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. (shrink)

Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay on Tolstoy, this paper poses the question should James Turner Johnson be deemed a hedgehog or a fox? That is, it considers whether Johnson should be regarded as a monist (hedgehog) or a pluralist (fox) in his contribution to the just war tradition. It contends that his commitment to history, while superficially indicative of a hedgehog, serves to conceal a deep-lying pluralism ? or at least the possibility of such ? in his views on (...) the meaning of history. Contrary to initial appearances, then, Johnson's commitment to history is not univocal: it does not speak with one voice, and to one purpose. Rather it suggests a variety of voices or positions, and is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which are of a piece with one another. This paper seeks to uncover these various voices or positions, with a view to raising some searching questions pertaining to how we should properly understand the just war tradition today. (shrink)

By claiming that “just war is just war,” critics suggest that just war theory both distracts from and sanitizes the horror of modern warfare by dressing it up in the language of moral principles. However, the phrase can also be taken as a reminder of why we need just war theory in the first place. It is precisely because just war is just war, with all that this implies, that we must think so carefully and so judiciously about it. Of (...) course, one could argue that the rump of just war scholarship over the past decade has been characterized by disinterest regarding the material realities of warfare. But is this still the case? This essay examines a series of benchmark books on the ethics of war published over the past year. All three exemplify an effort to grapple with the hard facts of modern violent conflict, and they all skillfully bring diverse traditions of just war thinking into conversation with one another. (shrink)

Among the most vexed moral issues in contemporary conflict is the matter of whether irregular forces waging wars of national liberation should be expected to abide by the same jus in bello rules as state actors, even though these rules may prejudice their cause. Is it, in other words, reasonable to demand that irregular forces, including guerrilla groups and national liberation movements, should comport themselves like state armies, even in cases where this would stymie their capacity to effectively pursue their (...) military goals? This article examines Michael Gross’s recent provocative response to this question. Taking Article 44 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions as his point of departure, Gross contends that the laws governing battlefield conduct should be revised to allow irregular forces waging an otherwise just war greater leeway to pursue their cause. Controversially, he extends this concession to the use of qualified terrorist tactics. Focusing on Gross’s use of the notion of a ‘right to a fighting chance’ as a normative grounding for this far-reaching proposition, this article draws on specific historical cases that arose in the context of Ancient Greek warfare to challenge Gross’s position. On a broader note, this article concludes with some remarks to the effect that this foray into the world of Ancient Greek warfare is demonstrative of the critical potential of a historical approach to the ethics of war. (shrink)

The year 2020 has been a very trying one for many people, and universities have not been exempted from the challenges it has posed. There are real concerns that the effects of COVID-19 could lead to a lost generation of academic researchers. At the same time, this has been an unusually fecund period for the field of ethics and international affairs. New ideas regarding the relationship between politics and ethics have come to light, with implications for how we think about (...) what ethics actually comprises. This essay seeks to take stock of this moment by considering the contributions to the field made by four recently published books. It concludes that we are observing a trend toward a more expansive way of thinking about ethics, one that has significant implications for how we approach the task of international relations scholarship. (shrink)

This paper raises concerns about the tenor of 21st century interaction by identifying a tendency whereby relatively innocuous, canonically private communication is transformed into public communication deemed offensive enough to attract institutional or legal sanction. To understand examples of this tendency, it applies Goffman’s architecture of interaction to email communication and proposes the notion of situational transformation to encapsulate reframing processes involving footing, face and participation framework. Through these processes (to which, it is shown, the email medium is especially vulnerable) (...) and a discourse of civility, the private becomes public and opposition becomes offence. (shrink)

Nigel Biggar’s In Defence of War delivers a stout defence of just war thinking. It refuses to shy away from the tough questions raised by modern warfare. Instead, it submits that thinking clearly about these questions may require just war scholars to demonstrate a toughness to match, by callousing themselves to the human suffering their vocation forces them to confront. This article seeks to tease out Biggar’s understanding of callousness, challenging the reader to consider what is lost and enabled by (...) it. It concludes that Biggar offers a revealing account of callousness in war, but leaves us with many searching questions. Is callousness a vice or virtue, and is it an Achilles heel or a basic prerequisite of just war thinking? (shrink)

Moral Victories is the first book-length treatment of the ethical dimensions of victory in war.

ABSTRACT A number of philosophers have argued that alcoholics should receive lower priority for liver transplantations because they are morally responsible for their medical conditions. In this paper, I argue that this conclusion is false. Moral responsibility should not be used as a criterion for the allocation of medical resources. The reason I advance goes further than the technical problem of assessing moral responsibility. The deeper problem is that using moral responsibility as an allocation criterion undermines the functioning of medicine.

In 1954 F. R. Leavis wrote to the Times Literary Supplement taking issue with one of its reviewers. The reviewer had contrasted Leavis's approach to Shakespeare with that of Empson and Bradley. The latter, the reviewer had said, ‘like the plain man, or the audience in a theatre, cannot help considering the situation [in one of Shakespeare's plays] as “actual” and the characters as “real”’. Leavis, the reviewer had implied, treats the situation and characters somewhat differently.

In recent times Wittgenstein's work in logic has had an influence on other branches of philosophy. I am thinking, in particular, of social philosophy and the philosophy of religion. In these branches, Wittgenstein's followers have made much use of his notion of a language game. It has been argued, for example, that religion forms a language game of its own, having its own standards of reason, and is therefore not subject to criticism from outside. This argument has given rise to (...) controversy, some seeing it as a subtle attempt by the religious to evade criticism. I have come myself to feel that the notion of a language game has been put to uses with which Wittgenstein himself might not have agreed, or, if he had, would have been wrong to do so. In order to explain what I mean I should like to look closely at the opening section of Peter Winch's article ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:F.H. Bradley, Collected Works Volumes 1–5.

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Metaphysics -- Bacon -- Locke -- Kant -- Comte -- Logical positivism -- Russell -- Analysis -- Quine and science -- Wittgenstein.

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)