Kaplan’s System and Process

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-120
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Just War ◽  
Small Range ◽  
Scientific Rigour ◽  
Moral Content ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
Special Language

In this note Wight critically analyses Morton Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics. While ‘positivist theorists’ aspiring to scientific rigour have belittled philosophical works on topics such as the just war or natural law as ‘tautologous or platitudinous’, these theorists have themselves constructed ‘new edifices of tautology and platitude’. Kaplan, for example, restates ‘simple and obvious truths, in the impressive special language of his theory’. Wight lists other shortcomings. Kaplan’s ‘historical limitedness’ reflects his ‘small range of historical reference’. Kaplan’s reliance on the abstractions of game theory leads to ‘the unintentional effect’ of ‘trivialization’ of ‘the awful issues of peace and war’. Furthermore, Kaplan’s ‘analytical jargon atomises and disintegrates reality’, and this results in ‘dehumanization’ and ‘hypostatization’ of the abstractions. Finally, ‘Objectivity becomes moral neutrality’, with ‘moral content … drained off, and then added again to the stew in pinches of recognition as “parameters” or “values”’.

Blurring the Lines

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brunstetter
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
Clear Line ◽  
Western Democracies

Law enforcement is often seen as the de facto, and relatively pure, alternative to contemporary just war. If we are not at war, then the more restrictive law enforcement is the viable paradigm. This chapter interrogates two assumptions underlying this view. It begins by demystifying the unwritten assumption that the liberal law enforcement paradigm associated with Western democracies is the idealized foil to just war. Using France, whose postcolonial legacy complicates the turn to the Western liberal paradigm as an illuminating case, the chapter explores how domestic warlike violence creates a state of fractured order—the violence and potential for abuses of power that permeate society as the government seeks to balance security and individual rights. The chapter then turns to the transnational context to challenge the view that there exists a clear line between the state of war and the state of peace. Mali serves as a paradigmatic case to illustrate how the effectiveness of law enforcement is curtailed in spaces of contested order where heavily armed terrorist groups challenge the authority of the state, thus prompting a turn to Special Forces and drones to restore order. In both contexts, the chapter identifies a shift away from the restrained norms that typically govern the use of force in law enforcement to more warlike uses of force that blur the lines between peace and war. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how this shift might inform the ethics of limited force, which lies between law enforcement and just war.

Business as International Politics: Drawing Insights from Nation-State to Inter-Firm Alliances

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oded Shenkar ◽  
Ilgaz Arikan
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Transaction Cost ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
And Performance

This paper broadens the scope and depth of business alliance research by way of interdisciplinary enrichment. The paper draws on the political science literature on nation-state alliances to generate insights into the establishment, operations and performance of inter-firm alliances. Shared theory bases of game theory and transaction cost economics, as well as theories, variables and research findings indigenous to political science are posited as a platform from which propositions regarding inter-firm alliances are derived.

Teaching the Scientific Study of International Processes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Scott Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Finite Time ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Comparative Case Studies

The Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) is an approach aimed at teaching of international politics scientifically. Teaching scientifically means teaching students how to use evidence to support or disprove some particular logical argument or hypothesis that reaches some level of generalization about relationships between concepts. Closely related to simply asking what evidence there is, is teaching students to address the breadth, depth, and quality of that evidence. The scientific approach may also draw attention to the logic of arguments and policies. Are policies, positions, and the arguments behind them logical? Or is some policy or position based on assumptions that are not logically related, or only true if certain auxiliary assumptions hold true? Teaching methods for SSIP include comparative case studies, experiments and surveys, data sets, and game theory and simulation. Instructors also face several challenges when seeking to teach scientifically, and in particular when they try to make time to teach methodology as part of an international politics course. Some problems are relatively easily overcome just by focusing on effective teaching. Other are unique to SSIP and cannot be dealt with quite so easily. Among these are the need to appeal to a broad audience, and dealing with students' negative reactions to the term “science” and the constraint of finite time in a course.

Проблема морального содержания права в концепции Дж. Финниса

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
V. Yu. Perov ◽  
A. D. Sevastianova
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Moral Content ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
John Finnis

The law and morality the interrelation issue has been the subject for many discussions, recent works in the philosophy field and law ethics of renowned authors as H. Hart, L. Fuller and J. Finnis, who contributed significantly to the topic. The key question about the moral content of law is examined within the polemics between theorists of legal positivism and natural law legal theorists. This article touches upon this issue by the example of the concept of John Finnis, one of the most brilliant contemporary law philosophers, his neo-naturalistic concept of natural law includes some ideas of modern positivism. J. Finnis claims natural law appears as a set of principles of practical reasonableness for the ordering of human life and the human community. Law acts as a method to ensure “the common good” of the community and is based on seven self-evident, as he believes the basic human goods necessary for the human flourishing. The requirements of practical reasonableness compose the content of natural law, contain recommendations on how to carry out these self-evident goods. For Finnis, the aim of law is to provide conditions, according to the requirements of practical reasonableness, in which these seven goods can be realized. It is outlined that J. Finnis regards law as a social institute which purpose is to regulate human affairs, and thus to promote the creation of a community where everyone could realize the seven fundamental goods for humankind.

Physician Assistance in Dying: An Option for Christians?

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-249
Author(s):  
Lloyd Steffen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Just War ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Controversial Problem ◽  
Natural Law Theory

Abstract Opposition to physician-assisted suicide is widespread in Christian ethics. However, on a topic as controversial as physician-assisted suicide, no one can reasonably speak for “the Christian” perspective. Natural-law and, specifically, just-war thinking are claimed in the Christian tradition, yet the natural-law contribution to a Christian ethical analysis of physician-assisted suicide requires explanation and defense. Natural-law ethical theory affirms the central role of reason in moral thinking and provides a theoretical resource in contemporary ethics to assist in analyzing specific moral issues, problems, and conflicts. This essay seeks to demonstrate how just-war thinking, derived from natural-law tradition, allows movement from the theoretical world of natural-law theory to the practical world of normative ethics. Here the case is made that the just-war model of ethics helps elucidate the moral problematic involved in physician-assisted suicide while clarifying direction on this particularly thorny and controversial problem.

Just War Theory and the Problem of International Politics

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-175
Author(s):  
Helmut David Baer ◽  
Joseph E. Capizzi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory

scholarly journals The just war theory and international law

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 243-265
Author(s):  
Milos Jovanovic
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Common Base ◽  
Further Development

The paper provides a detailed overview of the existing relationship between the just war theory and international law. It stresses the fact that the two concepts were historically incompatible. The just war theory falls within ethics and appeals to superior principles that were not in accordance with the positivist law theory and the concept of sovereignty upon which public international law was founded. That incompatibility may at first seem as a paradox since the two concepts should be derived from a common base: the idea of justice. Further development of international law has clearly proved that law cannot be separated from the idea of justice and that is, to some extent, closely linked to some elements of natural law. The author concludes that in the domain of the use of force contemporary international law provides a legal frame, which is in accordance with the precepts of the just war theory.

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