The Morality of Defensive War by Ccile Fabre

The Morality of Defensive War by Ccile Fabre

In recent years, conventional just war thinking has been subjected to powerful scrutiny. Revisionist critics, animated by a commitment to individual human rights, and scepticism about the moral importance of states, have undermined the arguments grounding doctrines as widely accepted as states' rights of national defence, the principle of noncombatant immunity, and combatants' equal right to fight. They have argued, in particular, that our ordinary understanding of national defence cannot be justified on individualist grounds - and that there is no alternative to an individualist justification. But while their challenges to the conventional view have been powerful, their alternatives have been less compelling. Some positive account of the morality of defensive war is required, along one of three lines: Either we must concede that wars of national defence are unjustified, and adopt a restricted form of pacifism (with a possible exception for averting mass atrocity crimes); alternatively, either the individualists must explain how their theory is consistent with our strongly-held judgments about national defence, or advocates of the conventional view must provide compelling alternative theoretical justifications for their position. In their original contributions to The Morality of Defensive War, the leading advocates of the revisionist and conventional approaches to the morality of war develop each possibility in detail. Part I sets out, in new and more forceful terms, the challenge that our ordinary views about national defence represent. In Part II individualists response to that challenge. Part III develops new approaches to vindicating the conventional view.

The contributors are also a valuable mix of established writers on the ethics of war, and those providing perspectives from related but distinct disciplines or areas of philosophy * Thomas Simpson, The Philosophical Quarterly *
it is impossible to do justice to the great richness of this volumeIt addresses a theme central to contemporary just war theory and the ethics of political violence and offers a refreshing diversity of philosophical perspectives, even while it extends the central thrust of the revisionist argument. It will form an indispensable part of the current literature in the field. * Christopher Finlay, International Affairs *

Cécile Fabre is currently Professor of Political Philosophy at Oxford University, and Fellow in Philosophy at Lincoln College. She has published extensively on rights, justice, and war--her latest monograph, Cosmopolitan War, came out with OUP in 2012. ; Seth Lazar is a continuing research fellow at the School of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences, and the Australian National university. He writes on war and killing, and has published in the premier international journals in moral and political philosophy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199682836
ISBN 10	0199682836
Title	The Morality of Defensive War
Author	Seth Lazar
Series	Mind Association Occasional Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2014-02-20
Number of pages	266
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.