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Taking War Seriously

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2018

Charles Blattberg
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Abstract

Just war theory − as advanced by Michael Walzer, among others − fails to take war seriously enough. This is because it proposes that we regulate war with systematic rules that are comparable to those of a game. Three types of claims are advanced. The first is phenomenological: that the theory's abstract nature interferes with our judgment of what is, and should be, going on. The second is meta-ethical: that the theory's rules are not, in fact, systematic after all, there being inherent contradictions between them. And the third is practical: that by getting people to view war as like a game, the theory promotes its ‘aestheticization’ (play being a central mode of the aesthetic) such that those who fight are encouraged to act in dangerous ways. And war, it goes without saying, is already dangerous enough.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 94 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 139 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2018 

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References

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62 My thanks to Asa Kasher, Françis Douville Vigeant, and Michael Walzer for comments on previous versions of this paper.