Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 December 2025
This chapter differentiates technologies aiming at restoring individuals’ physical or psychological faculties from those aiming at increasing them. While the former type of technology finds its moral justification in sound arguments, the latter are seen by many as being more questionable. This chapter discusses the fear associated with capacity-increasing technologies in the military sphere, particularly with regard to the risk of creating an asymmetry between combatants. Despite the fact that the moral reasons for the use of capacity-restoring technologies are very different from those of capacity-increasing technologies, it would nonetheless be a mistake to automatically condemn the latter. Of course, they create an asymmetrical relationship between the states that have them and the ones who do not; however, this inequality between combatants does not challenge the moral justification for killing during wartime. Indeed, capacity-increasing technologies allow some soldiers to augment their chances of survival on the battlefield, but they do not create a situation where their beneficiaries will become absolutely invulnerable to being wounded or killed. Based upon the morality of warfare, this distinction, is not insignificant, as it is the core element that allows individuals to kill other human beings in times of war. Therefore, as long as these technologies will not engender invulnerability, they should not be considered as morally reprehensible.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.