Abstract
The overall purpose of my thesis is to determine the moral responsibility of soldiers in war. My theoretical framework is that of the just war tradition, a major moral tradition that holds that war can be evaluated according to certain moral rules.
The concept of moral responsibility is discussed thoroughly. I argue that an agent can be regarded as a responsible person if he has a capacity for effective deliberation. A central question, then, is whether soldiers generally have such a capacity in war. Further, I claim that an agent can be held responsible for a particular injurious action if he acted freely and knowingly. Following Augustine, Francisco de Vitoria, and Michael Walzer, I conceive of war as a state in which moral choice is possible. Likewise, I argue that we tend to judge actions in war as more and less just. Hence, I argue that the conditions for holding someone responsible are applicable in war. Further, I claim that all soldiers, independently of rank, may have to make decisions in war. A major concern is to define and delimit their responsibility more closely. In this regard, I make a distinction between being morally responsible and being culpable. To be morally responsible does not necessarily imply that one is culpable, neither morally nor legally, for a particular harm. Thus, not all of our judgments of responsibility can be translated into judgments of legal responsibility.