Comparative study of three texts: Ethics of war: paper

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This document covers the following aspects: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Michael Walzer, Just and unjust wars and the rules of war. All these sections are based on the Doctrine of double effect from the article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Considering that the Christian thought has a major role in the Just War Tradition which basically is the moral framework which determines most decisions made by both States and soldiers in wartime, I thought it would be interesting to see more in depth what it consists of. Therefore Thomas Aquinas' views about war are going to be very useful in the following analysis. Reading these texts, a second observation that I have made is that it is very complicated to apply the same moral judgments to individuals and collectives. That is one of the reasons why I decided to give a special importance to the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) debate which originally only concerned the individual level. War-related issues have led to concern the collective level. We also discuss Walzer's chapter about the rules of war, as Walzer addresses the question of the distinction between these two levels and tells us a lot about the importance of codes and conventions in warfare.

Extraits

[...] There are actually two main difficulties that I would like to address. The first one is at the border between Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello and has important implications on Jus Post Bellum as well. It is a question of individual responsibility. Walzer explains us how hard it was to evaluate Rommel's responsibility when he obeyed Hitler's orders. But I think that the only criterion in that case should be the conscious and consented allegiance he had towards Hitler. [...]

[...] need to moralize soldiers in warfare. In fact, it shows the tension there is between Jus ad bellum and Jus in Bello. Another relevant aspect of these codes in this argument shows that they give a moral justification to war in a certain way. Indeed, the conception of war as a fight between fighters is largely accepted among soldiers. Even if it permits to avoid the death of many civilians, it makes war acceptable and justified whereas it definitely is a normative claim it should not. [...]

[...] Comparative study of three texts: Ethics of war: paper Texts discussed Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Part II section II Question 40: War. Michael Walzer, Just and unjust wars, Chapter 3 rules of war”. Doctrine of double effect (article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). First of all: Why these three texts? Considering that the Christian thought has a major role in the Just War Tradition which basically is the moral framework which determines most decisions made by both States and soldiers in wartime, I thought it would be interesting to see more in depth what it consists of. [...]

[...] We could easily criticize the idea developed by Aquinas that a legitimate authority is an authority that directly comes from God. Indeed today, there are no catholic absolutist regimes anymore to justify their authority by the divine law. However, the ethical framework offered by Aquinas still has repercussions today. State leaders, in the process of decision making to go to war or not, have to think about the justness of their intention, their cause and of their authority as well. [...]

[...] What is interesting about this article is that it presents the most recent controversies about this doctrine. Thus, we can notice that even if the four principles are considered virtuous by every researcher, they all allow exceptions which make the theory barely adaptable into practice. Moreover the idea that the bad effect must not be intended but merely foreseen has brought about skepticism in our generally secularized time and we can observe that most researchers today have less principled approaches such as the permanent reference to fundamental precepts and show more pragmatism towards normative ideas such as sin and virtue. [...]