Help!: The Ethics of Rescue - Hardcover

Frowe, Prof Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198929404 ISBN 13: 9780198929406

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2026

Synopsis

Most people agree that we can have duties to prevent harm to others. But there is significant disagreement about what these duties demand of us and what they permit others to do to us. In Help! The Ethics of Rescue, Helen Frowe develops an account of the theoretical underpinnings of the duty to rescue. She rejects the influential view that the limits of the duty to rescue are explained by agent-relative prerogatives to care more about our own interests than the interests of others. In its place, she defends an agent-neutral account of the duty to rescue, grounded in the limits of the duty to use ourselves as a means for the benefit of others. Her account provides a unified, non-consequentialist account of the duty to rescue that tightly connects our right to refrain from saving to the wrongness of others forcing us to save. Frowe explores the implications of this agent-neutral account for a number of key debates in the ethics of rescue, such as the duty to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming, the moral significance of property rights over harm-preventing resources, and the permissibility of forming agreements to save. She also considers its implications for applied aspects of the duty to rescue, including the ethics of abortion, the ethics of war, and duties to refugees.

About this title

About the Author

Helen Frowe is Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar at Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. Her books include Defensive Killing, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction, 3rd edn. and, with Derek Matravers, Stones and Lives: The Ethics of Protecting Heritage in War. She is the co-editor of Heritage in War: Ethical Issues, Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War and How We Fight: Ethics in War. She was the recipient of the 2023 Elizabeth D. Rockwell Prize and 2019 Marc Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198929404
• ISBN 13: 9780198929406
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320