Transcript The Moral Status of War

Philosophy 220
The Moral Status of War
What's the Deal with War, Terrorism
and Torture?
• War, Terrorism and Torture, like all other forms of
human activity, have moral implications that ethics helps
us evaluate.
• Like some of the other activities we’ve taken a look at,
war is something which common moral opinion agrees
is sometimes justified, but not always.
• Terrorism and torture, on the other hand, are instances
of activities which common moral opinion generally
forbids (murder is another example).
o In these cases, too, arguments have been made that they can
be/are justifiable acts/practices.
o This is an example of how ethics can expand our common moral
judgment.
What are the Ethical Questions?
• As we’ve seen in other contexts,
moral philosophy asks general
questions about the appropriateness
and adequacy of moral judgments.
• In the context of W, T and T, the
questions take this form:
1.
2.
Are W, T or T, considered individually, ever morally
permissible?
If any of them are, what best explains why (justifies this
answer)?
Some Definitions: War
• War: (1): a state of usually open and declared
armed hostile conflict between states or nations;
(2) a period of such armed conflict (504).
• The distinction between hot and cold wars
expands on this definition. Hot wars are wars
which actually involve fighting. Cold wars are
those which are carried out without declaration
or direct military conflict.
• We are going to focus on hot wars, one
controversial instance of which our country is
currently involved.
Theoretical Extremes
• Two positions which could serve as the endpoints of
a moral spectrum addressing war are moral nihilism
and anti-war pacifism.
• Moral Nihilism: the view that moral considerations
do not apply to war (507).
o An absolute nihilist rejects any moral questions about war;
a limited nihilist acknowledges questions about the justice
or injustice of specific wars, but argues that in a war,
anything goes.
• Anti-War Pacifism: any massive use of lethal force
(wars) is always (perhaps, almost) morally wrong.
Theoretical Mainstream
• Just-War Theory is a common context of
moral analysis of war.
• Though there are a number of competing
JWTs, a clear and straightforward account
comes as an extension to Natural Law
Theory.
o Particularly helpful is the NLT's "Doctrine of
Double Effect."
What does JWT do?
• As the title suggests, JWT assumes an answer to the
first of our moral questions about war: war is
sometimes justified.
• The theory provides us with an answer to the
second question, specifying the conditions under
which war is justified, and thus, of course,
unjustified.
• Like most theories justifying war, JWT makes the
basic distinction between jus ad bellum (discussion of
when it is justified to go to war) and jus in bello
(discussion of the morality of activities used to
make war).
Jus ad Bellum
• JWT identifies 5 conditions which must be
met for a justified decision to go to war.
1. War must be declared by a legitimate
authority.
2. There must be a just cause.
3. War must be a last resort.
4. There must be a reasonable chance of
success.
5. The violence produced must be proportional
to the wrong being resisted.
Jus in Bello
•
Employing the doctrine of double effect, JWTs
specify 3 conditions which must be met for a
particular action to be just in pursuit of
military ends.
1.
2.
3.
Military Necessity: the action must be necessary to
accomplish a justifiable military end.
Discrimination: the action must avoid, to the extent
possible, innocent collateral damage.
Proportionality: the evil of the activity (casualties, property
damage, etc.) must be in proportion with the good of the
goal of the action.
Wasserstrom, "Does Morality
Apply?"
• Wasserstrom's article evaluates the
common arguments for Moral Nihilism,
ultimately concluding that the arguments
are unsuccessful.
• On the assumption that the presumptive
position is that war is susceptible to moral
evaluation, Wasserstrom concludes that
MN is false.
What is Moral Nihilism?
• The first step in evaluating arguments for a position
is to carefully and clearly state the position and
arguments under examination.
• With the help of the Acheson quote (512c1-2),
Wasserstrom works to provide a clear, unambiguous
statement of the position.
• As he goes on to show, disambiguating the position
reveals that there are a number of different possible
MN positions to argue for, and the arguments for
each of them have to be evaluated on their merits.
Conceptual MN
• One way to understand the MN claim is to
understand it as a statement of analytic or
conceptual truth: it is impossible for war to be
evaluated from a moral standpoint.
o A MN view on war could in this sense be just an instance of the
broader claim that morality is empty or useless, but most
frequently it amounts to the claim that war is a special case.
• Evaluation? This analytic claim certainly is not
true merely by the definition of war. The
definition certainly indicates that war is a case
when killing is acceptable, but it doesn’t require
that it is always or in any way acceptable.
Prescriptive MN
• Another way to understand MN is as a prescriptive
claim that in the case of war, national interests ought to
trump moral considerations.
• A common way of making this argument is to make
appeal to consequentialist features, such as that fewer
American lives would be lost if a particular war is fought
or a particular weapon system is used, even though it
may lead to the loss of more foreign lives.
o Clearly, an underlying assumption is that American lives are more
valuable than those of foreigners.
o Another common assumption is that leaders making the decision to go
to war act as servants of the interests of the citizens (like lawyers acting
as servants of the interests of their clients).
Evaluation?
• Taking the lawyer analogy seriously requires that we
recognize that such "servant" roles are not absolute.
Lawyers are often required to act counter to the interests
of their clients, if moral considerations overwhelm those
interests.
o If a lawyer knows that their client is going to commit a crime, they are
morally (and legally) required to report it. Similarly, a leader does have
an obligation to protect her citizens, but not in ways that violate other
fundamental moral obligations (like respect for human life).
• It's also dubious that appeals to national interests rule
out consideration of the interests of other nations.
• Finally, the claim that national interests trump other
interests is itself in need of justification that is not
obvious or straightforward.
Implications
• Given the strong presumptive argument that all
areas of human activity are open to moral
evaluation, the argument that war qualifies as a
case of special exemption needs to be justified.
• Wasserstrom examines the common
justifications offered for this claim and provides
strong arguments that they do not work.
• Lacking justification, the MN thesis should be
rejected.