What one is ultimately interested in with regard to ‘just cause’ is whether a specific war, actual or potential, is justified. I call this ‘the applied question’. Answering this question requires knowing the empirical facts on the ground. However, an answer to the applied question regarding a specific war requires a prior answer to some more general questions, both descriptive and normative. These questions are: What kind of thing is a ‘just cause’ for war (an aim, (...) an injury or wrong suffered, or something different altogether)? I call this ‘the formal question’. Then there is what I call the ‘the general substantive question’. Depending on the previous answer to the formal question, the general substantive question can be formulated as: ‘Which causes are just?’ or as ‘Under what conditions is there a just cause?’ A final question, which has recently elicited increased interest, is what I call ‘the question of timing’: does the ‘just cause’ criterion only apply to the initiation of a war or also to the continuation of a war, that is, can a war that had a just cause at the beginning lose it at some point in its course (and vice versa)? I argue that a just cause is a state of affairs. Moreover, the criterion of just cause is not independent of proportionality and other valid jus ad bellum criteria. One cannot know whether there is a just cause without knowing whether the other (valid) criteria (apart from ‘right intention’) are satisfied; and this account has certain theoretical and practical advantages. As regards the general substantive question, I argue that all kinds of aims can, in principle, be legitimately pursued by means of war, even aims that might sound dubious at first, like vengeance or the search for glory. Thus, the pursuit of such aims does not make the war disproportionate or deprive it of just cause. As regards the question of timing, I argue that the criteria of jus ad bellum apply throughout the war, not only at the point of its initiation. While starting a war at t1 might be justified, continuing it at time t2 might be unjustified (and vice versa), and this insight does not require an addition to jus ad bellum but is already contained in it. (shrink)

Joseph Raz's famous theory of authority is grounded in three claims about the nature and justification of authority. According to the Preemption Thesis, authoritative directives purport to replace the subject's judgments about what she should do. According to the Dependence Thesis, authoritative directives should be based on reasons that actually apply to the subjects of the directive. According to the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT), authority is justified to the extent that subjects are more likely to comply with right reason by (...) following the authority's directives than by following their own judgments about what right reason requires.1In this article, I consider a number of ways in which NJT might be construed as a justification for authority. First, I evaluate NJT construed as a principle that would provide a practical justification for an individual to accept or recognize a particular person or persons as a preemptive authority. Second, I evaluate NJT construed as a principle that describes the conditions under which a state or legal system is morally legitimate. I argue that NJT is true under none of these interpretations.2. (shrink)

Most individuals realise that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as ""ethnic cleansing"" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purpose? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying (...) those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress and, most importantly, the UN Security Council in determining when long-term US military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals - whether in self-defense or in defense of others - remains the ""only"" classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principle of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars - World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War - and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgements about war decisions. The book should be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology and political science. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of whether the United Nations should engage in preventive military actions. Correlatively, it asks whether UN preventive military actions could satisfy just war principles. Rather than from the standpoint of the individual nation state, the ethics of preventive war is discussed from the standpoint of the UN. For the sake of brevity, only the legitimate authority, just cause, last resort, and proportionality principles are considered. Since there has been disagreement about the specific (...) content of these principles, a third question also is explored: How should they be formulated? Moreover, these questions are addressed in the context of a particular issue: the goals of the non-proliferation and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. (shrink)

The current armed conflict in Afghanistan (briefly, the Afghan conflict) is viewed through the lens of a just war theory. In particular, the question stated by the title is explored by means of a generalized just cause principle. For brevity, empirical, practical, and legal issues about the Afghan conflict are mostly set aside. Hence a definite answer to the question is not proposed. Instead, the main aim is to clarify the question. Specifically, the question is amplified, (...) by distinguishing putative just causes of countering terrorism, countering an insurgency, and countering extreme violations of basic human rights. Apparently, however, U.S. government officials (e.g., President Barack Obama) and U.S. military commanders (e.g., General Stanley McChrystal) have mixed goals or motives concerning current U.S.military operations in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, from the standpoint of a just war theory, it is instructive to analytically distinguish these putative just causes, and to consider them separately. Additionally, it is instructive to consider how they might be combined. Consequently, a fourth putative just cause is considered: countering violent spoilers of peacebuilding. (This paper was completed on March 31, 2010.). (shrink)

In this chapter, I add to the new body of philosophical literature that addresses African approaches to just war by reflecting on some topics that have yet to be considered and by advancing different perspectives. My approach is two-fold. First, I spell out a foundational African ethic, according to which one must treat people’s capacity to relate communally with respect. Second, I derive principles from it to govern the use of force and violence, and compare and contrast their implications (...) for war with other recent African views and especially with some prominent accounts in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I argue that the approaches to military conflict prescribed by the Afro-communal ethic and its derivative principles differ, and in some prima facie plausible ways, from the views of thinkers that include Thomas Hurka, David Luban, Larry May, Jeff McMahan, and Michael Walzer. In particular, I conclude that the African perspectives ground some interesting and under-explored approaches to just causes for war that merit consideration, including the ideas that military conflict could in principle be justified in order to protect a people’s culture or to correct an aggressor’s vice. (shrink)

The topic of the paper is the justness of the so-called global redistributive wars — wars whose prime purpose would be the correction of global economic and power structures that are said to cause suffering in poor countries. My aim is to comment on Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s argument concerning the implications of Thomas Pogge’s theory of global poverty. Pogge has argued that affluent coun-tries uphold global institutional structures that have a significant causal role in leading to the poverty-related deaths of (...) millions of peo-ple who live in poor countries. According to Pogge, rich countries harm the citizens of poor countries. The argument by Lippert-Rasmussen is important, as it suggests that Pogge’s theory of the causes of global poverty, if correct, has a strange implication, namely, the implication that poor countries are or at least could be entitled to a military attack against rich countries. In this paper I will try to show that Lippert-Rasmussen’s argument is not fully compelling, and I will argue that it is not clear whether a global redistributive war would meet the principle of just cause. (The paper is here: http://www.kantiana.ru/upload/iblock/0ff/2014_12_01_raikka.pdf). (shrink)

Anything other than paraphrasing the well-known Heraclitean aphorism would not be more appropriate to portray the crux of the contribution of the three philosophers of the Budapest School, Gábor Hofer-Szabó, Miklós Rédei and Lázló E. Szabó, in the ongoing discussion of the principle of the common cause . Indeed, ‘common causes love to hide’ and for that reason critics and aspirant falsifiers of PCC find correlations which, at a first level of analysis, might lack a common cause (...) explanation. But as the authors argue such correlations do not amount to disconfirming evidence for the principle, since PCC does not specify where to search for a common cause of a correlation; it just states that there is one. PCC is neither falsifiable, nor verifiable; it is a metaphysical doctrine that can only be assessed for its plausibility in the light of theories of empirical science. This idea fosters the investigation of the existence of common causes of correlations in two fundamental physical t .. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “How and Why the Brain Lays the Foundations for a Conscious Self” by Martin V. Butz. Excerpt: Butz proposes an anticipatory drive that is postulated to be responsible for brain function and the development of brain structure. It is especially interesting because Butz suggests that the anticipatory drive guides brain development, in addition to function. This is an ambitious and provocative proposal, and bears close examination. I focus on just one aspect here: (...) in the spirit of constructivism, I ask, where is it? (shrink)

In this paper, I explore whether elementary classical mechanics adheres to the Principle of Composition of Causes as Mill claimed and as certain contemporary authors still seem to believe. Among other things, I provide a proof that if one reads Mill’s description of the principle literally, it does not hold in any general sense. In addition, I explore a separate notion of Composition of Causes and note that it too does not hold in elementary classical mechanics. Among the (...) major morals is that there is no utility to describing classical mechanics in terms of Composition of Causes. This is both because the stated principles do not hold and because when one describes what actually does hold in classical mechanics in terms of the Composition of Causes, one introduces misleading associations that can generate errors just as claimed by Russell. (shrink)

Recently, alternatives to both the structure and content of ‘orthodox’ just war theory have been proposed by Jeff McMahan and David Rodin. In this paper, I draw on this debate to show that key ideas in just war theory can be disputed in both of these respects. More broadly, it is unclear how we should assess the debate between differing conceptions of individual principles (such as just cause and proportionality) and the competing wider theories in which (...) they might be situated. I employ the idea of reflective equilibrium, taken from John Rawls, to show how these conflicting viewpoints might be understood and assessed. I argue, then, that contemporary just war theory faces both important questions of substance, and a set of difficult meta-theoretical issues concerning the grounds on which competing just war theories can be assessed. Futhermore, I contend, this should influence the character of – and our expectations for – real-world just war institutions. (shrink)

Traditional just war doctrine holds that political leaders are morally responsible for the decision to initiate war, while individual soldiers should be judged solely by their conduct in war. According to this view, soldiers fighting in an unjust war of aggression and soldiers on the opposing side seeking to defend their country are morally equal as long as each obeys the rules of combat. Revisionist scholars, however, maintain that soldiers who fight for an unjust cause bear at least (...) some responsibility for advancing an immoral end, even if they otherwise fight ethically. This article examines the attitudes of the American public regarding the moral equality of combatants. Utilizing an original survey experiment, we find that the public's moral reasoning is generally more consistent with that of the revisionists than with traditional just war theory. Americans in our study judged soldiers who participate in unjust wars as less ethical than soldiers in just wars, even when their battlefield conduct is identical, and a large proportion supported harsh punishments for soldiers simply for participating in unjust wars. We also find, however, that much of the American public is willing to extend the moral license of just cause significantly further than revisionist scholars advocate: half of the Americans in our survey were willing to allow an unambiguous war crime—a massacre of innocent women and children—to go unpunished when the act was committed by soldiers fighting for a just cause. Our findings suggest that incorporation of revisionist principles into the laws of war would reinforce dangerous moral intuitions encouraging the killing of civilians. (shrink)

Shortly after the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues was constituted in 2010 and days before the commission members were to join a conference call to discuss possible topics for their deliberation, Craig Venter held a press conference announcing that his lab had created a synthetic chromosome for a species of mycoplasma and had inserted this genetic material into organisms of another species of mycoplasma (the genes of which had been deactivated), transforming the host species into the donor (...) species. While not overtly claiming to have “created life in the test tube,” Venter's publicity seemed cleverly designed to provoke the media into reporting his discovery in just that way. The resulting uproar caused President Obama to give his new bioethics commission the assignment of investigating the ethics of the emerging field of synthetic biology. The commission went right to work. It formed working groups to deliberate about parts of the report, feeding ideas and language to the staff members who would do the actual writing, and then present the working group suggestions to the commission as a whole for public deliberation at open meetings. One of those working groups was charged with coming up with ethical principles that would guide the analysis. Having served as a member of that working group, I report here on the process by which these principles emerged and reflect upon the suitability of that process for the work of public bioethics commissions. (shrink)

This article challenges the tendency exhibited in arguments by Michael Ignatieff, Jeremy Waldron, and others to treat the Law of Armed Conflict as the only valid moral frame of reference for guiding armed rebels with just cause. To succeed, normative language and principles must reflect not only the wrongs of ‘terrorism’ and war crimes, but also the rights of legitimate rebels. However, these do not always correspond to the legal privileges of combatants. Rebels are often unlikely to gain (...) belligerent recognition and might sometimes have strong moral reasons to exceed the rights of regular combatants. Where this gives rise to tensions between morality and the LOAC, a decision is needed to determine which to follow. Setting aside the idea of suppressing just war theory altogether in favour of a more purely regulatory approach to war and reforming law in the direct light of moral theory, I question the attempt by Waldron to argue that moral weight of the legal conventions at the heart of the LOAC trump any moral reasons there might be for breaching them. Even if non-combatant immunity is, as Waldron suggests, a deadly serious convention, I argue that war is justified only if pursued for the sake of deadly serious causes which may even be serious enough to oblige agents to break the law. A political theory of the ethics of war is needed to mediate between the moral and legal in such cases where they cannot be reconciled directly. (shrink)

In this essay we argue that the notion of machine necessarily includes its being designed for a purpose. Therefore, being a mechanical system is not enough for being a machine. Since the experimental scientific method excludes any consideration of finality on methodological grounds, it is then also insufficient to fully understand what machines are. Instead in order to understand a machine it is first required to understand its purpose, along with its structure, in clear parallel with Aristotle’s final and formal (...) causes. Obviously, purpose and structure are not machine components that can physically interact with other components; nonetheless they are essential to understanding their operation. This casts an interesting light on the relationship between mind and body: for just as an artifact’s finality and structure explain its operation, so also consciousness is the explanation—not the efficient cause—of specifically human behavior. What machines and human beings have in common is that, in order to understand them, it is necessary to appeal to the principle of finality. Yet while finality is given and extrinsic in the case of machines, we human beings are characterized by the ability to self-propose our own ends. Since the principle of finality is essential to understanding the production of machines, the traditional view in modern Western philosophy that finality lies beyond the scope of objective/scientific knowledge should be rectified to allow for a genuine science of the artificial. We think a correct understanding of final causality will overcome current resistance to this principle. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, (...) I consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

Does a person's liability to attack during a war depend on the nature of their individual causal contribution to the (unjust) threat posed? If so, how? The recent literature on the ethics of war has become increasingly focused on questions of this kind. According to some views on these matters, your liability hinges on the extent of your causal contribution: the larger your contribution to an unjust threat, the larger the amount of harm that we can impose on you in (...) order to avert the threat. Some philosophers have suggested that we can ground a quite general principle of civilian immunity on this basis. But, do causal contributions really come in degrees? Can we make sense of a graded notion of causal contribution that can be relevant to debates about liability in war? I argue there is good reason to be sceptical. The appearance that causal contributions come in degrees is just an illusion that can be explained away. (shrink)

In this chapter, I take up the question of whether one of the central principles of jus ad bellum – just cause – is relevant in a world in which cyberattacks occur. I argue that this principle is just as relevant as ever, though it needs modification in light of recent developments. In particular, I argue, contrary to many traditional just war theorists, that just cause should not be limited to physical attacks. In (...) the process, I offer an improved definition of cyberattack and show how some other principles of jus ad bellum constrain this widened notion of just cause. (shrink)

The Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae provides Aquinas's mature and systematic account of human action. The Prima secundae represents his treatment of the moral life "in universali." After treating the end of man, and certain aspects of human action as such, he turns to what he calls the "principles of action." Well over half of the questions of the Prima secundae are devoted to these principles. The principles are divided into intrinsic and extrinsic principles, the latter being law and (...) grace. ;What does Aquinas mean when he calls law an extrinsic principle? And given that it is extrinsic, in just what sense can it be a principle of action without threatening the integrity of voluntary action? ;Many writers in the broader Thomistic tradition have de-emphasized the role of law in the moral life. Others, granting law a substantial role, deny its extrinsic character. A common thread can be discerned in these two positions: namely, an unwillingness or hesitancy to grant law as an extrinsic principle a major and unique role in the moral life. ;Three fundamental points concerning law as an extrinsic principle of action are central to this dissertation. First, for Aquinas law is, and always remains, essentially an extrinsic principle. Second, for Aquinas law is a foundational and essential principle of moral actions; indeed natural law provides the first principles of practical reasoning. Third, this understanding of law as an extrinsic principle does not threaten the voluntary or the profoundly personal character of human action. ;After reviewing the thoughts of some contemporary writers, I examine the nature and kinds of law in Aquinas and then its extrinsic character. A treatment of just how law acts as a real principle, indeed a cause of action, where I study the relation of law and prudence, is finally followed by a consideration of the end of law. (shrink)

This paper argues that if one considers just a single clinical moment there may be no principled way to choose among different approaches to psychoanalytic technique. One must in addition take into account what Aristotle called the final cause of psychoanalysis, which this paper argues is freedom. However, freedom is itself an open-ended concept with many aspects that need to be explored and developed from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper considers one analytic moment from the perspectives of the (...) techniques of Paul Gray, Hans Loewald, the contemporary Kleinians and Jacques Lacan. It argues that, if we are to evaluate these techniques, we must take into account the different conceptions of freedom they are trying to facilitate. (shrink)

This introductory chapter examines the debates concerning who are the people and the relevant territorial unit in which they should exercise self‐determination. It distinguishes between three types of arguments concerning conditions under which there might be a right to secede: choice theories, just‐cause theories, and national self‐determination theories.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BALTHASAR AND ECKHART: THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND CATHOLICITY CYRIL O'REGAN Yale University New Haven, Connecticut Or pleas'd to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a Fault, and hesitate Dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous Foe and a suspitious Friend 1 THE TENDENCY to avoid exclusion is a mark of the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. It represents an identifying habit, an incorrigible (...) feature of style and sensibility. His texts in which theologians, philosophers, poets, dramatists, and saints are christianly praised give testimony to a catholicity that barely brooks limits. Not only in true Gospel fashion are a multitude invited to the eschatological banquet, they constitute the vast medium of tradition, in which Maximus the Confessor rubs shoulders with Plato, in the company of Claudel, Calderon, and Therese of Lisieux. At different times Balthasar thinks of the tradition as one huge symphony in which notes sound only to be transcended and as a conversation between particular perspectives on the great mystery of redemption, no one of which is final and which meet only in the infinity of their object. The decision for plurality and variety in the tradition certainly validates difference and counts against its reduction.2 Yet at the same time tradition, precisely as a matter of variety, exhibits a measure of coherence or concordance that pro1 These couplets are from Alexander Pope's poem Atticus. See Minor Poems, ed. Norman Ault, completed by John Butt (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 143. 2 See, for example, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 39, 187, 251. 203 204 CYRIL O'REGAN hibits difference from becoming truly excessive. It is this prohibition of excessive difference in Balthasar's reading of tradition that I would like to examine here. I take as my case study of Balthasar's rhetoric of reading his conflicted response to Meister Eckhart, about whose inclusion in the Christian tradition Balthasar expresses no doubts, yet whose theological message is such as to cause anxiety. We shall occupy ourselves in this paper with the way in which Eckhart's nonnegotiable inclusion within the tradition serves to repress the account of those features that present a fundamental challenge, that represent difference that would make the Christian field radically heterogeneous. In the first two sections, focusing mainly on the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (=GL),3 I shall offer outlines of both the positive and negative contributions Eckhart is deemed to have made to the theological tradition. Though I do not wish to give the impression of Scholastic pro and contra, Balthasar's positive remarks being imbricated with the negative and vice versa, it will be suggested that the elements adduced in both cases constitute mirror images of each other. Balthasar takes a bifocal, though not stereoscopic, view of a group of five elements: aesthetic disposition, the sameness of Being and God, the whylessness of the divine, Gelassenheit, and Gottesgeburt. This group is in effect read twice, once in a way that affirms and confirms Eckhart's unproblematic inclusion in the tradition (section 1), and again in a way that, in the light of basic Christian principles, raises serious questions about such inclusion (section 2). In a final section the question is raised whether the conflict in interpretation suggests a deeper underlying conflict between Balthasarian commitment to Catholic theological principles and catholicity. I. BALTHASAR'S AFFIRMATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART On the surface there is little reservation about the approbation Eckhart receives in the fifth volume of The Glory of the 3 The Glory ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. S, The Realm ofMetaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, C.R.V., John Saward, and Rowan Williams, ed. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). BALTHASAR AND ECKHART 205 Lord. If the depths of Balthasar's analyses of the medievals in his volumes on metaphysics (vols. 4 & 5) never reach the level of his account of Anselm and Bonaventure in volume two, it would be caviling to suggest that his intention at the... (shrink)

This paper rejects most aspects of John W. Lango and Eric Patterson’s proposal that the United States should plan for a possible intervention in Sudan on secessionist and humanitarian grounds and announce this planning as a deterrent to the central government of Sudan attacking the people of South Sudan if they would opt in a January 2011 referendum for independence. I argue that secession is not a just cause for armed intervention and that, rightfully, neither the American people (...) nor many of its men and women in uniform would be prepared to engage in an intervention that might easily escalate. I also caution that American intervention against an Islamic regime might have high global security costs. For the sake of avoiding these negative consequences and harm to the people of Sudan, available nonviolent policy alternatives should be pursued. Still, I grant that the global community should intervene in Sudan if mass slaughter of civilians were to occur as a result of renewed hostilities between North and South Sudan. My objections to Lango and Patterson’s intervention proposal appeal to jus ad bellum principles as well as just military preparedness (jus ante bellum) principles. (shrink)

This is a reply to objections by the distinguished German philosopher Georg Meggle to Honderich's moral defence of Palestinian terrorism. It has to do with (1) the Principle of Humanity, (2) Zionism, Neo Zionism, a Palestinian moral right to terrorism within historic Palestine, (3) Just War theory and the Principle of Humanity, (4) terrorism in general defined as causing fear, (5) terrorism in general defined as the killing of innocents, (6) objections to the Palestinian moral right, (7) (...) the case of Palestine and the Principle of Humanity, (8) anti semitism, Meggle, Jurgen Habermas, and the publisher Abraham Melzer. There is also another reply to objections , in this case by Tamara Meisels, of Tel Aviv University. (shrink)

Climate justice demands polluters to take responsibility for both present and future harm caused by past GHG emissions and for future harm caused by future GHG emissions. One problem with this is double climate taxation: people living in historical polluting countries must both shoulder the burden of an effective and inclusive climate transition and repay the climate debt incurred by their predecessors. Although double climate taxation might be defensible on normative grounds, it risks making climate justice politically infeasible. I therefore (...) maintain that global climate justice should focus on future, rather than past, climate harms. The forward-looking polluter pays principle (FL-PPP) can ensure both a cost-effective climate transition and a fair distribution of the climate burden, provided it is applied as follows: i) each country must introduce a carbon price calibrated to the global social cost of carbon; ii) each country must transfer part of carbon revenues collected at the country level to an international fund; iii) global carbon revenues must be redistributed on the basis of the country-level social cost of carbon. The FL-PPP burden can be made more progressive, moreover, if the formula for allocating global carbon revenues is adjusted through two coefficients, one consumption-based and one priority-sensitive. (shrink)

As it is traditionally conceived, Just War Theory is not well suited for dealing with nation vs non-nation wars. It thus makes sense to create a second Just War Theory to deal with these wars. This article explores the differences and similarities between the two theories.

Power, peace, and the just war ethic -- The criterion of legitimate authority : describing the political act -- The criterion of just cause : the limits on government's international jurisdiction -- The criterion of just intention : the pursuit of peace and international order -- Justice in bello : applying the principle of discrimination -- The just war ethic and the nature of Christian realism.

Economic forecasting is famously unreliable. While this problem has traditionally been blamed on theories such as the efficient market hypothesis or even the butterfly effect, an alternative explanation is the role of money – something which is typically downplayed or excluded altogether from economic models. Instead, models tend to treat the economy as a kind of barter system in which money's only role is as an inert medium of exchange. Prices are assumed to almost perfectly reflect the 'intrinsic value' of (...) an asset. This paper argues, however, that money is better seen as an inherently dualistic phenomenon, which merges precise number with the fuzzy concept of value. Prices are not the optimal result of a mechanical, Newtonian process, but are an emergent property of the money system. And just as quantum physics has its uncertainty principle, so the economy is an uncertain process which can only be approximated by mathematical models. Acknowledging the dynamic and paradoxical qualities of money changes our ontological framework for economic modelling, and for making decisions under uncertainty. Applications to areas of risk analysis, forecasting and modelling are discussed, and it is proposed that a greater appreciation of the fundamental causes of uncertainty will help to make the economy a less uncertain place. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents, which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, the article argues that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents must comply with (...) high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him- or herself. It is argued that accidentally but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, can unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently using. (shrink)

The mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa strives to deliver transit services that promote social equity through bicycle lanes, improved sidewalks, and a world-famous Bus Rapid Transit system, “TransMilenio.” Through examining the principles that guide his planning, we can flesh out a starting point for socially just transit systems. While such measures can alleviate several harms that transit systems cause, they rest on an incomplete foundation due to their top-down nature. To amend this situation, the author argues for a (...) restorative justice approach to transportation democracy, using examples from Peñalosa’s mayoral tenure. In turn, lessons from Bogotá’s transportation history reveal how to develop transit systems that strongly favor justice. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

IN THE DISCUSSION on education in the Republic, Socrates lays down the principles which those who speak about the gods must follow if they want to avoid the errors of traditional mythology. The first typos of this rational theology is this: "God is the cause, not of all things, but only of the good." For "God, being good, cannot be responsible for everything happening in our life, as is commonly believed, but only for a small part. For we have (...) a far smaller share of good than of evil, and while God must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some other factors than God as cause of the evil." Rightly celebrated, this passage has set the agenda for ages of reflection in Western thought on the cause of evil. In contrast to traditional mythology where the gods are seen as the origin of both good and evil--as Homer says, "Zeus has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, full of fates, good in one and evil in the other"--the divinity is now freed of all responsibility for evil. God, who is entirely good, can only be the cause of well-being. If this answer sets God free of all responsibility for evil, it seems to be at the cost of limiting God's power: for God is no longer responsible for "most things in human life," since most of them are evil. What, then, may be the cause or causes of evil? Do bad things have a cause? Or do they just happen? Plato's formulation seems to suggest that he favours a dualistic solution to the problem of evil: God is the cause of all good, but for evil we have to find other causes. What could those causes be: matter, cosmic necessity, an evil soul? Various answers of this type were developed in later Platonism and in later mythological philosophies. Without denying that Plato often uses a dualistic discourse and uses elements of it in his cosmology, I do think that Plato had something different in mind. After all, he was not primarily interested in the problem of theodicy. For in this passage of the Republic, he is not concerned with the problem of evil in the universe as a whole, which is really the theodicy question, but with evil in "human life," that is, evil insofar as human beings experience it and suffer from it: the fact that we are not at all living well but are instead miserable and unhappy. (shrink)

We investigate how the just cause principle is applicable to contingency planning about armed interventions in civil wars that are somewhat likely to occur in the future. According to a 2005 peace agreement that formally ended a civil war between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a referendum on South Sudan independence is to be held no later than January 9, 2011. Close observers of Sudan warn that this promise of an independence (...) referendum might not be correctly fulfilled, and that a North-South civil war is somewhat likely to recur. Focusing on the case of Sudan, we discuss the following key question, from the temporal standpoint of August 2010, the month this paper was completed: How may the just cause principle be used prospectively to decide whether there would be a just cause for armed intervention in Sudan, if a renewed North-South civil war were to occur there during the years 2010–2014? To illuminate this question of application, we also discuss a question of theory. What is the just cause principle? A core thesis is that the deterrent threat of armed intervention is an essential tool for preventing such a civil war. By means of deterrent threats of limited forms of armed intervention—for instance, the deterrent threat of imposing no-fly zones—the balance of cost/benefit calculations by the Sudanese government about the prospect of civil war might be tipped in favor of acceptance of South Sudan independence. We recommend that responsible actors in the international community should plan contingently about such armed intervention in Sudan, with the goal of preventing a renewed North-South civil war there. (shrink)

Few ideas in the history of philosophy have come in for the sustained criticism meted out to Aristotle’s notion of final causation. According to Aristotle and the scholastics, final causes are not just one kind of cause among many, but the very ‘cause of causes’. To appreciate the connection between final causes and efficient causes, it is useful to gather a few reminders of the Aristotelian approach to causation in general. The Aristotelian notion of causation in general (...) has two essential components: a cause is that on which something depends in itself, and a cause is a principle in itself influencing being in another. For the scholastics, the effort to understand the natural order is in large part a matter of identifying these causes in the phenomenon under investigation. For final causes in cases of human agency are, in the last analysis, only ens rationis, namely, beings of reason. (shrink)

The harm principle, understood as the normative requirement that conduct should be criminalized only if it is harmful, has difficulty in dealing with those core cases of criminal wrongdoing that can occur without causing any direct harm. Advocates of the harm principle typically find it implausible to hold that these core cases should not be crimes and so usually seek out some indirect harm that can justify criminalizing the seemingly harmless conduct. But this strategy justifies criminalization of a (...) wide range of conduct on the basis of the fear, worry, and anxiety it generates among those who are not the direct victims of the conduct, and thereby undermines the limiting role of the harm principle by permitting the very move it was meant to prevent: the criminalization of harmless conduct on the ground of others’ feelings about it. The best way to avoid this dilemma is to recognize that people have rights, operating independently of the harm principle, to be treated in certain ways just because they are persons. The existence of such rights provides a ground for both criminalizing conduct and limiting the scope of criminalization because these rights point both to conduct that people must be permitted to engage in and conduct that might well be criminalized. A complete account of criminal law will therefore require the harm principle to work together with an independent account of rights. (shrink)

John Locke discusses the notions of identity and diversity in Book 2, Chapter 27 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. At the beginning of this much-discussed chapter, Locke posits the place-time-kind principle. According to this principle, no two things of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time . Just what Locke means by this is unclear, however. So too is whether this principle causes problems for Locke, and whether these problems (...) can be resolved. This is significant because the place-time-kind principle is foundational to Locke's discussion of identity. Moreover, the place-time-kind principle stands at the center of a number of lively and long-standing debates in Locke scholarship. These include the debates over the ontological status of Lockean persons, and whether Locke is a relative identity theorist, to name just two. In this paper, I offer a survey of how Locke's place-time-kind principle has been interpreted in the secondary literature. The aim of this taxonomy is to clarify where the differences between competing interpretations lie, and additionally show just how challenging it is to determine which reading is best. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe jus ad bellum criterion of right intention is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is (...) class='Hi'>just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, wh... (shrink)

This essay assesses the morality of Ukraine's use of drones to attack targets inside Russia. Following its invasion by Russian forces, Ukraine has had a just cause to wage a war of self-defense. However, its efforts to achieve that cause remain subject to moral limits. Even a state that has been unjustly attacked may not, for example, respond by deliberately targeting the attacking state's civilian population. To do so would violate the jus in bello principle of (...) discrimination. The essay first describes how drone technology has frequently enabled long-range strikes against Russian military assets as well as other targets inside cities. It then explains why it would be morally wrong for Ukraine to attack its enemy's population centers. First, Russian civilians are not liable to attack, and this nonliability is undiminished by the injustice of Russia's invasion or by any in bello wrongs committed by the Russian military. Second, attacking Russian cities with drones would arguably achieve little or no self-defensive benefit for Ukraine, and it could even be counterproductive. (shrink)

The causal principle of the Kalām cosmological argument—Everything that begins to exist has a cause—remains controversial. One common objection is that while the principle may apply to things within the universe, it does not apply to the universe itself. Here, I argue that if the universe began uncaused, then there is an extremely high probability that the universe began just moments ago with the appearance of age. However, I further argue that the general agreement of independent (...) estimates for the universe’s age provides powerful empirical evidence that if the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause. (shrink)

The world is littered with wars in which innocent individual human beings, helpless groups of persons and harmless institutions are casualties because they are directly or indirectly targeted and attacked. The nature or composition of such casualties calls for a revision of, or at least leads one to question, the dominant approach to the principle of non-combatant immunity. In the just war theory, moral and political philosophers mostly approach the theorisation about the principle of the immunity of (...) non-combatants from what may be termed the individualist approach. In this approach, combatants and non-combatants are conventionally conceived as individual human beings only, or groups of persons. Consequently, the approach cannot show us how institutions cause or participate in war, and it cannot tell us how institutions should be treated in war, whether they should be treated as combatants or non-combatants, and when they should be treated as combatants or non-combatants. For this reason, the individualist approach is insufficient. However, in what may be referred to as the institutional approach, combatants and non-combatants can also be conceived as institutions rather than individuals or groups of persons. If this is the case, then arguments for and against the immunity of non-combatants can be proffered based on this institutional conception. This article contends that we need to supplement the individualist approach with the institutional approach to be able to: (i) ascertain the causal, constitutive, contributory and participatory roles of certain institutions in a particular war; and (ii) determine whether they are legitimate targets of attack. (shrink)

It is with these words that Alan Gewirth opened his 1972 Lindley Lecture at the University of Kansas. And he immediately followed up his opening words with a more or less blanket indictment of almost the entire group of contemporary writers on meta-ethics, who, he would aver, while claiming to be "rationalists" in the matter of the rational justification of moral principles, and while making much of how far they have distanced themselves from the old-line emotivists in this very regard, (...) have nevertheless just not brought it off, so far as their own provision for any such rational justification is concerned. Thus while the emotivists had tended to hold that such reasons as a person might give in support of moral principles could not really function as reasons, but only as causes that might impel or compel acceptance of such principles, the latter-day "rationalists," as Gewirth calls them, insist that good reasons are always in order and logically relevant, so far as any moral or even evaluative judgment is concerned. Indeed, merely to call a thing good, or to judge an action right or wrong, already implies that such a judgment is put forward as one that is universalizable and for which good reasons can be given. Unfortunately, however,—Gewirth goes on to insist—reasons and justifications of this sort turn out, even on the admission of the rationalists themselves, to be valid only on the prior assumption of what might be called "the moral point of view.". (shrink)

My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...) classical mechanics as we know it. Previously, laws of motion had been channels for truth and reference into mechanics. By 1750, the laws lose these features. Instead, now they just assert equalities between functions; and serve just to entail (differential) equations of motion for particular mechanical setups. This creates two philosophical problems. First, it’s unclear what counts as evidence for the laws of motion in the Enlightenment. Second, it’s a mystery whether these laws retain any notion of causality. That subverts the early-modern dictum that physics is a science of causes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 305-306 [Access article in PDF] Fichte, J. G. Foundations of Natural Right according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre. Edited by Frederick Neuhouser. Translated by Michael Baur. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xxxv + 338. Cloth, $64.95; Paper, $22.95. Though best known for his immensely influential effort to "systematize" Kant's Critical philosophy (...) and to ground the same upon a transcendental analysis of the structure of self-consciousness, Fichte also made seminal contributions to social and political philosophy. Of these contributions, the most original is surely his effort to demonstrate that mutual recognition of free subjects is a condition for the possibility of individual self-consciousness. This transcendental deduction of the essentially social or intersubjective character of human beings provides the theoretical underpinnings for a pure theory of Naturrecht ("natural law" or "natural right"), in which the principles of political philosophy are established without any reference to the purely practical principles of morality. Unlike moral laws, the principles of right are only hypothetically or conditionally valid, inasmuch as they are dependent upon one's free decision to live in a community of free beings and to limit one's own freedom accordingly.Justice and law are thereby grounded upon a new, distinctly political conception of [End Page 305] human freedom, which is itself grounded in a new account of the intersubjective dimension of self-consciousness. Following his deduction of the pure concept of right, Fichte proceeds to deduce the conditions for applyingthe same, among the most significant of which is embodiment. Here again, Fichte was a pioneer in arguing for the necessary connection between self-consciousness and the human body. The next step is to demonstrate in detail how social relations between embodied free agents must be organized if such agents are to co-exist in a community. This hypothetical application of the pure concept of right establishes both the "right of coercion" and the basic outlines of the "right of the state," and hence the general form of any legitimate state constitution.Though it appears that Fichte is working with the social contract tradition, his deductive strategy requires a fundamental revision of the same and allows him to construct a theory of the just state that is both recognizably "liberal" and extraordinarily open to considerations of economic justice and social welfare. It is for this reason that some European philosophers (notably, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut) have in recent decades employed Fichte's political thought as a major resource in their effort to defend a rights-based political theory against attacks from both the right and the left.The primary source of Fichte's political philosophy is his 1796/97 Grundlage des Naturrecht, a work that exercised a decisive influence upon Hegel (whose Phenomenology of Spirit is often and incorrectly described as the first effort, within the context of post-Kantian Idealism, to demonstrate that intersubjectivity is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness). Directly and indirectly (that is, through Hegel) Fichte's social and political philosophy exercised a strong influence upon Marx and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century socialists.For all of the above reasons, the appearance of a new and reliable English translation of Fichte's Grundlage des Naturrechts is a cause for celebration. Let it be said at once that Michael Baur's translation is simply marvelous. It is accurate and readable, as well as faithful to the style of this, one of Fichte's best-written works. Frederick Neuhouser's Introduction to this translation is equally fine. In it, Neuhouser not only outlines Fichte's main arguments and conclusions, but also offers a brief but trenchant critical appraisal of the historical significance of Fichte's achievement and of the potential relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates and discussions. The Introduction also includes a provocative and well-balanced discussion of some of the unresolved problems implicit in Fichte's arguments. Readers will also appreciate the useful "Guide to Further Reading," and index... (shrink)

I critically examine the South African university student and worker protests of 2015/2016 in light of moral principles governing the use of force that are largely uncontested in both the contemporary Western and African philosophies of just war, violence and threats. Amongst these principles are: “discrimination”, according to which force should be directed not towards innocent bystanders but instead should target those particularly responsible for injustice; “likely success”, meaning that, instead of being counter-productive, the use of force must be (...) reasonably expected to advance a just cause; and “last resort”, which entails that only the least force necessary to rebut injustice should be employed. I invoke these and related principles to appraise a wide array of types of student/worker protests, noting which of them accorded with the principles and which did not. I also reply to defences that some South Africans have recently made of protesting with coercion and destruction. (shrink)

In this book Uwe Steinhoff describes and explains the basic tenets of just war theory and gives a precise, succinct and highly critical account of its present status and of the most important and controversial current debates surrounding it. Rejecting certain in effect medieval assumptions of traditional just war theory and advancing a liberal outlook, Steinhoff argues that every single individual is a legitimate authority and has under certain circumstances the right to declare war on others or the (...) state. He also argues that the just cause cannot be established independently of the other criteria of jus ad bellum (the justification of entering a war), except for right intention, which he interprets more leniently than the tradition does. Turning to jus in bello (which governs the conduct of a war) he criticizes the Doctrine of Double Effect and concludes that insofar as wars kill innocents, and be it as "collateral damage", they cannot be just but at best justified as the lesser evil. Steinhoff gives particular attention to the question why soldiers, allegedly, are legitimate targets and civilians not. Discussing four approaches to the explanation of the difference he argues that the four principles underlying them all need to be taken into account and outlines how their weighing can proceed if applied to concrete cases. The resulting approach does not square the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets with the distinction between soldiers and civilians, which has extremely important consequences for the conduct of war. Finally, Steinhoff analyses the concept of terrorism and argues that some forms of "terrorism" are actually not terrorism at all and that even terrorism proper can under certain circumstances be justified. (shrink)

Just-war theory has a long and distinguished history that stretches back to the Christian theologians of medieval Europe. Yet principles of just war must develop alongside social norms, standards of military practice and technology, and civilian-military relationships. Since World War II, and especially since American involvement in Vietnam, military ethics has developed into an academic cottage industry. As commonly taught to undergraduates and military practitioners, contemporary just-war theory seeks to ensure the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of (...) nation-states. The theory insists that the only just wars are defensive ones and forbids wars of national aggrandizement. On this view, because of the right to collective self-determination, wars must not seek to remake the world order, as that would undermine state sovereignty.In recent decades, however, cosmopolitan philosophers have challenged various aspects of the traditional edifice in an attempt to use just-war theory to enhance the protection of human rights around the world. Scholars have argued for greater scope for humanitarian intervention to protect individuals against their own government, for principles of justice after war to ensure that all states are legitimate, and most radically, for the responsibility of ordinary combatants to assess for themselves the justice of their military's cause. On this last argument, because combatants whose cause is just have done nothing to lose their immunity from harm, attacking them is unjust, and combatants whose cause is unjust cannot fight with discrimination.This publication surveys these recent developments, and it finds that they provide a radical challenge to both the theory and the practice of contemporary warfare. Of particular importance is its insistence on the need to strengthen international institutions, so as to provide combatants with an impartial perspective on their side's cause, and to strengthen military ethics education; and its suggestion that policies on dishonorable discharge be rethought. However, this monograph also challenges certain aspects of the new approach, suggesting important connections between military ethics and democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants from intentional attack. In (...) response to these critics, some philosophers have defended aspects of the old orthodoxy on novel grounds. Revisionists counter. As things stand, the prospects for progress are remote. In this paper, we offer a way forward. We argue that exclusive focus on first-order moral principles, such as combatant equality and noncombatant immunity, has led revisionist and orthodox just war theorists to engage in “proxy battles.” Their first-order moral disagreements are at least partly traceable to second-order disagreements about the nature and purpose of political theory. These deeper disputes have been central to the broader discipline of political theory for several years; we hope that bringing them to bear on the ethics of war will help us move beyond the present impasse. (shrink)

In classical electrodynamics, electromagnetic effects are calculated from solution of wave equation formed by combination of four Maxwell’s equations. However, along with retarded solution, this wave equation admits advanced solution in which case the effect happens before the cause. So, to preserve causality in natural events, the retarded solution is intentionally chosen and the advance part is just ignored. But, an equation or method cannot be called fundamental if it admits a wrong result (that violates principle of (...) causality) in addition to the correct result. Since it is the Maxwell’s form of equations that gives birth to this acausal advanced potential, we rewrite these equations in a different form using the recent theory of reaction at a distance (Biswaranjan Dikshit, Physics essays, 24(1), 4-9, 2011) so that the process of calculation does not generate any advanced effects. Thus, the long-standing causality problem in electrodynamics is solved. (shrink)

Proportionality has long been considered a pillar of just war theory, requiring that the goods achieved in an action outweigh the collateral harms it causes. In this article, I argue that the in bello principle of proportionality cannot serve its intended function of limiting the destructiveness of actions during war. I illustrate the features of war that make the in bello proportionality constraint not merely impossible to follow, but perhaps even self-defeating. I conclude by suggesting ways in which (...) theorists and policymakers concerned with justice in war might attempt to respond to this dilemma. (shrink)