When the Japanese invaded Joseon at the end of the sixteenth century, a Spanish Jesuit priest, Gregorio de Céspedes, S.J. , stayed in the Japanese fortress in Ungcheon with Japanese soldiers. While Céspedes is celebrated as the first European who allegedly came with an evangelical vision of proselytizing the native Koreans, previous scholarship has inadequately acknowledged Céspedes’ role without consideration of his concrete actions in the Japanese fortress and of the broader context of sixteenth–century Spanish colonial expansion. An examination of (...) the Jesuit mission to sixteenth-century Japan, the role of the Spanish chaplains and their activities in foreign expeditions, and Céspedes’ activities in Joseon indicate that Céspedes was not a missionary sent to Korea, but rather an active chaplain who played a role in the larger development of church and state collaboration under Spanish colonialism. (shrink)

본고에서는 한강학파가 임진난이라는 현실적 고통에 어떠한 방식으로 직면해 있으며, 그들이 이를 대응하고 극복하기 위해 어떠한 노력을 해나갔는지에 대한 양상을 살펴보는 것을 목적으로 한다. 한강학파는 조선 중기 대구권에서 주로 활동한 한강 정구를 중심으로 형성된 학파를 말한 다. 정구는 경(敬)을 통한 마음 수양과 의(義)를 통한 사회실천의 전통을 모두 받아들이면서 자 신의 학문적 토대로 삼았다. 그는 학문적 회통성과 개방성뿐만 아니라 경의협지의 수양 정신을 사회적 실천으로 확장시켜 학문의 실천성까지 담보하고자 하였다. 그리고 이러한 특징은 특히 임진난이라는 위기 상황을 겪으면서 구체화된다. 이에 한강학파는 임진난 당시 국난을 (...) 극복하 기 위한 직간접적인 노력을 통해 영남지역을 주도하는 세력으로 그 위상이 급부상하게 된다. 따라서 본고에서는 임진난 전후로 정구와 그의 문인들이 임진난이라는 위기상황을 대응 하고 극복하는 양상을 통해 당시의 학계를 주도한 그들의 학문의 정체성과 연속성을 확인해 보고자 하였다. 이에 따라 세 가지의 카테고리를 통해 살펴보고자 한다. 먼저 한강학파의 성 장과 그들의 학문이 형성된 사상적 기반을 살펴본다. 한강학파는 정구의 사상적 흐름을 이 어 받고 있는데, 정구의 학문을 소개하면서 한강학파의 학문적 연원을 살펴본다. 그 다음으 로는 임진난 당시 의병활동의 전개 양상과 피난 생활 및 문학적 대응 양상을 살펴본다. 그들 의 처세 양상은 달랐지만 필자는 이들 모두 국난을 극복하기 위한 직간접적인 양상으로 보 았다. 임진난 이후 한강학파는 향촌사회 중심으로 사회재건활동에 진력하는데, 이 또한 그 들의 강한 사회적 실천성을 확인할 수 있는 하나의 자료가 될 것이다. (shrink)

The Art of War application to education is about solving problems to improve student and school success. The Art of War describes the significance of a leader and his knowledge and prudent application of the strategies. At the core of theses strategies is the non-negotiable moral purpose of the leader to be reinforced by other fine qualities as wisdom, commitment, discipline, and courage.

Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been a feature of the U.S. justice system since 1790. But they have expanded considerably under the war on drugs, and their use has expanded considerably under the Trump Administration; some states are also poised to expand drug-related mandatory minimums further in efforts to fight the current opioid epidemic. In this paper I outline and evaluate three prominent arguments for and against the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs—they appeal, respectively, to proportionality, (...) consistency, and efficiency. I ultimately defend the view that the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs is unjust. -/- . (shrink)

In the debate on peace ethics in Germany, it is constantly argued that the ‘doctrine of just war’ must be replaced by a ‘doctrine of just peace’. The criteriology of just war can at best be preserved within a doctrine of just peace. However, it is often overlooked that—although the word ‘peace’ may sound nicer than ‘war’—a doctrine of just peace is also fraught with great difficulties in terms of content. The concept of peace can be interpreted in different ways; (...) the concept of justice must even be differentiated if it is to have meaning at all. Ultimately, the two concepts point to a different understanding of tradition and historicity: while the doctrine of just war takes its criteria from the tradition, the idea of just peace attempts to draw conclusions for the present from drafts or blueprints of the future. However, since the drafts can turn out differently, new conflicts will arise precisely for this reason. Talk of ‘just peace’ might be more pleasing to the public, but does not necessarily have to be more restrictive in terms of violence. (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

European Enlightenment thinkers like Emer de Vattel in his epic work The Laws of Nations argued that engaging in warfare should comply, as much as possible, with humane rules in the treatment of both combatants and noncombatants. Encapsulated by the phrase jus in bello, or justice in warfare, the question remains whether this idealist doctrine had application in military actions conducted during the Revolutionary War fought over the issue of American independence. This essay concludes that in such frontier regions as (...) the Mohawk Valley of New York, the doctrine of jus in bello had virtually no impact in restraining wartime cruelties. What actually occurred in such areas was vicious partisan warfare, or a contagion of violence characterized by brutal retribution and retaliation among combatants, along with merciless actions directed against civilian noncombatants. The Revolutionary War, at least in regions like frontier New York where partisan fighting predominated, had more in common wit.. (shrink)

The Ethics of War is an indispensable collection of essays addressing issues both timely and age-old about the nature and ethics of war. Features essays by great thinkers from ancient times through to the present day, among them Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, Russell, and Walzer Examines timely questions such as: When is recourse to arms morally justifiable? What moral constraints should apply to military conduct? How can a lasting peace be achieved? Will appeal to a broad range of (...) readers interested in morality and ethics in war time Includes informative introductions and helpful marginal notes by editors. (shrink)

The World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFScW) and UNESCO share roots in the Social Relations of Science (SRS) movements and in the Franco-British scientific relations which developed in the 1930s. In this historical context (the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism and the Nazi use of science, the social and intellectual fascination for the USSR), a new model of scientific internationalism emerged, where science and politics mixed. Many progressive scientists were involved in the war efforts against Nazism, and tried to (...) prolong their international commitments into peacetime. They contributed to the establishment of the WFScW and of UNESCO in 1945–1946. Neither the WFScW nor UNESCO succeeded in achieving their initial aims. Another world emerged from the immediate post-war years, but it was not the world fancied by the progressive scientists from the mould of scientific internationalism. The aim of this article is to follow the path from the Franco-British networks towards the establishment of the WFScW and UNESCO; from an ideological scientific internationalism towards practical projects. It is to understand how these two bodies came to embody two different scientific internationalisms during the Cold War. (shrink)

This book develops an alternative account of rights according to which rights forfeiture has a much smaller role to play because rights themselves are more contextually contingent. For example, those who threaten to cause harm without a right to do so have weaker claims not to be killed than innocent bystanders or those who have a right to threaten to cause harm. By framing rights as the output of a balance of competing claims, and by laying out a detailed account (...) of how to balance competing claims, Walen provides a more coherent account of when killing in war is permissible. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine, realism has made a comeback in public discourses but it is not clear what realism actually means as it seems to stand for everything: from supporting the Ukraine against Russian aggression to the war is the West’s fault. This is the result of decades of not distinguishing between neorealism and classical realism and implicitly acknowledging neorealist storytelling of having systematized classical realist thought. The present paper is a further intervention to carefully (...) distinguish between both theoretical perspectives to uncover what they can add to current world political problems. It finishes by asking if neorealist scholars like John Mearsheimer have a point that it is the West’s fault and a diplomatic solution needs to be found. They often refer to Hans Morgenthau not least because he was one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War. (shrink)

Hobbesian war primarily arises not because material resources are scarce; or because humans ruthlessly seek survival before all else; or because we are naturally selfish, competitive, or aggressive brutes. Rather, it arises because we are fragile, fearful, impressionable, and psychologically prickly creatures susceptible to ideological manipulation, whose anger can become irrationally inflamed by even trivial slights to our glory. The primary source of war, according to Hobbes, is disagreement, because we read into it the most inflammatory signs of contempt. Both (...) cause and remedy are therefore primarily ideological: The Leviathan's primary function is to settle the meaning of the most controversial words implicated in social life, minimize public disagreement, neutralize glory, magnify the fear of death, and root out subversive doctrines. Managing interstate conflict, in turn, requires not only coercive power, but also the soft power required to shape characters and defuse the effects of status competition. (shrink)

This article discusses the well-known verdict of Vattel's legal positivism in relation to concepts of modernity and the European State System and aims at a re-interpretation of Vattel's understanding of the modern state, just war and the international order. It wants to show that even though States and individuals do not obey the same logic and reason, Vattel was neiter a Hobbesian thinker nor, as Kant claimed, a 'sorry comforter'. The main reason for this is that Vattel's doctrine of the (...) war en forme does not imply a break with the tradition of just war. Instead, it should be read as a reformulation of the inegalitarian notion of the enemy as proposed by just war doctrines. Pointing out to the persistance of a jusnaturalistic framework, the article shows that Vattel's concept of justus hostis is built on the same conceptual framework as the concept of the enemy of the human race. (shrink)

The new western way of war from Vietnam in Iraq -- Theories of the new western way of war -- The global surveillance mode of warfare -- Rules of risk-transfer war -- Iraq: risk economy of a war -- A way of war in crisis.

Can war ever be just? By what right do we charge people with war crimes? Can war itself be a crime? What is a good peace treaty? Since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, many wars have erupted, inflaming such areas as the Persian Gulf, Central Africa and Central Europe. Brutalities committed during these conflicts have sparked new interest in the ethics of war and peace. Brian Orend explores the ethics of war and peace from a Kantian perspective, (...) emphasizing human rights protection, the rule of international law and a fully global concept of justice. Contending that Kant’s just war doctrine has not been given its due, Orend displays Kant’s theory to its fullest, impressive effect. He then completely and clearly updates Kant’s perspective for application to our time. Along the way, he criticizes pacifism and realism, explores the nature of human rights protection during wartime, and defends a theory of just war. He also looks ahead to future developments in global institutional reform using cases from the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda to illustrate his argument. Controversial and timely, perhaps the most important contribution War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective makes is with regard to the question of justice after war. Orend offers a principled theory of war termination, making an urgent plea to reform current international law. (shrink)

In the 1960s, the growing strategic importance of ocean exploration led the French government to develop greater capacity in marine scientific research, aiming to promote cooperative and diplomatic relations with the leading states in ocean exploration. Devised during Charles de Gaulle's government (1958–1969), the restructuring of French oceanography culminated, in 1967, in the establishment of the state‐led Centre National pour l'Exploitation des Océans (CNEXO). Beyond being intended to control the orientation of marine research at a national level, the CNEXO's mission (...) was to use scientific diplomacy to balance a desire for enhancing international cooperative relations in oceanography with French ambitions to equal the USA's leading capacity to explore the oceans. Its director, the naval officer Yves la Prairie, played a crucial role in articulating scientific, national, and diplomatic interests for France in the oceans. (shrink)

The following is simultaneously an essay in sociological theory, in cultural sociology, and in the empirical reconstruction of postwar Western history. Per theory, it introduces and specifies a model of cultural trauma - a model that combines a strong cultural program with concern for institutional and power effects - and applies it to large-scale collectivities over extended periods of time. Per cultural sociology, the essay demonstrates that even the most calamitous and biological of social facts - the prototypical evil of (...) genocidal mass murder - can be understood only inside of symbolic codes and narratives; that these frames change substantially depending on social circumstances; and that this culture process is critical to establishing understandings of moral responsibility. Empirically, this essay documents, in social and cultural detail, using both secondary and primary sources, how it was that the `Holocaust' gradually became the dominant symbolic representation of evil in the late twentieth century, and what its consequences have been for the development of a supra-national moral universalism that may restrict genocidal acts in the future. (shrink)

'Uncritical Theory' is a timely challenge to much of what passes for radical thinking in an age of postmdern commodity culture.

When is it right to go to war? When is a war illegal? What are the rules of engagement? What should happen when a war is over? How should we view terrorism? _The Ethics of War and Peace_ is a fresh and contemporary introduction to one of the oldest but still most relevant ethical debates. It introduces students to contemporary Just War Theory in a stimulating and engaging way, perfect for those approaching the topic for the first time. Helen Frowe (...) explains the core issues in Just War Theory, and chapter by chapter examines the recent and ongoing philosophical? debates on: theories of self defence and national defence Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello, and Jus post Bellum the moral status of combatants the principle of non-combatant immunity the nature of terrorism and the moral status of terrorists. Each chapter concludes with a useful summary, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, to aid student learning and revision. _The Ethics of War and Peace_ is the ideal textbook for students studying philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, and political (...) ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. (shrink)

The movement against enforced disappearances has been exceptionally strong in Pakistan. It has highlighted the extralegal activities of state actors and has prompted the judiciary to question powerful agencies regarding their conduct. With the help of historical analysis, this article argues that the movement has grown out of the reactions generated by War on Terror in Pakistan. The state’s stance to override human rights for combating terrorism is challenged by a movement which is largely anti-War on Terror and which is (...) strengthened by historical and ideological factors as well as by respect for human rights. The movement against enforced disappearances had thus paved the ground for important debates on human rights in Pakistan. (shrink)

The text delivers a twofold analysis of negationism. On the one hand, it is taken as an ideological phenomenon characterized by a critique of modernity construed from the outside of its customary assumptions. On the other hand, an objective sort of negationism is found in the historical unfolding of the intrinsic limitations of modern socialization. These are brought forward by attention to the class content of the class character of the institutions regularly evoked by the apologetics of modernity – civil (...) society, science, the State. Progressivism, we suggest, the main target of negationism, is the tradition occupied with that apologetics, either promoting an intellectual critique of, or simply overlooking, the afore-mentioned class character, which, however, becomes historically undeniable to the common people, consistently victimized by it throughout modern history. In this sense, the modern social process is characterized as civil war. (shrink)

Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors (...) who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles. (shrink)

At the opening of the twenty-first century, while obviously the world is still struggling with violence and conflict, many commentators argue that there are many reasons for supposing that restrictions on the use of force are growing. The establishment of the International Criminal Court, the growing sophistication of international humanitarian law and the 'rebirth' of the just war tradition over the last fifty years are all taken as signs of this trend. This book argues that, on the contrary, the just (...) war tradition, allied to a historically powerful and increasingly dominant conception of politics in general, is complicit with an expansion of the grounds of supposedly legitimate force, rather than a restriction of it. In offering a critique of this trajectory, 'Just War and International Order' also seeks to illuminate a worrying trend for international order more generally and consider what, if any, alternative there might be to it. (shrink)

In Polish historiography on radio in the Stalinist period, the official propaganda broadcast by Polish Radio is very often juxtaposed with the free and unbiased broadcasting of Radio Free Europe (RFE), which can create the impression that RFE was the only source of information in Poland and tends to diminish the importance of Polish Radio. In fact, both broadcasting institutions were crucial players in Cold War warfare, which was described by George F. Kennan in terms of Clausewitz's “fog of war.” (...) Indeed, both RFE and Polish Radio were listening to each other through the Iron Curtain because “white propaganda” (along with the intelligence obtained from political refugees) was one of the most important sources of information. The two broadcasting stations were more alike than we are willing to admit. For instance, the Polish section of RFE mimicked the post-war strategy of Polish Radio. While the latter pretended to be the continuation and successor of the pre-war institution, RFE's propaganda shaped the programme of Polish Radio for many years. Using this case study on RFE's attitude toward Poland's western borders along the Odra and Nysa Rivers, I show how these two opposing broadcasting stations functioned within an endless propaganda feedback loop. (shrink)

The question whether both enemies in a war could claim the same right, was a fundamental topic in the early modern theory of war and Grotius treated it briefly in his On Law of Prize and Booty. The jurisprudence of the seventeenth century developed two explanations: the Scholastic tradition held that only one party could fight with right reason, whereas some authors of the humanistic tradition thought that in some cases it was impossible to solve this question. Grotius took elements (...) from both traditions, applying them to two different levels of his argument. If we namely consider the rulers, we should accept the Scholastic conclusion that only one party can fight with right reason. But the subordinate soldiers do not always have an exhaustive knowledge of the situation and need first of all to acknowledge that their superiors command legitimately. Thus, each level uses a different logical relationship in the Aristotelian square because the enemies follow in the former case the pattern of contrary propositions, but in the latter they obey a pattern of subcontrary propositions. (shrink)

This paper extends previous arguments against the assumption that the study of variation at the molecular level was instigated with a view to solving an internal conflict between the balance and classical schools of population genetics. It does so by focusing on the intersection of basic research in protein chemistry and the molecular approach to disease with the enactment of global health campaigns during the Cold War period. The paper connects advances in research on protein structure and function as reflected (...) in Christian Anfinsen’s The molecular basis of evolution, with a political reading of Emilé Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling’s identification of molecular disease and evolution. Beyond atomic fallout, these advances constituted a rationale for the promotion of genetic surveys of human populations in the Third World, in connection with international health programs. Light is shed not only on the experimental roots of the molecular challenge but on the broader geopolitical context where the rising role of biomedicine and public health had an impact on evolutionary biology. (shrink)

A survey of just war theory literature reveals the existence of quite different lists of principles. This apparent arbitrariness raises a number of questions: What is the relation between ad bellum and in bello principles? Why are there so many of the former and so few of the latter? What order is there among the various principles? To answer these questions, I first draw on some recent work by Jeff McMahan to show that ad bellum and in bello principles are (...) not, as often portrayed, independent—the justice of conduct in war largely presupposes the justice of the recourse to war. Undermining this independence claim is one important step toward revealing the unified logical structure of just war theory. I then argue that we can see the dependence of the jus in bello upon the jus ad bellum , not just in the content of certain principles, but also in the structure of the two sets of principles: I construct a one-to-one mapping between ad bellum and in bello principles. In doing so, I argue also that the shared structure successfully finds place for the questions central to the evaluation of the morality of war: what is a sufficient provocation to use force, what objectives may be sought by force, why or for what ends, who has authority to decide to use force, and when or in what circumstances? Despite variations in expression, the theory allows for a coherent and comprehensive evaluation of morality in warfare. (shrink)

Discussions of the morality of the Gulf War have tended to embrace the traditional theory of the just war uncritically and to apply its tenets in a mechanical and unimaginative fashion. We believe, by contrast, that careful reflection of the Gulf War reveals that certain principles of the traditional theory are oversimplifications that require considerable refinement. Our aims, therefore, are both practical and theoretical. We hope to contribute to a better understanding of the ethics both of war in general and (...) of the Gulf War in particular. (shrink)

Radio Free Europe used balloons to drop leaflets in an attempt to supplement radio with printed words in the 1950s—a historical moment when closing borders, censoring the press, jamming foreign radios, tapping telephone lines, and tracking letters from abroad created an almost hermetically sealed space without many means for exchanging information across the Iron Curtain. This article traces how distorted and limited information shaped Cold War propaganda and practices of information-gathering. The article further examines unpredictable environmental factors that were transformed (...) into persuasive political rhetoric. A comparative analysis of communist media shows similarities of imagination in a visual propaganda campaign across five communist countries. Fantasies evolved into an object of public interest when propaganda strategies embraced a language of facts. (shrink)

The Moral Target: Aiming at Right Conduct in War and Other Conflicts comprises essays that discuss aspects of war and other conflicts in the light of nonconsequentialist ethical theory. Topics include the relation between conditions that justify starting war and those that justify stopping it, the treatment of combatants and noncombatants in war, collaboration, justice after war and other conflicts, terrorism, resistance to communal injustice, and nuclear deterrence.

The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...) as a practical concern, a pragmatic worry about implementation, which while germane to debates over the laws of war, need not undermine our convictions in the fundamental principles the revisionists advocate. This response is inadequate. Revisionists have not shown that soldiers should obey the laws of war, in practice, when they conflict with their other moral reasons – our worries about application remain intact. Moreover, a theory of war that offers only an account of the laws of war, and a set of fundamental principles developed in abstraction from feasibility constraints, is radically incomplete. We need to know how to apply those fundamental principles, and whether, when applied, they lead to defensible conclusions. Only two options seem to remain. Perhaps the revisionists’ arguments for their chosen fundamental principles are sufficiently compelling that we should stick with them, and accept their troubling conclusions – in other words, accept pacifism. Alternatively, we need to revise our fundamental principles, so that when applied they yield conclusions that we can more confidently endorse. -/- Though it does not save the revisionist view from the responsibility dilemma and cognate objections, the appeal to law does raise an important, and previously inadequately theorized, question – or, rather, resurrects a neglected topic, discussed in depth by historical just war theorists such as Grotius and Vattel. There are good grounds for distinguishing the laws of war from the morality of war, and for adjusting the former to accommodate predictable noncompliance, that should not impact on our account of the latter. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some profound moral insights underlying both combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity: specifically, we cannot infer from a combatant’s side having not satisfied jus ad bellum that he may not justifiably use lethal force; and other things equal, it is more wrongful to harm a nonliable noncombatant than to harm a nonliable combatant. (shrink)

The “right intention” requirement, in the form of a requirement that the agent must have a justified true belief that the mind-independent conditions of the justification to use force are fulfilled, is not an additional criterion, but one that constrains the interpretation of the other criteria. Without it, the only possible interpretation of the mind-independent criteria is purely objectivist, that is, purely fact-relative. Pure objectivism condemns self-defense and just war theory to irrelevance since it cannot provide proper action guidance: it (...) is impractically demanding. This means that “revisionist” just war theories which base their doctrine of the moral inequality of combatants on the idea that objective justification defeats liability are irrelevant for the real world, where objective justification is virtually inaccessible. Moreover, only the right intention requirement in the form of a knowledge requirement, as opposed to requiring “good intentions” or “acceptable motivations,” can solve this problem. (shrink)

For decades the papal tradition has renounced the term ‘war’ as something around which to build an ethical approach. One can sympathize with this: resort to war seems the consequence of ethical failure and brings in its train a host of brutalities including rape, torture, and murder that harm both victims and perpetrators. But that view of ‘war’ is an incomplete representation of the possibilities of the uses of force to secure legitimate political goods. Thus the popes have struggled to (...) maintain a clear voice in the face of abject tragedies like the Russian invasion of Ukraine: on the one hand, Pope Francis condemns war in an almost absolute manner; on the other, he recognizes the legitimacy of Ukrainian defensive uses of force. In so doing, of course, he merely abides the so-called ‘just war theory’ he seems to have discarded. My contribution will focus on the current state of the just war in Catholic teaching. I will maintain the state remains where it has been since at least the middle of the twentieth century: skeptical about the capacity of states to judge in terms of international law, but cognizant of their right to defend themselves against ongoing aggression. (shrink)

The US and China have both benefited greatly from their trading relationship. However, motivated by a US concern that their partner was becoming more of a rival, then-president Donald Trump began a ‘trade war’ in 2018. In US news outlets and, of particular interest here, on American social media platforms, China was represented as a global menace, with extreme xenophobia against Chinese people. Yet less is known about how Chinese people responded on social media to the same situation. This paper (...) explores the discourses carried on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, focusing on the 2021 Alaska talks between the US and China, where negotiations took place. As with their US counterparts, Weibo users comment little on actual trade benefits or damages caused by the conflict. We find a strong sense of nationalism, but this is not based on xenophobia; rather on a discourse comparing the talks to similar events early in the twentieth century, where the ‘Century of Humiliation’ began, and where territories such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shaoshan were taken by colonial powers. Foregrounded is China’s ability now to end this humiliation. (shrink)

This study of the comparative ethics of war seeks to open a discussion about whether there are universal standards in the ideologies of warfare between the major religious traditions of the world. The project looks at the ideology of war in the major Asian religious traditions. Does our exploration of the ethics of war in Asian civilizations have any bearing on the pressing questions of armed conflict today? It has become clear that Islamic ethics and law contain sophisticated concepts of (...) both just war (jus ad bellum) and just warfare (jus in bello) . The contributions of this work explore the central issues of just war in non-Western religious traditions. This new approach will be of interest to scholars of religion and war studies. (shrink)

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of “negative revelation” in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate and become meaningless, adding depth to the term moral injury.

The Other's War is an intervention into a set of contemporary moral, political and legal debates over the legitimacy of war and terrorism within the context of the so-called global War on Terror. Tarik Kochi considers how, despite the variety of its approaches âe" just war theory, classical realist, post-Kantian, poststructuralist âe" contemporary ethical, political and legal philosophy still struggles to produce a convincing account of war. Focusing on the philosophical problem of the rightness of war, The Other's War responds (...) to this lack. Through a discussion of a number of key Western intellectual traditions, Kochi demonstrates how often conflicting and contradictory conceptions of warâe(tm)s rightness have developed in modernity. He shows how a process of ordering violence around different notions of right has constantly redrawn the boundaries of what constitutes âe~legitimateâe(tm) violence. Such a process has consequences for anyone who claims to be fighting a âe~just warâe(tm). Building upon this account and drawing upon the philosophical heritage of G.W.F. Hegel and Ernst Bloch, The Otherâe(tm)s War proposes a new understanding of war, not just as a social condition characterised by violent conflict and struggles for power, but as the attempt of individuals and groups to realise their normative claims through violence. Kochi argues that both of these aspects of war are an expression of the metaphysics of human subjectivity. War begins with, and is the radical exaggeration of, a fundamental activity of human subjectivity, in which the subject constitutes its normative and material identity; realising and positing itself through acts that involve negation and violence. By drawing consideration of the problem of war back to the level of a philosophical examination of the metaphysics of human subjectivity, The Other's War develops a novel theory of war that helps us to better understand the nature of contemporary conflict as a process of recognition. From this perspective, judgment, it is concluded, needs to be constantly guided by the effort to recognise the ethics of the other's war. (shrink)

This article deals with some aspects of the study of the mind between the 1920s and 1940s at the University of Paris. Traditionally the domain of philosophy, the study of the mind was encroached upon by other disciplines such as history of science, ethnology, sociology and psychology. These disciplines all had weak institutional status and were struggling to constitute themselves as autonomous. History of science did not as a rule reject its relationship with philosophy, whereas ethnology, sociology and psychology were (...) constructing their identities by breaking away from philosophy. A discussion about Lévy-Bruhl’s La mentalité primitive, hosted by the Société Française de Philosophie in 1923, showed that the positions of philosophers, sociologists and psychologists about the questions posed by the book, namely the fixity and universality of the mind, were strictly linked with their views about the ‘scientificity’ of ethnology. A compromise between fixity and historical transformation of the mind was put forward by Gaston Bachelard, who institutionally represented the discipline of history and philosophy of science. This discipline was institutionally linked to ethnology, psychology and sociology, but, unlike them, had no claim to ‘scientificity’. Bachelard realized this compromise by breaking the unity of the mind and by employing an extra-institutional discipline: psychoanalysis. His freedom of choice corresponded with an increasingly weak institutional position for the discipline of history and philosophy of science. (shrink)