James Turner Johnson's Just War Idea: Commanding the Headwaters of Tradition

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cian O'Driscoll

James Turner Johnson is the foremost scholar of the just war tradition working today. His treatment of the historical development of the just war tradition has been hugely important, influencing a generation of theorists. Despite this, Johnson's work has not generated much in the way of critical commentary or analysis. This paper aims to rectify this oversight. Engaging in a close and critical reading of Johnson's work, it claims that his historical reconstruction of the just war tradition is bounded by two key thematic lines — the imperative of vindicative justice and the ideal of Christian love — and occasionally betrays an excessive deference to the authority of past practice. By way of conclusion, this paper sums up the promise and limits of Johnson's approach, and reflects upon its contribution to contemporary just war scholarship.

Author(s):  
M.G.L. Mills ◽  
M.E.J. Mills
Keyword(s):  

The main findings from the study, some of which have led to altering perceptions of cheetah biology, are summarized. It is hoped that this will highlight topics for future cheetah research in order to expand knowledge of the species and its role in biodiversity. Comparisons of cheetah ecology and behaviour have been made between the southern Kalahari and other landscapes, especially the Serengeti Plains. These areas are at extremes of the cheetah’s habitat range and therefore differences in the way it has adapted to the southern Kalahari compared with the Serengeti would be expected. The Serengeti Plains, with their vast herds of gazelle and extremely open landscape, might appear to be the ideal habitat for the cheetah. However, it is not that simple and, in some respects cheetahs perform better in the southern Kalahari than they do on the Serengeti Plains. Arid systems are clearly important cheetah habitat.


Horizons ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-123
Author(s):  
Laurie Johnston

Pope Francis titled his recent World Day of Peace message “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.” The use of the word “style” is unusual but important. It reveals the significance of the way we talk about the questions of violence and peace—our rhetoric, in other words. It has been suggested that talking about “just war theory” can, in fact, obstruct the development and use of nonviolent techniques for the resolution of conflict. My contribution to this roundtable will examine the extent to which that is the case.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH BURCHARD

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.


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

Target ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Assis Rosa

Abstract Focussing on the pragmatic dimension of literary dialogue in narrative fiction, this paper analyses: (a) the negotiation of power carried out by characters and the way it is relayed in the text as signalled by forms of address; and (b) the negotiation performed by the translator in order to reproduce a power relation when dealing with the cultural and social environments of the source- and the target-language texts. By analysing one hundred years of Robinson Crusoe translated into European Portuguese (189– to 1992) the paper will attempt to reveal a possible historical development of translational norms and the way in which the historical, cultural and social environments may have influenced them.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.


2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron W. Hughes

AbstractThis paper examines Hermann Cohen’s idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis. This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides’ centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides’ precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol’s pantheistic doctrine of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides’ rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda.


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