Jeff McMahan is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 philosopher. McMahan took his first degree at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 and his PhD

PHD

PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, and is currently professor of philosophy at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. He has written extensively on normative

Normative ethics

Normative ethics is the study of ethical action. It is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking...

 and applied

Applied ethics

Applied ethics is, in the words of Brenda Almond, co-founder of the Society for Applied Philosophy, "the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment"...

 ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

. His publications include The Morality of Nationalism (co-edited with Robert McKim; Oxford, 1997), The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford, 2002) and Killing in War (Oxford, 2009), which deals with Just War

Just War

Just war theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin, studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers, which holds that a conflict ought to meet philosophical, religious or political criteria.-Origins:The concept of justification for...

 theory and argues against the deeply held beliefs within the theory.

Jeff McMahan is an advocate of the higher brain death view. He claims that there is a difference between an organism's death and a person's death, because person (personhood) refers to the personality and higher-thinking type of responsiveness while organism refers only to the body in which a person is housed.

Selected bibliography

• The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press July 2003) (ISBN: 0-195-16982-4)
• Killing In War: (Oxford University Press May 2009) (ISBN: 0-199-54866-8)

External links

• Personal website. Includes list of publications.
• Unjust War in Iraq. The Pelican Record XLI, no. 5 (December 2004): 21-33.
• Introduction to the work of Jeff McMahan. By Lucia Sommer.