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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.

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Type
Research Article
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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.