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Abstract

Emergency situations cannot be defined as situations in which a person is facing contradictory moral duties. Rather, they are situations in which an asset secured also by moral norms is in imminent danger so that the situation is perceived as existentially threatening for a person, either by the person herself or by someone else, for reasons comprehensible also for a third person. Hence, emergency situations call for an emergency ethics since in an emergency situation an action can be morally permissible that would not be permissible in a different situation. As I will show in this paper, whether an action is morally permissible in such an emergency situation that would not be permissible in a different situation depends on five conditions. These conditions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the moral permissibility of an action that would be morally forbidden if they were not fulfilled.