The Ethics of War and Peace: Competing Traditions

Controversies on how best to deal with other groups of people, especially aggressive ones, have surely been with us nearly as long as people have been forming groups, and modern advances, both political and technological, have only complicated these matters. That moral agents must give some thought to our moral responsibility in this arena is a given, but what form such reasoning will take is not. Over time, a number of traditions regarding war have emerged, ranging from categorical rejection (pacifism) to a limited acceptance (just war tradition) to an enthusiastic acceptance (crusading tradition); others ultimately reject the notion that war is subject to moral strictures at all (realism).

As a first step to evaluating these views, I will work to more precisely define each, especially the two most popularly espoused (pacifism and just war theory), by way of a survey of their histories and scope. Building on this groundwork, I will then show how all four traditions relate to one another, by situating them along a continuum, arguing in particular that just war theory and pacifism have far more in common than most realize. In the course of laying out this continuum, I will also show that the only coherent way to characterize these traditions is with reference to non-consequentialist moral reasoning.

I will then argue that pacifism and just war tradition, given their underlying principles, are morally preferable to the alternatives, and more specifically, that a strong form of pacifism (that takes active responsibility for nonviolently combating injustice), and a strict form of just war (that is willing forego war when it is unjust), are morally superior to other forms. Of the two, I will ultimately make the case for the former, while nonetheless showing why a dualist approach that accepts both is most appropriate for this moral domain.