Just War

1. Just War 1 August 2008

2. Cicero

3. Cicero’s model of the political community • The community develops from natural needs for the sake of a good life that includes sociality • Citizens are those who agree on a common conception of law and interest • Does not assume that there are special natural differences among people • The best regime is a mixed regime, in fact a regime much like the Rome of Scipio’s generation (before Cicero’s birth)

4. The concentric circles of society Friends? Parents, immediate family Shares: natural affection plus everything else Kinsmen, non-immediate family Cultural group Where should we put our political community? All of humanity Shares: common reason

5. Duties • We share less with our co-citizens than with our family, for example • But we owe the republic (the common concern) more than to other communities • Nevertheless, justice implies giving each natural community its due, including humanity • There is a natural law to which we must conform if we are to be happy; reason is the natural law

6. Just war • Requires something like the Stoic idea of a universal community under natural law • Requires that war be understood as something in need of regulation, not elimination

7. Cicero and just war • War can be just or unjust, but justice does not depend on the natural inferiority of others • It depends on whether the war is justified by the need for peace and • whether it has been properly declared, and preceded by good-faith efforts at solving the problem peaceful • There are also honourable and dishonourable or undertaking warfare

8. Cicero and just war • Many of the peoples defeated by Rome went on to become its citizens; such wars were just, and that republican empire is justified

9. Cicero and Just war • Nevertheless, Cicero argues that some of the conquests after Scipio’s time were unjust

10. Ancient vs. medieval political thought • What is the key difference between Greek and (Western) medieval political thought?

11. Aquinas and just war theory • Context: Rediscovery of Aristotle in the West • Synthesis of reason (Aristotelian philosophy) and faith • Systematization of just war ideas from Augustine onwards • Just war only a small part of the Summa

12. Just war theory in medieval times • The problem: Reconciling commonsense moral intuitions and pragmatic political life with the apparently explicit teachings of the gospel

13. The justice of going to war (ius ad bellum) • War must be undertaken by proper public authority • War must be undertaken as just punishment for wrongdoing • War must be undertaken with a right intention

14. Public authority • What counts as proper public authority? Why can’t private individuals declare war? • Whose good is the common good being protected?

15. Punishment for wrongdoing • What counts as punishable wrongdoing? What faults are punishable by war?

16. Rightful intention • What counts as a rightful intention? What actions show that there is no rightful intention?

17. Justice in war (ius in bellum) • Principle of innocent immunity • Doctrine of double effect • Principle of proportionality

18. Innocent immunity • Who counts as “the innocent”?

19. Double effect • How much care should be taken to avoid the deaths of innocents?

20. Erasmian pacifism • A reaction to scholastic exercises in justification • Utopian: unwilling to compromise with existing power structures or even our common sense • Rhetorical: not a systematic presentation of arguments

21. Erasmian pacifism • Man is a social animal, and is thus repulsed by violence. But this natural state can be perverted by degrees. • In European warfare among princes, there can hardly be any just claims. • An unjust peace is often, if not always, better than a just war, assuming there are any such. • Diplomacy and other means are often not given any time to work.

22. Can just war theory serve to justify anything?