Neither Sin nor Paradox

The Good Kill ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 82-119
Author(s):  
Marc LiVecche
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Just War ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Moral Vision ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
The World ◽  
Just War Tradition

Chapter 3 demonstrates how the just war tradition can help warfighters navigate the moral complexities of combat without compromising deeply held normative commitments. Drawing on the classical imagination of C. S. Lewis, it drafts a portrait of the just warrior as a marbling of the characteristics of Venus and Mars—the personifications of love and war. Such a union of dispositions demonstrates the possibility of attending to both the necessity of war and the requirements of love without contradiction. The just war tradition is shown to be committed to both moral realism—the view that what is good in the world is determined by a moral order grounded in objective reality—and to a moral vision that is essentially eudaemonist, or deeply concerned with the promotion of human flourishing, including enemy flourishing. This leads to a theological examination of enemy love and to a distinction between moral and nonmoral evil.

10. War and intervention

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
World War ◽  
Jus Post Bellum ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
Just War Tradition

This chapter examines the main theoretical approaches to war and the circumstances under which it is permissible to wage war. War is one of the most morally difficult, and morally pressing, aspects of human existence. It nearly always involves killing and maiming on a vast scale. Despite its destructive nature, and despite the rise of rights talk on the international stage and the spread of democracy across large parts of the world, war persists. The chapter first considers the just war tradition and alternatives to just war theory before discussing two theoretical approaches to the ethics of war: collectivism and individualism. It also explores three principles that govern the fighting of war: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. A case study on Afghanistan and the ‘war on terror’ is presented, along with Key Thinkers boxes featuring Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan.

Gender, Just War, and the Ethics of War and Peace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Just War Tradition

The just war tradition is the most dominant framework for analyzing the morality of war. Just war theory is being challenged by proponents of two philosophical views: realism, which considers moral questions about war to be irrelevant, and pacifism, which rejects the idea that war can ever be moral. Realism and pacifism offer a useful starting point for thinking about the ethics of war and peace. Feminists have been engaged with the just war tradition, mainly by exposing the gendered biases of just war attempts to restrain and regulate war and studying the role that war and its regulation plays in defining masculinity. In particular, feminists claim that the two rules of just war, jus ad bellum and jus in bello, discriminate against women. In regard to contemporary warfare, such as post-Cold War humanitarian interventions and the War on Terror, feminists have questioned the appropriateness of just war concepts to deal with the specific ethical challenges that these conflicts produce. Instead of abstract moral reasoning, which they critique as being linked to the masculine ideals of autonomy and rationality, many feminist argue for certain varieties of an ethics of care. Further research is needed to elaborate the basis of an ethical response to violence that builds on philosophical work on feminist ethics. Key areas for future investigation include asking hard questions about whom we may kill, and how certain people become killable in war while others remain protected.

Niebuhrian Takeaways on the Just War Tradition and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-122
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
The World ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

This chapter situates Niebuhr in the world of the just war theory, while offering an assessment of his likely views of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and whether or not it was consistent with a Niebuhrian/just war approach to jus ad bellum (considerations of whether it is just to launch a war). While most writers consider Niebuhr a firm Augustinian and solidly in the camp of the just warriors (as do I), some controversy has arisen around his consequentialism, coupled with his relative lack of attention to jus in bello considerations (considerations of justice in how a war is fought). If Niebuhr had been alive in 2003, this study concludes that he would have been firmly against the Iraq War because of what he would have seen as U.S. hubris, U.S. assumptions of American exceptionalism, and the fact that the war did not accord with just war theory’s jus ad bellum standards.

Reclaiming the System

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Organizational Role ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Globalized World

The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but ‘cogs’ in this system—but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a ‘system’. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. She asks how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls. She develops the notion of ‘transformational agency’, which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one’s organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The last part zooms out to the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to ‘the system’ or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world.

Humanism, the Bible, and Erasmus’s Moral World Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Tubau
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Just War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
World Order ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Moral World

This chapter sets Erasmus’s ideas on morality and the responsibility of rulers with regard to war in their historical context, showing their coherence and consistency with the rest of his philosophy. First, there is an analysis of Erasmus’s criticisms of the moral and legal justifications of war at the time, which were based on the just war theory elaborated by canon lawyers. This is followed by an examination of his ideas about the moral order in which the ruler should be educated and political power be exercised, with the role of arbitration as the way to resolve conflicts between rulers. As these two closely related questions are developed, the chapter shows that the moral formation of rulers, grounded in Christ’s message and the virtue politics of fifteenth-century Italian humanism, is the keystone of the moral world order that Erasmus proposes for his contemporaries.

Constructive realism: In defense of the objective reality of perspectives

Human Affairs ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Madzia
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
William James ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Constructive Realism ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Epistemological Realism

AbstractThe paper proposes an outline of a reconciliatory approach to the perennial controversy between epistemological realism and anti-realism (constructionism). My main conceptual source in explaining this view is the philosophy of pragmatism, more specifically, the epistemological theories of George H. Mead, John Dewey, and also William James’ radical empiricism. First, the paper analyzes the pragmatic treatment of the goal-directedness of action, especially with regard to Mead’s notion of attitudes, and relates it to certain contemporary epistemological theories provided by the cognitive sciences (Maturana, Rizzolatti, Clark). Against this background, the paper presents a philosophical as well as empirical justification of why we should interpret the environment and its objects in terms of possibilities for action. In Mead’s view, the objects and events of our world emerge within stable patterns of organism-environment interactions, which he called “perspectives”. According to pragmatism as well as the aforementioned cognitive scientists, perception and other cognitive processes include not only neural processes in our heads but also the world itself. Elaborating on Mead’s concept of perspectives, the paper argues in favor of the epistemological position called “constructive realism.”

Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH BURCHARD
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Just War ◽  
State System ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Just War Tradition

Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde allows us to rethink his interlinked proposals for the organization of the Weimar Republic, namely his theory of ‘democratic dictatorship’ and the ‘concept of the political’. Connecting the domestic homogeneity of an empowered people with the pluralism of the Westphalian state system, Schmitt seeks to humanize war; he objects to the renaissance of the ‘just war’ tradition, which is premised on a discriminating concept of war. Schmitt's objections are valid today, yet their Eurocentric foundations are also partially outdated. We are thus to argue with Schmitt against Schmitt to reflect on possibilities for the humanization of war.

Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, by Paola Pugliatti

2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (527) ◽  
pp. 976-978
Author(s):  
C. S. L. Davies
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Tradition
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