Download or read book Preventing Unjust War written by Roger Bergman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholic pacifists blame the just war tradition of their Church. That tradition, they say, can be invoked to justify any war, and so it must be jettisoned. This book argues that the problem is not the just war tradition but the unjust war tradition. Ambitious rulers start wars that cannot be justified, and yet warriors continue to fight them. The problem is the belief that warriors do not hold any responsibility for judging the justice of the wars they are ordered to fight. However unjust, a command renders any war “just” for the obedient warrior. This book argues that selective conscientious objection, the right and duty to refuse to fight unjust wars, is the solution. Strengthening the just war tradition depends on a heightened role for the personal conscience of the warrior. That in turn depends on a heightened role for the Church in forming and supporting consciences and judging the justice of particular wars. As Saint Augustine wrote, “The wise man will wage just wars. . . . For, unless the wars were just, he would not have to wage them, and in such circumstances he would not be involved in war at all.”

Download or read book Killing in War written by Jeff McMahan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-04-23 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? Jeff McMahan argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. McMahan argues, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause.

Download or read book Arguing About War written by Michael Walzer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Walzer is one of the world’s most eminent philosophers on the subject of war and ethics. Now, for the first time since his classic Just and Unjust Wars was published almost three decades ago, this volume brings together his most provocative arguments about contemporary military conflicts and the ethical issues they raise.The essays in the book are divided into three sections. The first deals with issues such as humanitarian intervention, emergency ethics, and terrorism. The second consists of Walzer’s responses to particular wars, including the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And the third presents an essay in which Walzer imagines a future in which war might play a less significant part in our lives. In his introduction, Walzer reveals how his thinking has changed over time.Written during a period of intense debate over the proper use of armed force, this book gets to the heart of difficult problems and argues persuasively for a moral perspective on war.

Download or read book The Future of Just War written by Caron E. Gentry and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and conversation—a method and means of pushing its thinking forward. Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting. The essays in The Future of Just War seek to reorient the tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War principles from those who would push it toward greater permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a checklist of criteria to be met before waging “just” war in the service of national interest.

Download or read book Striking First written by Michael W. Doyle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the United States have the right to defend itself by striking first, or must it wait until an attack is in progress? Is the Bush Doctrine of aggressive preventive action a justified and legal recourse against threats posed by terrorists and rogue states? Tackling one of the most controversial policy issues of the post-September 11 world, Michael Doyle argues that neither the Bush Doctrine nor customary international law is capable of adequately responding to the pressing security threats of our times. In Striking First, Doyle shows how the Bush Doctrine has consistently disregarded a vital distinction in international law between acts of preemption in the face of imminent threats and those of prevention in the face of the growing offensive capability of an enemy. Taking a close look at the Iraq war, the 1998 attack against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other conflicts, he contends that international law must rely more completely on United Nations Charter procedures and develop clearer standards for dealing with lethal but not immediate threats. After explaining how the UN can again play an important role in enforcing international law and strengthening international guidelines for responding to threats, he describes the rare circumstances when unilateral action is indeed necessary. Based on the 2006 Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, Striking First includes responses by distinguished political theorists Richard Tuck and Jeffrey McMahan and international law scholar Harold Koh, yielding a lively debate that will redefine how--and for what reasons--tomorrow's wars are fought.

Download or read book The Ethics of Preventive War written by Deen K. Chatterjee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the complex and contested moral and legal issues of preventive warfare.

Download or read book Who Should Die written by Ryan C. Jenkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects influential and groundbreaking philosophical work on killing in war. A "who's who" of contemporary scholars, this volume serves as a convenient and authoritative collection uniquely suited for university-level teaching and as a reference for ethicists, policymakers, stakeholders, and any student of the morality of war.

Download or read book Catholic Social Learning written by Roger C. Bergman and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The canon for Catholic social teaching spreads to six hundred pages, yet fewer than two pages are devoted to Catholic social learning or pedagogy. In this long-needed book, Roger Bergman begins to correct that gross imbalance. He asks: How do we educate ("lead out") the faith that does justice? How is commitment to social justice provoked and sustained over a lifetime? To address these questions, Bergman weaves what he has learned from thirty years as a faith-that-does-justice educator with the best of current scholarship and historical authorities. He reflects on personal experience; the experience of Church leaders, lay activists, and university students; and the few words the tradition itself has to say about a pedagogy for justice. Catholic Social Learning explores the foundations of this pedagogy, demonstrates its practical applications, and illuminates why and how it is fundamental to Catholic higher education. Part I identifies personal encounters with the poor and marginalized as key to stimulating a hunger and thirst for justice. Part II presents three applications of Catholic social learning: cross-cultural immersion as illustrated by Creighton University's Semestre Dominicano program; community-based service learning; and the teaching of moral exemplars such as Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Oscar Romero. Part III then elucidates how a pedagogy for justice applies to the traditional liberal educational mission of the Catholic university, and how it can be put into action. Catholic Social Learning is both a valuable, practical resource for Christian educators and an important step forward in the development of a transformative pedagogy.

Download or read book Ethics of Armed Conflict written by John W. Lango and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just war theory exists to stop armies and countries from using armed force without good cause. But how can we judge whether a war is just? In this original book, John W. Lango takes some distinctive approaches to the ethics of armed conflict. DT A revisionist approach that involves generalising traditional just war principles, so that they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents to all forms of armed conflict DT A cosmopolitan approach that features the Security Council DT A preventive approach that emphasises alternatives to armed force, including negotiation, nonviolent action and peacekeeping missions DT A human rights approach that encompasses not only armed humanitarian intervention but also armed invasion, armed revolution and all other forms of armed conflict Lango shows how these can be applied to all forms of armed conflict, however large or small: from interstate wars to UN peacekeeping missions, and from civil wars counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations.

Download or read book Ethics and War written by Steven P. Lee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of war ethics sensitive to the historical just war theory, informed by the contemporary concerns of war.

Download or read book Just War Against Terror written by Jean Bethke Elshtain and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2003-04-14 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The University of Chicago political philosopher applies "just war theory" to the war on terror and concludes that pacifism is an inappropriate response to the events of September 11, 2001. 35,000 first printing.

Download or read book Morality and War written by David Fisher and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the ending of the strategic certainties of the Cold War, the need for moral clarity over when, where and how to start, conduct and conclude war has never been greater. There has been a recent revival of interest in the just war tradition. But can a medieval theory help us answer twenty-first century security concerns? David Fisher explores how just war thinking can and should be developed to provide such guidance. His in-depth study examines philosophical challenges to just war thinking, including those posed by moral scepticism and relativism. It explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning; the relation between public and private morality; and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance not just to politicians and generals but to ordinary service people. The complexity and difficulty of moral decision-making requires a new ethical approach - here characterised as virtuous consequentialism - that recognises the importance of both the internal quality and external effects of agency; and of the moral principles and virtues needed to enact them. Having reinforced the key tenets of just war thinking, Fisher uses these to address contemporary security issues, including the changing nature of war, military pre-emption and torture, the morality of the Iraq war, and humanitarian intervention. He concludes that the just war tradition provides not only a robust but an indispensable guide to resolve the security challenges of the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Thick and Thin written by Michael Walzer and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Michael Walzer revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal. This new edition has a new preface and afterword, written by the author, describing how the reasoning of the book connects with arguments he made in Just and Unjust Wars about the morality of warfare. Walzer's highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of Justice and Just and Unjust Wars but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with getting the arguments right.

Download or read book Terrorism and the Right to Resist written by Christopher J. Finlay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify.

Download or read book Cosmopolitan War written by Cécile Fabre and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War is about individuals maiming and killing each other, and yet, it seems that it is also irreducibly collective, as it is fought by groups of people and more often than not for the sake of communal values such as territorial integrity and national self-determination. Cécile Fabre articulates and defends an ethical account of war in which the individual, as a moral and rational agent, is the fundamental focus for concern and respect—both as a combatant whose acts of killing need justifying and as a non-combatant whose suffering also needs justifying. She takes as her starting point a political morality to which the individual, rather than the nation-state, is central, namely cosmopolitanism. According to cosmopolitanism, individuals all matter equally, irrespective of their membership in this or that political community. Traditional war ethics already accepts this principle, since it holds that unarmed civilians are illegitimate targets even though they belong to the enemy community. However, although the traditional account of whom we may kill in wars is broadly faithful to that principle, the traditional account of why we may kill and of who may kill is not. Cosmopolitan theorists, for their part, do not address the ethical issues raised by war in any depth. Fabre's Cosmopolitan War seeks to fill this gap, and defends its account of just and unjust wars by addressing the ethics of different kinds of war: wars of national defence, wars over scarce resources, civil wars, humanitarian intervention, wars involving private military forces, and asymmetrical wars.

Download or read book Targeted Sanctions written by Thomas J. Biersteker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systematically analyzes the impacts and the effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions over the past quarter century.

Download or read book War by Agreement written by Yitzhak Benbaji and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War by Agreement presents a new theory on the ethics of war. It shows that wars can be morally justified at both the ad bellum level (the political decision to go to war) and the in bello level (its actual conduct by the military)by accepting a contractarian account of the rules governing war. According to this account, the rules of war are anchored in a mutually beneficial and fair agreement between the relevant players - the purpose of which is to promote peace and to reduce the horrors of war. The book relies on the long social contract tradition and illustrates its fruitfulness in understanding and developing the morality and the law of war.