Public War, Private Conscience The Ethics of Political Violence

"The Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, complained that the doctrine of 'justifiable war' provides little more than comfort to war-mongers. In this eloquent new essay, Andrew Fiala explores the dimensions of 'comfort' that our own Kantian convictions regarding the moral superiority of democracy and human rights provide when coupled with a 'grinding utilitarian logic' justifying the public use of deadly force in their furtherance. Surveying philosophical reflections on war from Plato, Kant, Bentham and Hegel to Hanna Arendt, John Rawls, and Michael Walzer, Fiala issues his own provocative challenges to our perpetual justification of our war-making and war-fighting, and examines, from Hiroshima to Baghdad, the private tragedy that war, as the 'sublime dance of cosmos and chaos', invariably reveals itself to be." - George R. Lucas, Jr., Class of 1984 Distinguished Chair of Ethics, U.S. Naval Academy, Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, USA