Right Intention: A Reply to Janzen, Purves, and Jenkins

Abstract

Recently, Greg Janzen as well as Duncan Purves and Ryan Jenkins have launched sustained attacks on the criterion of right intention. Their objections are also directed against my account of right intention, which interprets right intention in terms of a knowledge requirement: the agent must know that the mind-independent requirements for waging a justified war are satisfied. Janzen basically argues that this account relies on certain incorrect premises. My reply is that he misunderstands the account and its premises. Purves and Jenkins, in contrast, argue that the right intention criterion understood as a mere knowledge requirement is superfluous, since the function it serves can be performed by prospects of success and/or proportionality. I argue that prospects of success and proportionality cannot fulfill the function of proper action guidance without a separate criterion of right intention. Right intention, therefore, is an indispensable criterion of just war theory.