Suchergebnisse

The ethics of war : state of the art / David Rodin -- Luck, evidence, and war / Rob Lawlor -- Defending the common life : national-defence after Rodin / Deane-Peter Baker -- Humanitarian intervention : closing the gap between theory and practice / Gillian Brock -- Iraq : a morally justified resort to war David Mellow -- Moral tragedies, supreme emergencies, and national-defence / Daniel Statman -- Assassination and targeted killing : law enforcement, execution, or self-defence / Michael L. Gross -- Torture? : the case for Dirty Harry and against Alan Dershowitz / Uwe Gteinhoff -- Torture, terrorism, and the state : a refutation of the ticking-bomb argument / Vittorio Bufacchi and Jean Maria Arrigo

AbstractOne way to tell the story of contemporary ethics of war is as a gradual expansion of the period of time to which theorists attend in relation to war, from ad bellum and in bello to post bellum and ex bello. Ned Dobos, in his new book, Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, invites us to expand this attention further to the period between wars, which he calls jus ante bellum. In this essay, I explore two significant implications of this shift in normative focus. First, I argue that it opens up an important and productive field of the ethics of military policy-making outside of conflict, including procurement, training, force posture, and military diplomacy. Second, I argue that attending to the relationship between ante bellum and ad bellum considerations contains the seeds of a powerful pacifist argument.

We are one humanity, but seven billion humans. This is the essential challenge of global ethics: how to accommodate the tension between our universal and particular natures. This tension is, of course, age-old and runs through all moral and political philosophy. But in the world of the early twenty-first century it plays out in distinctive new ways. Ethics has always engaged twin capacities inherent in every human: the capacity to harm and the capacity to help. But the profound set of transformations commonly referred to as globalization—the increasing mobility of goods, labor, and capital; the increasing interconnectedness of political, economic, and financial systems; and the radical empowerment of groups and individuals through technology—have enabled us to harm and to help others in ways that our forebears could not have imagined. What we require from a global ethic is shaped by these transformative forces; and global ethics—the success or failure of that project—will substantially shape the course of the twenty-first century.

In "The Ethics of America's Afghan War," Richard W. Miller argues that reflecting on whether and how to end the war in Afghanistan exposes serious deficiencies in just war theory. I agree, though for different reasons than those canvassed by Professor Miller. Miller argues that by focusing on the traditional categories of just cause, proportionality, and necessity (or last resort), just war theory obscures the importance of broader geostrategic considerations that he believes are the most plausible—though ultimately for Miller insufficient—rationale for continuing with the strategy of large-scale counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I doubt that geostrategic considerations can play the role in moral assessment that Miller believes they do. But the phenomena he is pointing to do illuminate important defects in traditional just war theory.

Résumé L'éthique des affaires est coincée entre deux théories de la responsabilité de l'entreprise qui sont concurrentes et tout aussi erronées. D'une part, selon le modèle de la valeur pour les actionnaires, défendu par le Prix Nobel d'économie Milton Friedman, l'entreprise n'a de réelles obligations morales qu'envers ses seuls actionnaires. D'autre part, selon la théorie normative des partenaires, l'entreprise a l'obligation morale de veiller aux intérêts d'un éventail de communautés, au nombre desquelles les actionnaires ne sont qu'un groupe parmi d'autres. Or, et c'est la position que nous défendons dans le présent article, si elle prétend donner une définition viable de la responsabilité morale des entreprises, l'éthique des affaires doit se dégager de ces deux approches théoriques qui font autorité pour adopter une nouvelle approche fondée, elle, sur une conception plus concrète de l'entreprise. En conclusion de cet article, nous présentons l'ébauche de ce que pourrait être une telle approche. Ce point de vue n'est pas sans conséquences pour l'influente théorie de Michael Porter sur la stratégie concurrentielle.