Political violence in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism, and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge today as it has so often in the past. It is not only a challenge to life and limb, but also to morality itself. In this book, C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective to the subject. He places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics. In clear and accessible language, Coady reexamines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking.
What is terrorism? How is it different from other kinds of political violence? Why exactly is it wrong? Why is war often thought capable of being justified? On what grounds should we judge when the use of violence is morally acceptable? It is often thought that using violence to uphold and enforce the rule of law can be justified, that violence used in self-defense is acceptable, and that some liberation movements can be excused for using violence--but that terrorism is always wrong. How persuasive are these arguments, and on what bases should we judge them? How Terrorism is Wrong collects articles by Virginia Held along with much new material. It offers a moral assessment of various forms of political violence, with terrorism the focus of much of the discussion. Here and throughout, Held examines possible causes discussed, including the connection between terrorism and humiliation. Held also considers military intervention, conventional war, intervention to protect human rights, violence to prevent political change, and the status and requirements of international law. She looks at the cases of Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Finally, she explores questions of who has legitimate authority to engage in justifiable uses of violence, whether groups can be responsible for ethnic violence, and how the media should cover terrorism. Held discusses appropriate ways of engaging in moral evaluation and improving our moral recommendations concerning the uses of violence. Just war theory has been developed for violence between the military forces of conflicting states, but much contemporary political violence is not of this kind. Held considers the guidance offered by such traditional moral theories as Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, and also examines what the newer approach of the ethics of care can contribute to our evaluations of violence. Care is obviously antithetical to violence since violence destroys what care takes pains to build; but the ethics of care recognizes that violence is not likely to disappear from human affairs, and can offer realistic understandings of how best to reduce it.
Tony Coady explores the challenges that morality poses to politics. He confronts the complex intellectual tradition known as realism, which seems to deny any relevance of morality to politics, especially international politics. He argues that, although realism has many serious faults, it has lessons to teach us: in particular, it cautions us against the dangers of moralism in thinking about politics and particularly foreign affairs. Morality must not be confused with moralism: Coady characterizes various forms of moralism and sketches their distorting influence on a realistic political morality. He seeks to restore the concept of ideals to an important place in philosophical discussion, and to give it a particular pertinence in the discussion of politics. He deals with the fashionable idea of 'dirty hands', according to which good politics will necessarily involve some degree of moral taint or corruption. Finally, he examines the controversial issue of the role of lying and deception in politics. Along the way Coady offers illuminating discussion of historical and current political controversies. This lucid book will provoke and stimulate anyone interested in the interface of morality and politics.
This volume sets out to give a philosophical “applied” account of violence, engaged with both empirical and theoretical debates in other disciplines such as cognitive science, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology, political theory, evolutionary biology, and theology. The book’s primary thesis is that violence is inescapably intertwined with morality and typically enacted for “moral” reasons. To show this, the book compellingly demonstrates how morality operates to trigger and justify violence and how people, in their violent behaviors, can engage and disengage with discrete moralities. The author’s fundamental account of language, and in particular its normative aspects, is particularly insightful as regards extending the range of what is to be understood as violence beyond the domain of physical harm. By employing concepts such as “coalition enforcement”, “moral bubbles”, “cognitive niches”, “overmoralization”, “military intelligence” and so on, the book aims to spell out how perpetrators and victims of violence systematically disagree about the very nature of violence. The author’s original claim is that disagreement can be understood naturalistically, described by an account of morality informed by evolutionary perspectives as well. This book might help us come to terms with the fact that we are intrinsically “violent beings”. To acknowledge this condition, and our stupefying capacity to inflict harm, is a responsibility we must face up to: such understanding could ultimately be of help in order to achieve a safer ownership of our destinies, by individuating and reinforcing those cognitive firewalls that would prevent violence from always escalating and overflowing.
Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Dr. Daniel Rothbart and Dr. Karina Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other. The essays confront the practice of demonizing the Other as a justification for violent conflict and the conditions that enable these distorted images to shape future decisions. The authors provide insight into the possibilities for transforming threat-narratives into collaboration-narratives, and for changing past opposition into mutual understanding. Identity, Morality, and Threat is a strong contribution to the study of identity-based conflict and psychological defenses.
Most people strongly condemn terrorism; yet they often fail to say how terrorist acts differ from other acts of violence such as the killing of civilians in war. Stephen Nathanson argues that we cannot have morally credible views about terrorism if we focus on terrorism alone and neglect broader issues about the ethics of war. His book challenges influential views on the ethics of war, including the realist view that morality does not apply to war, and Michael Walzer's defence of attacks on civilians in 'supreme emergency' circumstances. It provides a clear definition of terrorism, an analysis of what makes terrorism morally wrong, and a rule-utilitarian defence of noncombatant immunity, as well as discussions of the Allied bombings of cities in World War II, collateral damage, and the clash between rights theories and utilitarianism. It will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, political theory, international relations and law.
The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Why did the aristocracy of the Roman Republic destroy the system of government which was its basis? The answers given by ancient authorities are moral corruption and personal ambition. The modern student finds only too inevitable the causal nexus of political conflict, violence, militaryinsurrection and authoritarian government. Yet before the era of intense violence Rome had an apparently stable constitution with a long history. In this revised edition of his classic book, for which he has written a new introduction, Andrew Lintott examines the roots of violence in Republican lawand society and the growth of violence in city war and the power of armies. It suggests in conclusion that this disaster was more the outcome of folly in the choice of political means than depravity in the choice of ends.
This study focuses on conceptual questions that arise when we explore the fundamental aspects of violence. Mark Vorobej teases apart what is meant by the term ‘violence,’ showing that it is a surprisingly complex, unwieldy and highly contested concept. Rather than attempting to develop a fixed definition of violence, Vorobej explores the varied dimensions of the phenomenon of violence and the questions they raise, addressing the criteria of harm, agency, victimhood, instrumentality, and normativity. Vorobej uses this multifaceted understanding of violence to engage with and complicate existing approaches to the essential nature of violence: first, Vorobej explores the liberal tradition that ties violence to the intentional infliction of harm, and that grows out of a concern for protecting individual liberty or autonomy. He goes on to explore a more progressive tradition – one that is usually associated with the political left – that ties violence to the bare occurrence of harm, and that is more concerned with an equitable promotion of human welfare than with the protection of individual liberty. Finally, the book turns to a tradition that operates with a more robust normative characterization of violence as a morally flawed (or forbidden) response to the ontological fact of (human) vulnerability. This nuanced and in-depth study of the nature of violence will be especially relevant to researchers in applied ethics, peace studies and political philosophy.
