Public War, Private Conscience The Ethics of Political Violence

by Fiala, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781441182586
• ISBN10: 1441182586
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Engaging both with contemporary examples and historical ideas about war, the book offers unique analysis of issues relating to terrorism, conscience objection, just war theory and pacifism. Andrew Fiala examines the conflict between utilitarian and deontological points of view. On the one hand, wars are part of the project of public welfare, subject to utilitarian evaluation. On the other hand, war is also subject to deontological judgment that takes seriously the importance of private conscience and human rights. This book argues that the conflict between these divergent approaches is unavoidable. We are continually caught in the tragic conflict between these two values: public happiness and private morality. And it is in war that we find the conflict at its most obvious and most disturbing.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Sublime Grind of Ares 2. The War of Public and Private

3. Plato's Prophecy and Kant's Dream

4. Democratic Control and Professional Ethics5. The Military Establishment

6. The Democratic Peace Myth: From Kant and Mill to Hiroshima and Baghdad

7. The Vanity of Temporal Things: Hegel and the Ethics of War

8. American Ambivalence: Militarism, Pacificism and Pragmatism 

9. Sliding Scales and the Mischief of War

10. Waterboarding, Torture and Violence

11. Conscientious Refusal and the Liberal Tradition12. Public Myths and Private Protest

Bibliography

Index