Simple Truths, Hard Problems: Some thoughts on terror, justice, and self-defence

Abstract

Among the most elementary of moral truisms is the principle of universality: we apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others, more stringent ones if we are serious. A near-universal principle of intellectual culture is the rejection of this truism, sometimes explicitly. Rejection of this and similar moral truisms has severe human consequences, and yields what are regarded as “hard problems”—hard in no small measure because truisms are rejected. Illustrations range from establishment of “norms” for international behavior to practice and doctrine with regard.