[Review of] Taking Life: Three Theories on the Ethics of Killing, by Torbjörn Tännsjö

Tännsjö's ambitious aim is to defend a comprehensive ethical stance on killing. Chapter 1 describes his method, which he terms ‘applied ethics (turned upside down)’ [1]. The method is essentially abductive and broadly coherentist. The trustworthiness of our intuitions about particular ethical phenomena are subjected to ‘cognitive psychotherapy’ in order to ascertain whether they are unduly partial, the mere product of tradition, infected by theoretical commitments, etc. We then seek to identify the theoretical principles that provide the best explanation of these ‘strong and considered’ intuitions.