionist Jews in the region, despite facing resistance from many local Arabs. Was the unilateral Zionist settlement morally permissible, or was it an instance of wrongful colonialism? Three objections will be discussed here and they all stem from the Kantian ethics of state-building and the minimalistic conception of statehood that follows from it. Accordin…
Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Law and economics (9 works) · War, Ethics, and Justification (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (5 works) · Just war theory (5 works) · Spanish Civil War (5 works) · Torture, Ethics, and Law (5 works)