The Ethics of War. Part II: Contemporary Authors and Issues

Abstract

This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently of each other.

African perspectives on just war

“…Contemporary western just war theory has largely been sceptical of the relevance of matters internal to individuals, such as the psychological effects or intentions, in evaluating the morality of war. This is not only because of a general scepticism towards the internal effects and intentions of individuals being easily verifiable, but also because, broadly speaking, sincere and honest political intentions in the context of war are rare, changeable and an unreliable basis for deciding to wage war (Begby et al., 2012a; Lazar, 2017). Thus, this trend of African philosophy is, indeed, different from what has been recently produced in just war theory because it evaluates the morality of war by looking at internal processes and their impact on the individual.…”