Just War Essay

Here is the major essay on Just War theory from the Philosophy course - I will post the exact topic when I find it. But the following "Quote of the day" which appeared at the bottom of the blog seemed appropriate:

Quote of the Day
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Just War - Introduction

The status of noncombatants in terms of their immunity from attack is a central moral question arising out of attempts to limit the conduct of war that is variously addressed by just war theorists, realists and pacifists. In what follows, against the realists, war will be considered an activity subject to moral scrutiny. The principle of noncombatant immunity will be further addressed from the jus in bello perspective of the just war theory, and noncombatant immunity examined as a moral problem, attending particularly to the principles of discrimination and the doctrine of double effect. A recently emerging alternative theme in just war thinking emphasising absolute noncombatant immunity will then be considered. To argue that any civilian deaths, intended or otherwise, is unjust is actually a form of pacifism that renders impossible warfare in the “just” sense. On the whole, however, interpretation of the just war theory consistent with its tradition provides the most coherent, practical and just approach to understanding the place of noncombatants in war.

Concern about civilian casualties is one of the main reasons typically offered for opposition to war in general and specific methods of waging war in particular. In discussing the potential for war in the Middle East, Pope John Paul II reminded hearers of the “consequences for civilian populations both during and after military operations”[1]. More recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross has called for urgent international action on cluster munitions, because their inaccuracy and unreliability produces “indiscriminate” results[2]. Similar ongoing concerns about noncombatant injuries and deaths heavily influence the contemporary discourse of war. Moral categories are employed in an attempt to grapple with the dilemmas of the decision to engage in war and how war is to be conducted. These are frequently founded on the ethical understandings of the status of noncombatants during war guided by just war theory.

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[1] The Times. “The Pope: Why I say no to war”, 12 February 2003. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/02/12/whyisayn.html

[2] International Committee of the Red Cross. The Need For Urgent International Action on Cluster Munitions Retrieved 16^th November 2006 from http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/cluster-munition-statement-061106?opendocument

The Principle of Non-combatant Immunity

Many of the rules developed by the just war tradition have since been codified into contemporary international laws governing armed conflict, such as The United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. The framework of jus in bello, can be seen, for example, in the UN Protocol for Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) explicitly attempts to protect the victims of armed conflicts through such law-making approaches. Specifically, Article 51, 2, makes provisions to prohibit indiscriminate attacks, based on the just war principle of discrimination, thus:

The civilian population as such, as well as individual citizens, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited. [1]

The influence of these protocols is evident in statements such as the following from an Amnesty International researcher who led two fact-finding missions to Lebanon to investigate allegations of war crimes in the wake of the recent 34-day conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbolla fighters:

One of the cornerstones of international humanitarian law is the principle of discrimination and proportionality. Not everything is allowed in war. Even if you are attacking a legitimate military target, you cannot do so in circumstances where it is going to cause disproportionate harm to civilians.[2]

The constraint on war imposed by discrimination is widely acknowledged as perhaps the heart of the justified conduct of war[3]. In strict use, the principle of discrimination covers property and objects as well as people, and so subsumes the principle of noncombatant immunity, although in practice the terms are often used interchangeably. Discrimination holds that noncombatants have legal and moral immunity from direct, intentional harm. This is because noncombatants are those who themselves are doing no harm. In the just war literature these are sometime called “innocent”, meaning “currently harmless”, as opposed not to “guilty”, but to “doing harm”[4]. Combatants are thus distinguished from noncombatants on account of their immediate threat or harmfulness. As Shue remarks:

The principle of non-combatant immunity is a reaffirmation of the morally foundational ‘no harm’ principle. One ought generally not to harm other persons. Non-combatant immunity says one ought, most emphatically, not harm others who are themselves not harming anyone. This is as fundamental, and as straightforward, and as nearly non-controversial, as moral principles can get.[5]

According to just war theorists, it does not need to be justified how anyone can be a noncombatant even in the midst of war. We are all essentially noncombatants. What needs explaining is how the advent of war creates the exception to this general rule in the form of a class or role of “combatants” who lose this immunity. Walzer argues that those who bear arms lose their right not to be attacked because they pose a danger to others and prevent them from going about their peaceful purposes. Noncombatants, posing no such threat, retain their right[6]. Soldiers are only entitled to target those who are “engaged in harm”. They are not to attack an entire society. To attack civilians purposefully is to undermine the whole rationale of the ethic, because this is unlimited rather than limited war.

The distinction between combatants and noncombatants thus underlies the unity between the justified resort to war and justified conduct of war. This distinction can be grounded in a Christian charity that requires that a Christian defend his neighbour against unprovoked, unjust attack. Thus, to attack the noncombatant as a way of getting at the combatant is a violation of the very principle it is attempting to uphold[7]. Combatant / noncombatant differences can also be explained and justified as simple protection of potential victims from further unjustified harm, by harming those who are engaged in right-violating harm. This is the place where, as the apocryphal quote attributed to George Orwell attests, “rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf”. Given the right conditions, it is actually immoral to avoid war, when war could be used to defend the innocent.

However, the place to draw the line between combatants and noncombatants is often not clear-cut[8]. Nagel draws the distinction between those contributing to the support of the survival as a human being of members of an opposition’s armed forces does not qualify them as legitimate military targets – they would be engaged in farming and supplying food, for instance, war nor no war[9]. Other occupations, for example, munitions workers, assimilate noncombatants into the ranks of the military to a greater or lesser degree. The lines between combatant and noncombatant can become increasingly blurred when realist discussions of total war are allowed to enter the picture, or considerations that reckon collective guilt on behalf of the populace of unjust regimes for failing to overthrow their oppressive overlords. Nevertheless, just war considerations are directed towards the principles of the war conventions specifying that once identified, noncombatants cannot be attacked at any time.

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[1] United Nations Office of the Commission of Human Rights. 
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949,
and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) 
Retrieved on November 12th 2006 from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm

[2] Rosamond Hutt. “Israel and Hezbolla Accused of War Crimes”, The Human Rights Defender 25 (October/November 2006), 8.

[3] Henry Shue, “War” in Hugh LaFollette (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 738.

[4] Thomas Nagel. “War and Massacre” in Mortal Questions. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 70.

[5] Shue, War, 742.

[6] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 145.

[7] Paul Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? (Durham, MC: Duke University Press, 1961), 34-39.

[8] See Daniel S. Zupan, War, Morality and Autonomy: An Investigation in Just War Theory. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 81-93 for an extended discussion of this issue.

[9] Nagel, War and Massacre, 69.

The Just War Theory

The “just war” approach is foremost a tradition of statecraft that attempts to define morally worthy political ends[1]. Its core proposition is that states can resort to armed force and be moral justified in doing so. Just war describes the conditions under which war can be regarded as fully moral and just, “an ethically appropriate use of mass political violence”[2]. This is not an appeal to expediency but to justice. However, the term just war can itself be misleading, as it may imply the moral perfection of one side and guilt of the other. It is more properly understood as justifiable war, that is, the process of moral decision-making applied to war must be ongoing, and is a relative, admitting good and evil on both sides of the conflict[3]. While just war theory attempts to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable use of force, “realism” is sceptical about the application of moral terms, such as justice, to the activities of states. States must act in their own vital interests in matters of foreign policy, national security, and economic growth, and appeals to moral ideals are irrelevant. The ‘morality’ of warfare is thus a category error, as it has unrelated to the virtual anarchy of international politics, where actions in the real world often reflect the famous maxim of Thucydides, “the strong do as they can while the weak do as they must”[4]. The argument against the realists in favour of the treatment of war as a moral condition, and that morality holds for state actors as well as individuals, is offered in more detail by Walzer[5].

Given that war is subject to moral scrutiny, the just war approach to this kind of inquiry can broken down into its two constituent elements. The justice of war (jus ad bellum) “requires us to make judgements about aggression and self defence” [6] and may lead to the conclusion that war is sometimes justifiable – a proposition denied by some pacifists who believe that war is a criminal act. The law of war (jus in bello) subjects the conduct of war to moral criticism, necessitates decisions “…about the observation or violation of the customary or positive rules of engagement”[7]:

More fully, the jus ad bellum (right to go to war) criteria are usually listed as: just cause; right intention; legitimate authority; last resort; probability of success; and proportionality between good and bad outcomes[8] [9] [10]. All six criteria must each be fulfilled for a particular declaration of war to be justified. The first three of these six rules are deontological (duty-based or first principle) requirements. For just cause to be established, the duty not to commit aggression must be violated. Further duties must be respected to justify the response of war: appropriate motivation and the public declaration by the properly constituted authority. The next three requirements are consequentialist: having met these “first principle” requirements, the expected consequences of launching a war must also be considered. Thus, just war theory attempts to apply to the issue of war both deontology and consequentialism in a pragmatic way[11]. As Moseley argues, just war theory “bridges theoretical and applied ethics, since it demands an adherence, or at least a consideration of meta-ethical conditions and models, as well as prompting concern for the practicalities of war.”[12] The jus in bello component of the just war tradition is logically independent, although can be said to exist in a dualistic tension[13] as it derives from a similar set of concerns and origins. It likewise has to do with the restraint or limiting of war, but only once it has begun. Two broad principles define jus in bello considerations: discrimination (or noncombatant immunity); and proportionality. The principle of discrimination concerns who can and cannot be legitimately targeted in war, whilst the principle of proportionality concerns how much force is morally appropriate. Both serve to limit destruction to the extent militarily necessary.

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[1] George Weigel. Moral Clarity in a Time of War, First Things 128 (January 2003), 2-27. Retrieved 12th November 2006 from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0301/articles/weigel.html

[2] Brian Orend, “War” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 12^th November from 2006 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/war/

[3] James T Johnson. Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry. (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1981), xxxiv.

[4] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, LXXXIX Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Thuc.+5.89

[5] Michael Walzer,. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Considerations. (New York: Basic Books), 1977.

[6] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 21.

[7] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 21.

[8] Bruce Duncan. “War in Iraq: Is it Just?” Catholic Social Justice Series 47 (2003), 44.

[9] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Office of Social Development and World Peace. Letter to President Bush on Iraq. Retrieved on 12^th November 2006 from http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/bush902.htm

[10] Richard D Land. Letter to President Bush. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Land_letter. Known as the Land Letter and published by US Evangelicals, it shows how these same criteria can be used to come to an entirely opposite conclusion.

[11], Brian Orend, “War” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/war/

[12]Alexander Moseley. Just War Theory [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from.http://www.iep.utm.edu/j/justwar.htm

[13] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 21.

Collatoral damage

However, the place to draw the line between combatants and noncombatants is often not clear-cut[1]. Nagel draws the distinction between those contributing to the support of the survival as a human being of members of an opposition’s armed forces does not qualify them as legitimate military targets – they would be engaged in farming and supplying food, for instance, war nor no war[2]. Other occupations, for example, munitions workers, assimilate noncombatants into the ranks of the military to a greater or lesser degree. The lines between combatant and noncombatant can become increasingly blurred when realist discussions of total war are allowed to enter the picture, or considerations that reckon collective guilt on behalf of the populace of unjust regimes for failing to overthrow their oppressive overlords. Nevertheless, just war considerations are directed towards the principles of the war conventions specifying that once identified, noncombatants cannot be attacked at any time.

Unfortunately, the nature of warfare means that unavoidable harm will inevitably come to civilians. Despite their in-principle immunity based on discrimination, noncombatants of all sides are frequently the collateral damage of otherwise legitimate military activity. The term collateral damage refers to the “destruction unavoidably incurred in the act of destroying a target deemed to be of military significance”[3]. A “principled” approach emphasising taking precautions to discriminate between combatants and noncombatants appears in commentary on US military strategy during the Iraq War:

Nobody likes war. People get killed no matter how careful you try to avoid hitting civilians…I cannot think of another country that put in so much effort to avoid civilian casualties as the USA has in this war[4].

Despite the precautions, however, civilian casualties were still incurred. Nevertheless, just war theory, providing certain criteria are met, does offers justification to exonerate combatants of guilt for the type of effects of modern warfare described below:

And a new way of war did not necessarily prevent some old mistakes: once again, cluster munitions killed and maimed civilians…[I]n the weeks immediately after the war, it was hard to be sure how many innocent bystanders have died[5].

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[1] See Daniel S. Zupan, War, Morality and Autonomy: An Investigation in Just War Theory. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 81-93 for an extended discussion of this issue.

[2] Nagel, War and Massacre, 69.

[3] James Turner Johnson. Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 221

[4] Paul Reynolds, “Vox Populi – Worldwide war-talk on the web” in Sara Beck and Malcolm Dowling (eds.) The Battle for Iraq (Adelaide: ABC Books, 2003), 185

[5] Paul Adams “Shock and Awe – An inevitable victory” in Sara Beck and Malcolm Dowling (eds.) The Battle for Iraq (Adelaide: ABC Books, 2003), 120.

The Doctrine of Double Effect

Such collateral civilian casualties can be excused while still maintaining it is wrong to take deliberate aim at civilian targets [1]. In just war theory, the doctrine of double effect introduced by Thomas Aquinas offers the justification for just this kind of damage[2]. It is a way of reconciling the absolute prohibition against attacking noncombatants with the legitimate conduct of military activity. The doctrine itself argues that acts have two (“double”) effects, one directly intended and the other foreseen but not intended.. Thus double effect allows for the intentional targeting of legitimate military objectives, and writes off the civilian casualties incurred as foreseeable, yet unintentional or “accidental” effects. It applies in ambiguous situation when noncombatants (or friendlies in cases of fratricide) are mistaken for combatants – what matters is that the intention was a legitimate target in the mind of the actor. The following case from the Iraq War illustrates the consequences of US troops having right intentions yet creating disastrous consequences by failing to accurately distinguishing noncombatants from enemy:

[Civilians] drove about in vehicles easily mistaken for the ‘technicals’ [civilian vehicles co-opted into military role] used by fighters…. The result was a spectacle of dead fathers or slaughtered children in bullet-ridden cars skewed across the roadway; incensed American soldiers, stricken with guilt at what they had done, took refuge in feigned indifference.[1]

Rejecting the doctrine of double effect regards such “collateral” harm to noncombatant as either deliberate or intentional. Moral responsibility for civilian deaths must be accepted apart from some other justifying or excusing circumstances[2].

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[1] John Keegan. The Iraq War, (London: Hutchinson, 2004), 200.

[2] David R. Mapel. “Realism, War and Peace” in Terry Nardin (ed.) The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 67.

Four Conditions of the Doctrine of Double Effect

The following outline and discussion of the four conditions needed to satisfy the doctrine comes primarily from Walzer[1]. The first of these considers the act in and of itself, or is at least indifferent, that is, it is a legitimate act of war. This is an important safeguard as it can be used to subsequently test against the assertions made in the second and third factors. These next two are complementary as they concern ends and means – the second factor asks if the direct effect is morally acceptable (for example, the killing of enemy soldiers), while the third requires intention of the actor is good, aiming only at the acceptable effect; the evil is not one of his ends, nor is it a means to his ends. Fourthly, the good effect must be sufficiently good to compensate for allowing the evil effect; it must be justifiable under the proportionality rule.

The third clause carries the weight of the argument. In it, coterminous good and evil effects, are defendable “only insofar as they are the product of a single intention, directed at the first and not the second”[2]. Within the double effect analysis, “right” intention is that which resolves to attack only legitimate targets, following the principle of discrimination. This is the direct effect. All harm to civilians, even though foreseeable, must have been unintended. These are the indirect effects of the action.

A number of issues can be raised concerning the justification of foreseeable breaches of immunity, as well as the balance to strike between military legitimate military activity objectives and civilian casualties. The unintended but foreseeable deaths of military action can be great in number, subject only to the proportionality rule. This is essentially that hostile action against enemy should be controlled and confined to that which is necessary for the achievement of mission objectives. However this is not a strong constraint, as what is proportional or excessive relies on the judgement of the warrior on the spot. Considerations of proportionality easily slide into arguments favouring “military necessity” where “moral judgements wait upon military considerations”[3]. In addition, it is arguable that it is irrelevant whether the civilians are dead as a consequence of the direct or the indirect effect of an action. They are still dead. How can moral blame be denied if military action is initiated in the full knowledge that innocents will be killed?

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[1] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 153.

[2] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 153.

[3] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 129.

Against the Realists and Pacifists

Contemporary interpreters of the just war theory have extended the principle of discrimination as a limitation on military action, to an absolute prohibition on any harm coming to noncombatants whatsoever. For example, Bertram identifies how some have argued that US action in Afghanistan would be illegitimate unless there could be a guarantee there would be no civilian casualties[1]. This view is closer to a form of deontological pacifism that condemns the very activity of war as intrinsically wrong. More particularly, the principal duty of justice violated by war is “not the duty not to kill aggressors, but rather the duty not to kill innocent, non-aggressive human beings”[2]. This approach has further consequences for the overall just war theory. If all killing of civilians is (something close to) murder, any war that leads to the killing of civilians is therefore unjust. Because every war involves civilian deaths, every war is therefore unjust. Pacifism “emerges from the very heart of the theory that is meant to replace it”[3].

Claims that a “presumption against violence” is at the root of the just war tradition cannot be sustained. Weigel argues that the just war tradition is a tradition of statecraft, where the resort to armed force is given moral sanction based on jus ad bellum considerations. To begin instead at a series of means tests that primarily deal with in bello questions of proportionality and discrimination is to begin at the wrong place[4]. The intent of the just war considerations for jus in bello conduct is to place necessary limits (discrimination and proportionality) on war, within the context of a just resort to war (jus ad bellum). Essentially, “a just war is meant to be, and has to be, a war that it is possible to fight”[5].

Further, the jus ad bellum is logically and morally prior to the jus in bello considerations. To place an absolute priority on questions of discrimination in the form of noncombatant immunity breaks the link between just war thinking and statecraft built on the foundations of justice, as Weigel notes. In the discussion of the US decision to respond to the 9/11 strikes by attacking Afghanistan, confusing these differences influenced an outlook that was:

…so single-mindedly focused on noncombatant immunity prior to the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda that the question of the moral necessity of a vigorous response to the Taliban / al-Qaeda nexus in defence of the United States…seemed to drop out of the picture[6].

The tradition is turned inside out by when precedence is given to questions of discrimination and proportionality over what are the logically prior deliberations of jus ad bellum: just cause, right intention, competent authority, reasonable chance of success, proportionality of ends, and last resort. The moral obligation of government to pursue national security in the face of unjustified aggression is what establishes the foundation from which issues of conduct are sourced.

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[1] Christopher Bertram. “Afghanistan: A Just Intervention”. Imprints: Journal of Analytical Socialism 6, No 2 (2002) Accessed 31^st October 2006 from http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~plcdib/imprints/bertram.html

[2] Orend, War.

[3] Michael Walzer. Arguing About War. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 13.

[4] Weigel, George. “Moral Clarity in a Time of War”, First Things 128, (January 2003), 2-27. Retrieved on 12^th November 2006 from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0301/articles/weigel.html.

[5] Walzer, Arguing About War, 14.

[6] George Weigel, “Just War: An Exchange”First Things 122 (April 2002), 31-36. Retrieved on 31^st October 2006 from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0204/articles/justwar.html

Conclusion

The ongoing critique of war-making is a centrally important democratic activity. Some dismiss the present articulation of just war theory as reducible to “declarations of personal preference” [1] even while speculating about the potential of future philosophy to provide foundations for a more substantive theory of just war. The principles that underlie intuitive conceptions of justice and rights may yield to further theorising, yet there may never be a reliable and practically applicable distinction between combatants and noncombatants. For the realists view of war this discrimination need not necessarily be made. For pacifists, this creates a moral dilemma only resolvable by forbidding civilian casualties outright. Just war theory goes some way towards resolving the problem by imposing moral limits of warfare, attempting to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable use military force. The aim is to conceive of how the use of arms might be restrained, made more humane, and ultimately directed towards the aim of establishing lasting peace and justice.[2] This description of what is legitimate and what is illegitimate is what just war has always been about: it makes morally problematic actions and operations possible by constraining their occasions and regulating their conduct[3]. It is a “doctrine of radical responsibility”[4] for it holds political and military leaders responsible for the immunity of noncombatants on the other side.

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[1],Noam Chomsky. On Just War Theory and the Invasion of Iraq. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://readingchomsky.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-just-war-theory-and-invasion-of_30.html

[2] Mark Rigstad, JustWarTheory.com. Retrieved 7^th November 2006 from http://www.justwartheory.com

[3] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 22.

[4] Walzer, Arguing About War, 14.

Just War Bibliography

Bibliography

Adams, Paul. “Shock and Awe – An Inevitable Victory”. In The Battle for Iraq. Edited by Sara Beck and Malcolm Dowling, Adelaide: ABC Books, 2003.

Bertram, Christopher. “Afghanistan: A Just Intervention”. Imprints: Journal of Analytical Socialism 6 (2002). Retrieved on 31^st October 2006 from http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~plcdib/imprints/bertram.html

Chomsky, Noam. On Just War Theory and the Invasion of Iraq. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://readingchomsky.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-just-war-theory-and-invasion-of_30.html

Cotteringham, John, ed. Western Philosophy: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Duncan, Bruce. “War in Iraq: Is it Just?” Catholic Social Justice Series 47 (2003). North Sydney: Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.

Hutt, Rosamond. “Israel and Hezbolla Accused of War Crimes”. The Human Rights Defender 25 (October/November 2006), 8.

International Committee of the Red Cross. The Need For Urgent International Action on Cluster Munitions. Retrieved 16^th November 2006 from http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/cluster-munition-statement-061106?opendocument

Johnson, James T. Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Keegan, John. The Iraq War. London: Hutchinson, 2004.

Land, Richard D. Letter to President Bush. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Land_letter

Mapel, David R. “Realism, War and Peace”. In The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Edited by Terry Nardin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, 54-77.

Moseley, Alexander. Just War Theory [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://www.iep.utm.edu/j/justwar.htm

Nagel, Thomas. “War and Massacre”. In Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 53-74.

Nardin, Terry, ed. The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Orend, Brian. “War”. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/war/

Ramsey, Paul. War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? Durham, MC: Duke University Press, 1961.

Regan, Richard. Just War: Principles and Cases. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996.

Reynolds, Paul. “Vox Populi – Worldwide war-talk on the web”. In The Battle for Iraq, 185. Edited by Sara Beck and Malcolm Dowling. Adelaide: ABC Books, 2003.

Rigstad, Mark. JustWarTheory.com. Retrieved 7^th November 2006 from http://www.justwartheory.com

Shue, Henry. “War”. In The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

The Times. “The Pope: Why I Say No to War”. 12 February 2003. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from
http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/02/12/whyisayn.html

Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Thuc.+5.89

United Nations Office of the Commission of Human Rights. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Office of Social Development & World Peace. Letter to President Bush on Iraq. Retrieved on November 12^th 2006 from http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/bush902.htm

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Considerations. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Walzer, Michael. Arguing About War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Weigel, George. “Moral Clarity in a Time of War”. First Things 128 (January 2003), 2-27. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0301/articles/weigel.html.

Weigel, George. “Just War: An Exchange”. First Things 122 (April 2002), 31-36. Retrieved 31^st October from 2006 from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0204/articles/justwar.html

Zupan, Daniel S. War, Morality and Autonomy: An Investigation in Just War Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

Introduction to Philosophy

Here the two essays done in response to the first task from "Introduction to Philosophy". It required the bringing together of two two authors on a related subject into what was called "critical dialogue", which was meant to be more than a compare and contrast essay, but not quite a response to a set question. The first is on "Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility", while the second is on "The Meaning of Life". Enjoy.


Bibliography

Kupperman, J. J. “Free Will”. In Philosophy: The Fundamental Problems. St Martin’s Press: New York, 1978, 166-179.

Litch, Mary M. “Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility”. In Philosophy Through Film. Routledge: New York, 141-162.

Nagel, T. “The Absurd”. In Mortal Questions. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1979, 20-27.

Olen, Jeffrey. “The Meaning of Life”. In Persons And Their World: An Introduction to Philosophy. McGraw-Hill: New York, 1983, 432-441.

Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility

Critical reflection on: Mary M. Litch, “Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility” and Joel Kupperman, “Free Will”

The two readings being brought together address the relationship among free will, determinism and moral responsibility, and the relative implications for the truthfulness (and falsity) of these claims. They both provide a broad overview of some of the key philosophical arguments in favour and critical of the incompatibilist (hard determinism, libertarianism) and compatibilist (so-called “soft-determinism”) cases. Litch offers a more general treatment of the subject matter; identifying that each of the three views represent intractable problems, are subject to “severe criticism” (p. 151) and have “serious unanswered questions” (160). Kupperman argues that the case for determinism is inconclusive, considering and rejecting compatibilism as an alternative. He mounts an argument against determinist views in the predictive social sciences in particular, and concludes in favour of free will.

Litch and Kupperman each deal with a range of issues in the philosophy of free will, determinism and moral responsibility. Their definitions of determinism generally cohere (Kupperman, 167; Litch 142), and although Litch makes the additional distinction between universal determinism and human determinism, the outcome for humans is the same (144). This is important is the context of Kupperman’s main line of argument against determinism and the predicative power of the social sciences. In particular, Litch devotes a significant section to the discussion of the relationship between hard determinism and moral responsibility (154 – 157), and while the discussion of moral responsibility is more in the margins of Kupperman’s main effort, it is covered in the context of the arguments mobilised in his consideration of determinism (168-171). As such the concentration here will be on how their understandings of determinism influence their treatment of moral responsibility, and the conditions for and responses to morally blame worthy activities.

Both Litch in particular (154) and Kupperman by implication (167) note that society holds people responsible for their actions, usually as a consequence of an exercise of their free will. Litch shows how hard determinism’s denial of free will, if true, makes no allowance for moral responsibility (154). Indeed, the “incompatiblism” of hard determinism has been so strongly defined as to be directly identified as incompatible with “the sort of freedom needed to ground moral responsibility” (154). Litch’s attempt to formularise in detail the argument connecting hard determinism and moral responsibility (154) bears summarising here. To be morally responsible for an action, it must be freely performed. Such “freedom” means it must have been possible for a person to do something other than what they did. But if determinism is true, it is never possible for this to occur and thus it is never possible for a person to be morally responsible.

Kupperman agrees that to claim a person is not exercising free will is to “absolve that person of responsibility” (167), and approaches determinism from the angle of predictability. He offers the case of drug addiction as an example, where the choices taken by user are understood not to be free. Because their drug-taking behaviour is entirely knowable in advance, their choice is illusory. This establishes the case for determinism such that “conduct that seems free is not free if it is entirely predictable” (167). A generalisation of this principle of predictability to all behaviours in the population at large similarly denies that anyone’s choices are free. By extension, it also denies their moral responsibility. Despite this, Kupperman argues there may be no reason to deny responsibility in practice. A difficulty with this is its self-conscious demotion of moral responsibility to a merely descriptive or metaphorical role rather than the key plank on which accountability rests.

Litch (155) applies the implications of determinism for moral responsibility in discussing the conditions and consequences imposed by society in response to breaches of law. Determinism denies free will in the sense of disallowing that a person could do something other than what they actually did. As Litch contends, this also seems to describe the extenuating circumstances often taken into account in practice in both our moral and legal evaluations of whether a person performed an action freely. However, this analogy does not hold, as it reaches for the intuitive libertarian notions that underpin moral responsibility. With varying degrees of freedom, we have varying degrees of moral responsibility. For the true determinist, moral responsibility is not the golden standard to which all are held on account of an assumed free will, outside of individual unusual cases. It is irrelevant.

In this context, approaching Kupperman’s drug addiction case study from a compatibilist perspective (169 – 170) provides a compromise between determinism and moral responsibility. For the compatibilist, determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Actions must be determined by something – those that aren’t are random, and this is not the same as being free (173). According to this view, a person is free if “what they do is the result of their own unconstrained choice…whether or not their choice is in fact entirely predictable” (168). For the addict, to know that the psychological and physiological factors entirely predict addict’s behaviour is to know they are constrained from exercising free will – what they did was inevitable (169). This will not exonerate the addict of liability (given the crime of drug addiction), only explain the behaviour, because the addict’s choices are not unconstrained. Responsibility is only imputed in circumstances where a person might have, or should have wanted to, act differently. Nevertheless, the fact that the person’s choice was unforced does not change the fact that determinism denies their responsibility.

Although “moral and legal responsibility does not necessarily coincide” (Litch, 155), Litch further explores some of the practical consequences for the judicial system if persons are not held morally accountable for their actions. Is punishment defensible under hard determinism? Not if it is based on retributive notions of justice. Applying Litch’s summary (154), retribution demands that the guilty suffers based on the assumption of the exercise of a substantive free will capable of choosing between alternatives. But if we are not free agents, we cannot deliberate among real choices so as to be responsible for our actions. However, Litch argues other reasons are used by society to justify punishing lawbreakers, such as deterrence, protection and reform (155).

Deterrence remains consistent with a determinist worldview. Knowledge of the negative consequences of lawbreaking occurring (for example, prison) discourages both the lawbreaker and others who may be considering committing similar crimes. Kupperman recognises this when he argues in practice, even if all choices are determined, we “might feel free” (168), to engage in actions that assume people are responsible for their behaviour – blame, persuasion, and appeals to reason. Happily this will not be in vain, as even in a determinist universe these activities will still have “genuine causal impact” (168) – and a genuine deterrent effect. The irony of this move should not be lost: subjective feelings of freedom are being used as a justification to provide the causal foundation of behaviours in a known determinist system.

Punishment with the intent of reform serves to “discourage” the lawbreaker from “engaging in that behaviour again upon release” (Litch 155). The offender is altered for the better by the punishment experience (for example, imprisonment), and does not need to assume the engagement of a free will for its success. As Kupperman argues with reference to deterrence, determinism allows for “genuine causal impact” to effect change. Litch agrees that a process of real and threatened rewards and punishments can alter behaviour (155). That people are “determined” in this scenario does not equate to “set in their ways”, only that antecedent conditions can determine human actions. However, if the extreme naturist version as the source of our determinism is true, humans are incorrigible without some sort of “genetic manipulation or biological intervention” (158). This poses a problem for rehabilitation as a goal for incarceration.

Punishment is still warranted on the basis of the final factor: protection of society from future harm by this individual. Punishment in the form of incarceration restricts the liberty of the person and minimises the opportunity for the offence to reoccur – or perhaps even to occur in the first place. Accepting the availability of sufficient advanced predictive technology, it is possible to imagine science fiction-like scenarios involving the arrest and detention of people in advance of their crimes. In this view, the protection of society would be entirely justified, because such persons would inevitably commit their misdeeds. It is arguable that justice been served in a determinist universe in which a person can do no other that what their antecedents make them.

Hard determinism is an effective explanation for punishment that favours more consequentialist approaches. Giving up libertarian notions of free will that assume moral responsibility only dispenses with retributive notions of justice, as Litch (155) argues. Nevertheless, even if moral responsibility could be excised as merely a legal fiction, its absence does not survive the switch from an external perspective of moral responsibility to an internal one. As Kupperman suggests, “we experience ourselves as making choices, and there is no reason to disregard this experience”(177). He appeals Sartre’s description of our own awareness of the spontaneity of our activities for support - a “phenomenological” or insider experience (177). This freedom lends support to regarding ourselves and others as morally responsible for actions. On the other hand, Litch’s description of determinism seems to say the same thing about our subjective experience, albeit is a tongue-in-cheek manner. As Litch remarks (157), “There is only one course of action truly open to us. Luckily, though, is the course of action we choose.”

The Meaning of Life

Critical reflection on: Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd” and Jeffrey Olen, “The Meaning of Life”

The two readings being brought into immanent conversation converge in their interest in the absurd and the meaning of life, as their respective titles suggest. They share the view that human existence is essentially absurd and deny that life is ultimately meaningful, while affirming that our response to this alleged profound truth is what really matters, such that life really is what you make of it. On the other hand, they differ in their evaluation of particular approaches our absurd situation. Olen finds religion to be a “satisfactory answer to many of us” (p. 440) while also praising the defiant heroics of Sisyphus, whereas Nagel dismisses religion as merely one competing form of service to higher ends among many (whose ultimate justifications are also in question) and urges us to “approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair” (27). Olen and Nagel explore various understandings of the question of meaning and responses to meaninglessness, trying to offer rationally defensible arguments for finding meaning in absurdity, the fundamental fact of human existence (Olen, 434).

As Olen and Nagel describe it, the absurd is essentially a fundamental incongruity “between the universe and our own aspirations” (Olen 434). The world we inhabit does not meet our demand for it to provide us with meaning (Nagel 24). Nagel proceeds further and emphasises the sense of “transcendent awareness” – the ability to perceive ourselves as if from the outside. This “backward step” does not give us a true outside perspective (this is impossible), however, only enough information to see the strange seriousness with which we pursue what can be regarded as essentially mundane and indeed arbitrary and futile activities (22). Nagel finds absurdity in the application of a “transcendent consciousness into the service of an immanent, limited enterprise like a human life” (26). Further, the potential for overwhelming doubt negates the possibility of the demand for meaning ever being satisfied. Where Camus’ definition of absurdity turns on a contrast between “our expectations and the world” (24), for Nagel, absurdity arises from a “collision within ourselves” (24). Philosophical absurdity is a contrast between experience and “a larger context in which no standards can be discovered.” (24). Thus, it is impossible to expect ultimate grounding in the form of a view from nowhere in order to be required to justify meaning.

Both Nagel and Olen address the question of the larger purpose to determine whether this is a sufficient justification for providing meaning. This position assumes that the purpose of our lives are not sufficient in themselves, and the larger purpose to which our lives are necessary to provide us with the elusive sense of purpose. However both Nagel and Olen are quick to point out that such appeals to “higher causes” and “the greater good” also need further justification in favour of their ends as well. Nagel and Olen differ in response to this. Nagel, operating with an a priori assumption that life is meaningless automatically rules this option out (23), whereas Olen is more willing to consider the appeal to God for life’s meaning alongside (like Nagel) the denial that life is ultimately meaningful (437).

Nagel is critical of the appeal to higher purpose, and attacks it on the grounds of scale. Absurdity as taking seriously something that is “small and insignificant and individual” (23), merely begs the question of the significance of the larger enterprise or higher purpose. All are subject to scepticism – the all-seeing eye of certainty. The endlessly recursive chain of justification only finishes when we are “content” to have them end and do not find it “necessary” to look further (23). The search for meaning in a higher purpose becomes emotionally, rather than logically, exhausted. Taking the transcendental step also exposes the self-referential nature of our justifications in our search for ultimate meaning.

Olen’s assessment encourages us to rethink questions about the meaning of life by questioning their legitimacy. Citing the work of J. L. Austin, such questions are classified as those such about things in general. These “pseudo-questions” (436) commit the fallacy of asking about “nothing-in-particular” (436), and thus can have at best only “pseudo-answers” (437). While Olen emphasises the strength of the desire to find answers to such questions, he directs us to pay attention to the particularity of life and doing ordinary things. By doing so, the problem of the larger context is solved by avoidance – bury yourself in the minutiae of everyday life and the big picture questions won’t drive you to therapy or worse.

In order to avoid Austin’s fallacy, the point of something is needs to be placed in its larger context or purpose – one which particular actions serve. The argument runs that unless our actions serve a larger purpose, then neither does our lives, and if this is so, then our lives have no meaning (437). Olen is returning to the theme examined the context of ultimate importance, that is, from a perspective external to us (435). Olen fields the argument that against the background of the universe as a whole, we do not matter, and thus an individual’s contribution to humankind also does not matter. To accept this though is to commit the fallacy of scale deplored by Nagel (21). Olen agrees, but from an emotional angle, wondering about the validity of letting such questions “affect our feelings about life’s worth” (439).

Olen also considers accepting the possibility of a God, who has a larger plan and purpose in which the universe, human history and the individual have their part, and thus is far more sympathetic than Nagel to finding ultimate answers in religion. He quotes Ecclesiastes as providing an authoritive answer in this regard, “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” (434). For Olen, this response is reserved for those who can take Kierkegaard’s leap of faith (440). For those who can’t, Olen appeals to our ordinary needs and wants as sufficient to propel is into the future. Olen’s conclusion is self-admittedly “banal” (440) – keep yourself busy with ordinary everyday concerns because the concerns about ultimate meaning are irrelevant. He appeals for meaning to the “purposes of individual actions” (44) – but this only returns us to question the larger context in which they fit. Despite this, things can be referenced to the immediacy of the moment – we sweat the small stuff because they matter to us now.

Olen also asks if questions about the meaning of life really lead us either to commit suicide or to join the church (438). For those happy few, religion settles their disquiet. What of the suicide solution? Both Olen and Nagel consider the response of suicide to the absurdity of our existence. While Camus believed suicide to be “the central philosophical question” (Olen 437), Olen and Nagel’s interpretation of how Camus answers this issue differ. Olen accepts the view of Camus that life is a series of experiences. Although we are unable to evaluate the relative merit of any of these, we should attempt to have as many of these as we can, and live them heroically (438). Olen then gives an overview of the five absurd heroes, outlining in detail the myth of Sisyphus. By realising the futility of their lives, the absurd hero is able to live in “freedom and revolt” (438). Thus the response to absurdity is not suicide but rebellion – in the role of the doomed hero, futile yet valiantly defying the fates.

For Nagel, suicide is also escapist but in a different sense. For suicide to be any kind of feasible “solution” it must be posed in response to an accepted “problem”. But is the absurdity of existence a problem that inevitably compels the suicide solution? (26). If the issue is problematised in this way, and suicide ultimately rejected as escapist, is a self-consciously defiant tragic heroism acceptable as an alternative response? Nagel is not convinced. He calls it not an exercise in (existential) courage but “romantic and self-pitying” (26). According to Nagel, our response to absurdity need not be an agony ending in suicide nor a contemptuous defiance of fate like the absurd hero of Camus (26). This “betrays a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation” (27).

Olen and Nagel broadly agree that universe is meaningless and accept the absurdity this entails for the conduct of our lives. Through rejecting the dilemma of suicide or God, both arrive at a similar conclusion: We make our own meaning. Each tries to offer a rationally defensible argument for finding meaning in a meaningless life. As Nagel observes, “If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation, then what reason can we have to resent or escape it?” (26). However, it does not necessarily follow that if this rationally accepted, it should be emotionally acceptable.

Olen admires the absurd hero as an example of the adage “life is what you make it” (441). He also offers a fascinating yet mysterious Zen-like silence as an alternative. Nagel’s weapon of choice in the face of absurdity is irony. He returns to the transcendent theme, asserting that “If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” (27). While superficially comforting, if applied to itself irony must be just as good (or bad, as the case may be) as heroism or despair.

Irony has its advantages, if only as a sanity saving device, as Nagel suggests, “if we tried to rely entirely on reason… our lives and beliefs would collapse [into] madness” (25). The self-conscious ironist recognises the absurdity of the situation, yet maintains a commitment to the fiction of meaning. This fiction is recognised as necessary and the absurdity appreciated. Perhaps this is a retreat into quietism, the sublime mystery of silence alluded to by Olen. In the end, we return to our lives, as we must.