Modernity, the Environment, and the Christian Just War Tradition
Modernity, the Environment, and the Christian Just War Tradition
£94.00
GBPIn this volume, Mark Douglas presents an environmental history of the Christian just war tradition. Focusing on the transition from its late medieval into its early modern form, he explores the role the tradition has played in conditioning modernity and generating modernity's blindness to interactions between 'the natural' and 'the political.' Douglas criticizes problematic myths that have driven conventional narratives about the history of the tradition and suggests a revised approach that better accounts for the evolution of that tradition through time. Along the way, he provides new interpretations of works by Francisco de Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, and, provocatively, the Constitution of the United States of America. Sitting at the intersection of just war thinking, environmental history, and theological ethics, Douglas's book serves as a timely guide for responses to wars in a warming world as they increasingly revolve around the flashpoints of religion, resources, and refugees.
- Offers a historically-sensitive and theologically-coherent understanding of the Christian just war tradition and its role in shaping modernity
- Promotes an environmental history of the just war tradition in the West, linking it to changes in ideas, technologies, and climate
- Enables persons of faith to understand and respond to modern wars that revolve around religious, resources, and refugees
Reviews & endorsements
'This is a thorough, well-researched study of the evolution of just war theory from its Greek and Roman beginnings through its refinement in Christian history and its secular expression in international law. … Recommended.' C. L. Kammer, Choice
'As an early contribution to a nascent and necessary discussion of the connections between climate and the ethics of war … Douglas's ambitious project is a significant achievement: it names an urgent problem, provides some preliminary answers, identifies areas for future research, and contributes to ongoing scholarly debates in the field of religious ethics by suggesting a methodology for this work that takes into account the significance of both ethics and the historical contexts in which it is developed. It is my hope that contemporary just war thinkers will take up this call …' Rosemary Kellison, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
'This book would certainly be accessible to advanced undergraduates and serve as an effective introduction not only to the just war tradition, but also to the development - and trajectory - of modernity and the 'Secular Age' à la Charles Taylor. The author presents complex ideas in remarkably lucid prose, with many lovely and pithy turns of phrase …' Laurie Johnston, Studies in Christian Ethics
Product details
May 2022Adobe eBook Reader
9781009116763
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. Engaging the other: Francisco de Vitoria and the Age of Conquest
- 2. Understanding the self: Hugo Grotius and the birth of the secular
- 3. Shaping the state: the U.S. constitution as Christian just war document
- 5. Christian just war thinking and modernity
- 6. Historical roots and roads not taken: an environmental history of the Christian just war tradition
- 7. Re-narrating the Christian just war tradition.
