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"The status of the civilian today is that of a calculated casualty, to die immediately or after agonizing suffering. The civilian is also a hostage in the political power struggle, since his continued safety depends upon the decision or even impulse of his leaders. This is true if he is a citizen of a major power, or if he lives elsewhere in unstable social and political environments. Hartigan's book is a unique effort to deal with a mass, but hidden problem: the status of the civilian non-combatant in conditions of armed conflict. Civilian Victims in War fills the gaps in our knowledge of the origins of civilian immunity, so that a full evaluation of the principle's continued worth may be made. The book reviews the concepts of noncombatants, civilian immunity, how it arose from need and intuition and developed into legal practice. The volume focuses on the development of this concept in the Western tradition, not because civilian immunity was absent in Asia or Africa, but because its present formulation owes its origin and elaboration to European custom, practice, and thought. Civilian Victims in War is the first book to deal with the central theme of the innocent non-combatant. Hartigan seeks to pursue this subject in greater depth, and asks the intelligent layman to reconsider his or her options in the face of modern warfare. He touches on many subjects in this work which will spark interest with the general public and policy personnel, those who should recognize themselves as civilians and see this book as their tragic history."--Provided by publisher.

Bio-political philosophy can today confront the perennial questions of philosophy in the light of a wide range of evidence from the natural sciences. Observation seems to verify that humans are normative animals; although this characteristic of our nature is often traced to ratio nality, a reconsideration of Hume's critique in the light of biology suggests that the ultimate origin of our "normativeness" is far more primordial and less calculated. This suggests that the content of human value systems might be more constant and consistent than they at first appear. I bluntly contend that the Ten Commandments are an example of a moral regimen, not of how human believers can win salvation and eternal life, but rather of how human beings have thus far successfully guaranteed their earthly existence. In short, what we call our human normative systems spring from that same selective biology that sees us as the evolved creatures we are today. They are at one and the same time a cause and an effect of our human condition.

In recent years many scholars in political science have begun to employ the data of the life sciences in their studies. The emerging field of biopolitics is now an identifiable scholarly pursuit. The question now arises as to how that pursuit can and should be taught.This article describes several courses which I have offered in the past few years in which I have attempted to integrate political philosophy and biopolitics. Course content, along with student and peer reaction are discussed, as are the advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary collaboration. This approach is rejected in favor of a design which would begin with a departmental core of courses which would then provide a base for inter-institutional collaboration among students and faculty.

Since the time that man first began recording his excursions into mortal combat with his fellow man, he has evidenced an acute need to justify destruction and killing. This justification has usually taken the form of condensing the reasons for the struggle to a few simple issues which again usually has served to reduce the contention to a straightforward and clear-cut duality between friend and enemy, the enemy being of course wrong, evil or obstructive, while the nonenemy was on the side of right or possessed a destiny which must be fulfilled even at the expense of an otherwise harmless and indifferent adversary. What justified violent action against another group was, therefore, a comparative evaluation in terms of value priorities or normative criteria which would lead to the conclusion that violent action ought to be taken against the other party. The criteria employed can normally be seen to be of two kinds: we might call them internal and external.

Perhaps never before has the reality of a just and lasting peace among nations been so ardently desired and so urgently sought. This desire is inspired not so much by a hunger for the benfits of peace as it is by a horror of the consequences if peace is not achieved.