Summary Of War And Massacre By Thomas Nagel

303 Words2 Pages
Thomas Nagel lists multiple absolutist moral reasons why fighting wars is ethically permissible in his work, “War and Massacre,” which I will reference throughout this paper. While Nagel offers several justifications for an absolutist motivation for fighting a war, the one that I will use to support my argument is that he mentions if the means will outweigh the costs, then in a dilemma between utilitarian versus absolutist choice, utilitarianism looks at what will happen, whereas the absolutist perspective will look at what one is doing (124). Something within this quote that is important to mention is that the scenario Nagel describes where absolutism and utilitarianism are independent, Nagel also suggests that the absolutist argument is only