Introduction to EoWP

Question 1

Three ethical paradigms

Answer 1

1. Consequentialism: assessment of the morality of an action depending on its consequences
   Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick
   Utilitarianism: assessment of the morality of an action depending on its global utility
2. Deontology: assessment of the morality of an action depending on its conformity to a principal considered as universal.
   Kant
3. Ethics of virtues: assessment of the morality of an action depending on its effect on the person doing it
   Aristote, Anscombe, MacIntyre

Question 2

Is the ethics of war unethical?

Answer 2

Justifying the unjustifiable?
* Justifying is excusing
* Justifying is for the weak

Question 3

Historical roots of the Ethics of War

Answer 3

The Just War tradition originates with Christianism
* Bible
* Against pacifism and extremism
*
The first age:
* Saint Augustine
* Aquinas
*
The second age:
* Grotius
* Gentili
The third age:
* Walzer
* Just and Unjust Wars: a must read
* MacMahan and the analytical turn

Question 4

Just War: theory, doctrine or practice?

Answer 4

The different traditions have identified a body of principles which aims at framing the discussion on the legality and legitimacy of war
Just war as a social practice (and a social construct):
* Context matters? Jus post bellum and the XXth century war
* Constitutive principles?
Just war as a doctrine
* Code of conduct and rules of engagement
* Principles brandished by actors

Question 5

Criteria of Jus ad bellum (rights to go to war)

Answer 5

1. Legitimate authority
2. Public declaration
3. Just cause
4. Right intention
5. Chances of success
6. Last resort

Question 6

Criteria of Jus in bello (fighting justly)

Answer 6

1. Proportionality
2. Distinction
3. Necessity
4. All feasible precautions

Question 7

Alternative approaches

Answer 7

Other approaches – with different normative assumptions - discuss the ethics of war:
* Pacifism
* Realism

Question 8

Pacifism

Answer 8

 Pax/ficus => to make peace  A Christian doctrine?
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5
Debate: does it entail that war can NEVER be justified?
 Generally : pacifism says that you cannot make war in order to have
peace.
 Responsibility toward war? (fait accompli)

 Absolute pacifism
 Deontology and religious motives.
 Christian ideal of nonresistance to evil as required by Jesus’ pronouncements about nonresistance in the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew) or the Sermon on the Plain (in Luke)
 Other examples: Gandhi, ML King, Tolstoy Absolute => an ideal theory
Vs.
 Contingent pacifism
 Einstein, Bertrand Russel : « relative political pacifism »
 “that very few wars are worth fighting, and that the evils of war are almost always greater than they seem to excited populations at the moment when war breaks out” (Russell 1943, 8)

Question 9

Is it ethically justified to refuse to serve in the military ?

Answer 9

Real cases and ethical concerns
 The case for conscientious objectors in Israel (sarvanim): mandatory conscription
with exemptions (ethnic – Arabs – and religious bases – Orthodox).
 Now: increasing yet low number of exemptions on the base of freedom of conscience
 January 4, 2004, a military tribunal imposed one-year prison terms on five young activists who refused to enlist in the IDF. The court accepted that the five acted in accordance with their conscience but “ruled that they did not refuse to serve as individuals, but rather as a group, with the explicit goal of bringing about a change in Israeli policy in the territories. As such, the court ruled, their action strayed from the norms of classic conscientious objection into the realm of civil disobedience”