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Conviction Versus Convention

Rodin, David, and Shue, Henry (eds). 2008. Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 272 pp

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Notes

  1. In particular, I recommend Heidegger’s existential analysis of the meaning of death and how confronting it can separate the individual from the community (cf. Heidegger 1962: 274–311); Sartre’s investigation into the relationship between freedom and responsibility and in particular what that means for the soldier (cf. Sartre 1956: 707–712); Levinas’s attempt to reinvigorate the ancient view of ethics as ‘first philosophy,’ which, for someone who wrote in a gulag, interestingly begins with a reflection on war and morality (cf. Levinas 1969: 21–30). For a more recent exploration of the relationship between phenomenology and war, cf. Dodd (2009).

  2. McMahan, for one, forgets this when he writes in his recently published Killing in War, which is in many ways his response to Just and Unjust Wars, ‘For the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, virtually nothing of interest or significance was written on the just war, or indeed on the morality of war generally’ (McMahan 2009: 106). Although Walzer was at least willing to address Sartre and Frantz Fanon (cf. Walzer 2006: 204–206), it was unfortunately more to make a point by taking their words out of context than actually to engage with their alternative perspectives.

References

  • Dodd, James. 2009. Violence and phenomenology. New York: Routledge.

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  • Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

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  • Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

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  • McMahan, Jeff. 2009. Killing in war. New York: Oxford University Press.

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  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press.

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  • Walzer, Michael. 2006. Just and unjust wars. New York: Basic Books.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, 6 East 16th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Nolen Gertz

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  1. Nolen Gertz
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Correspondence to Nolen Gertz.

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Gertz, N. Conviction Versus Convention. Res Publica 17, 203–209 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9131-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9131-1

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