Beyond Just War A Virtue Ethics Approach

'David Chan offers a Copernican Revolution in thinking about the ethics of war. He utilizes virtue ethics instead of the traditional deontological and consequentialist approaches to just war theory. Arguing that the just war tradition has been overly permissive, Chan asks us to consider how virtuous leaders would approach war as a tragic choice, which forces the virtuous person to choose the evil of war. With subtlety and historical insight, Chan situates his own 'philosophy of co-existence' somewhere between pacifism and traditional just war theory.' - Andrew Fiala, Department of Philosophy, California State University, USA