Abstract
If, as I have argued in the last chapter, war is a great evil, then war should be avoided. Certainly, wars of choice should be avoided and too many wars are wars of choice.1 But is there a point at which it is morally worse not to fight a war? Or is war always a worse evil than the evils we seek to eliminate through war? And how does anyone provide rational and morally justified answers to these questions? In this chapter, I will propose answers that are different from those that have been used in the ethics of war.
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Notes
As Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 59, points out: “Every conflict threatens the structure as a whole with collapse. Aggression challenges it directly and is much more dangerous than domestic crime, because there are no policemen.”
Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), p. 139
Jeff McMahan in “The Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114 (2004), p. 695.
Carl Lesnor, “The ‘Good’ War,” The Philosophical Forum 36: 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 77–85, makes the point that in every war since the Second World War, the West has sought out Hitler clones to repeat the justification for the “Good” War.
On tragic choices, see Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
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© 2012 David K. Chan
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Chan, D.K. (2012). The Philosophy of Co-existence. In: Beyond Just War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263414_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263414_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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