Impure Agency and the Just War

Abstract

Feminist critiques of intention challenge some aspects of traditional just war reasoning, including the criteria of right intention and discrimination (particularly as interpreted using the doctrine of double effect). I take note of these challenges and propose some directions just war reasoners might take in response. First, right intention can be evaluated more accurately by judging what actors in war actually do than by attempting to uncover inward dispositions. Assessing whether agents in war have taken due care to minimize foreseeable collateral damage, avoided intentional targeting of noncombatants, corrected previous mistakes in their later actions, and taken responsibility to repair unintended damage they cause are examples of ways in which just war reasoners can evaluate intention by looking at actions.

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

“…Such study also poses questions about moral relativism along with whether—and how—universalistic claims about religion and ethics can sustain philosophical challenges from historicist quarters (see Stalnaker 2006). For that matter, many tools of moral analysis and social criticism, however much they now find expression in non‐religious idioms, have their roots in religious traditions, and we do well to study those ideas' histories to understand, apply, and perhaps revise them in light of new insights and discoveries (see Little 1969; Walzer 1977, 1987; Toulmin and Jonsen 1988; Keenan and Shannon 1995; Tierney 1997; and Kellison 2015).…”

Sheathing the Sword: Augustine and the Good Judge

“…Here, Augustine is still in conversation with the Stoics, this time about world peace. Walzer is not alone in taking this passage as an apology for just war; many have (Langan ; Epp Weaver ; Syse ; Kellison ). Yet, reading it as a continuation of the argument we have already been exploring, a different interpretation emerges: the Stoic wise man cannot be genuinely happy as friend, judge, or general.…”