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Added by: John BaldariBack matter: War is about individuals maiming and killing each other, and yet, it seems that it is also irreducibly collective, as it is fought by groups of people and more often than not for the sake of communal values such as territorial integrity and national self-determination. Cécile Fabre articulates and defends an ethical account of war in which the individual, as a moral and rational agent, is the fundamental focus for concern and respect--both as a combatant whose acts of killing need justifying and as a non-combatant whose suffering also needs justifying. She takes as her starting point a political morality to which the individual, rather than the nation-state, is central, namely cosmopolitanism. According to cosmopolitanism, individuals all matter equally, irrespective of their membership in this or that political community. Traditional war ethics already accepts this principle, since it holds that unarmed civilians are illegitimate targets even though they belong to the enemy community. However, although the traditional account of whom we may kill in wars is broadly faithful to that principle, the traditional account of why we may kill and of who may kill is not. Cosmopolitan theorists, for their part, do not address the ethical issues raised by war in any depth. Fabre's Cosmopolitan War seeks to fill this gap, and defends its account of just and unjust wars by addressing the ethics of different kinds of war: wars of national defence, wars over scarce resources, civil wars, humanitarian intervention, wars involving private military forces, and asymmetrical wars.Comment: This is a pivotal text on new war theory. It is best used as a primary text in advanced war theory, especially for those already familiar with the general literature on Just War.
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Added by: Veronica CibotaruAbstract:
This article questions fundamental concepts in political philosophy and political theory, as well as the method of political philosophy and philosophy more generally. While acknowledging that concepts such as contract, higher self, or organism do not refer within political theories to anything real but function as metaphors, MacDonald nonetheless emphasizes the importance of reflecting on the reasons for and the effects of their use. This way of thinking can constitute an essential part of philosophical method.
MacDonald’s thesis is that such concepts arise in response to puzzles of social life, among which the most fundamental is perhaps the question, “Why should human beings live with others of their own kind at all?” According to MacDonald, however, there is no general answer to these puzzles that could be applied to all social situations and that would entail political obligations normative for every context. This constitutes an important implicit critique of classical political theories.
As MacDonald argues, “as rational and responsible citizens we can never hope to know once and for all what our political duties are. And so we can never go to sleep.” The impossibility of offering a universal theory of political duties thus implies the requirement of constant ethical and political vigilance.
Comment: This can provide students with a useful critical perspective on classical political theories, such as the theory of the social contract. At the same time, it can encourage them to reflect on the method of philosophy and to take a fresh look at the classical analytic understanding of it as linguistic analysis.