Christopher J. Finlay

Hume’s Theory of Civil Society

This article interprets David Hume’s social and political thought as a ‘theory of civil society’, arguing that as such it constituted an important challenge to the civic humanism of much early 18th-century British political argument. Since republican theorists invoke the historical traditions of civic thought in current debates, Hume’s theory of civil society therefore is of especial interest in relation to the foundations of contemporary neo-republicanism. The first part argues that, in A Treatise of Human Nature, by analysing various different kinds of relation between human beings, Hume articulated a fundamental distinction between society and the state. The second examines Hume’s Essays and Political Discourses, focusing in particular on the relationship between the respective interests of society and government, the effects of commercial refinement on virtues and sociability, and on forms of mediation between society and the state. The concluding section reviews the historical and theoretical significance of Hume’s theory, focusing particularly on concepts of liberty.

Fairness and Liability in the Just War: Combatants, Non-combatants and Lawful Irregulars

Critics of non-uniformed ‘irregular’ warfare argue that it is unfair both to non-combatants and to enemy ‘regulars’. I dispute this view by outlining the ‘problem of in bello justice’, which concerns how the leaders of a people forced to fight a just war should distribute risks within their own population. In so far as all are the victims of aggression or unjust occupation, I argue, no citizens on the just side are morally liable to attack. But to benefit from the restraining effects of discrimination, some members must be rendered legally liable. Political leaders must therefore find the most appropriate distribution of the risk of harm: first, by deciding which and how many citizens to select as ‘combatants’; and second, by specifying how far to distance combatants from civilians. I identify four normative considerations that must be taken into account: each possible arrangement must (1) fulfil basic requirements of fairness domestically; then, between equally fair arrangements, leaders ought to determine which offers the most auspicious balance between (2) the goal of survival (of the society and as many of its members as possible) and (3) the goal of winning and, hence, eliminating the injustices that caused the war; finally (4) the arrangement should not be unfair to enemy combatants. On this basis, I argue that in spite of the increased risks it poses to civilians, limited ‘irregular’ warfare might be deployed legitimately against occupiers where using uniforms would render insurgents vulnerable to targeted assassination or arrest prior to actual combat.

The concept of violence in international theory : a Double-Intent Account.

The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a special way that makes acts of violence peculiarly hard to justify. This paper defends a narrow understanding of violence and a special ethics governing its use by arguing that a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category while partly accounting for the fearful connotations of the term. Violent Agency is defined first by a double intention (1) to inflict harm using a technique chosen (2) to eliminate or evade the target’s means of escaping it or defending against it. Second, the harms it aims at are destructive (as opposed to appropriative). The analysis offered connects the concept of violence to themes in international theory such as vulnerability, security, and domination, as well as the ethics of war.

The Perspective of the Rebel: A Gap in the Global Normative Architecture

If people have a right to rebel against domestic tyranny, wrongful foreign occupation, or colonial rule, then the normative principles commonly invoked to deal with civil conflicts present a problem. While rebels in some cases might justifiably try to secure human rights by resort to violence, the three normative pillars dealing with armed force provide at best only a partial reflection of the ethics of armed revolt. This article argues that (first) the concept of “terrorism” and the ongoing attempt to define it in international law, (second) the laws of war and their application to armed conflict, and (third) the Responsibility to Protect all obscure as much as clarify the problem. Given the prevalence of political oppression and the occurrence of civil conflicts originating in attempts to confront it, there is therefore a pressing need to establish a place for the rights of rebellion in the international normative architecture.

Dirty hands and the romance of the ticking bomb terrorist: a Humean account

On Michael Walzer’s influential account, ‘dirty hands’ characterizes the political leader’s choice between absolutist moral demands (to abstain from torture) and consequentialist political reasoning (to do what is necessary to prevent the loss of innocent lives). The impulse to torture a ‘ticking bomb terrorist’ is therefore at least partly pragmatic, straining against morality, while the desire to uphold a ban on torture is purely and properly a moral one. I challenge this ‘Machiavellian’ view by reinterpreting the dilemma in the framework of the Humean theory of justice and moral sentiment. By interpreting the ticking bomb scenario as a dramatic narrative, I argue that it appeals to properly moral sensibilities, which speak in favour of the use of force against the terrorist. The absolute ban on torture, by contrast, is an ‘artificial virtue’ and a product of political prudence. On this account, the ticking bomb terrorist dilemma therefore imposes a different burden on the political leader from Walzer’s version: an ethic of political responsibility demands that the political leader be prepared to sacrifice her moral soul by upholding the law against moral but politically imprudent demands to break it; while the ticking bomb ‘romance’ appeals to her feelings of compassionate moral concern towards particular individuals. She dirties her hands morally, not by authorizing torture, but by allowing the terrorist’s bomb to detonate and take the lives of the innocent.

Self‐Defence and the Right to Resist

Western political theory and ethics have traditionally seen lethal violence as justifiable in the service of liberty in some limited circumstances. Just war theory enshrines as a central commitment the right of states and peoples to defend themselves from unjust aggression, as when foreign states attempt to annex them through military invasion. 1 Similarly, liberal and democratic thought has commonly endorsed the entitlement of individuals both in their own right and as members of wider communities to use violence as a means of resisting or overthrowing oppressive regimes, domestic or foreign. As Tony Honoré put it not long ago, a commitment to rights generally entails a right to remedy as its corollary: remedial rights will include, in some circumstances at least, a right to use force – even lethal force, if necessary – to defend primary rights. 2 Michael Ignatieff has recently reiterated this view in his study of ethics in ‘an age of terror’. 3

Bastards, Brothers, and Unjust Warriors: Enmity and Ethics in Just War Cinema

How do members of the general public come to regard some uses of violence as legitimate and others as illegitimate? And how do they learn to use widely recognised normative principles in doing so such as those encapsulated in the laws of war and debated by just war theorists? This article argues that popular cinema is likely to be a major source of influence especially through a subgenre that I call ‘Just War Cinema’. Since the 1950s, many films have addressed the moral drama at the centre of contemporary Just War Theory through the figure of the enemy in the Second World War, offering often explicit and sophisticated treatments of the relationship between the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello that anticipate or echo the arguments of philosophers. But whereas Cold War-era films may have supported Just War Theory’s ambitions to shape public understanding, a strongly revisionary tendency in Just War Cinema since the late 1990s is just as likely to thwart them. The potential of Just War Cinema to vitiate efforts to shape wider attitudes is a matter that both moral philosophers and those concerned with disseminating the law of war ought to pay close attention to.

Introduction: Legitimate Authority, War, and the Ethics of Rebellion

The three articles that make up this special section all investigate, from different perspectives, the idea that considerations of “legitimate authority”—as paradigmatically associated with the modern sovereign state—have a key role in constituting the modern idea of war and in determining the normative status of those who participate in it. While Jonathan Parry addresses the theme as an important matter in the moral analysis of wars of any kind, Christopher Finlay and Pål Wrange focus on its salience in the context of wars between states and nonstate belligerents, such as national liberation movements or armed domestic rebellions. All three pieces were developed from papers presented as part of a panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Atlanta in March . In just war theory, legitimate authority (along with cognate terms such as “right authority” and “proper authority”) is traditionally identified as a principle of jus ad bellum and, thus, as a precondition of justifying the resort to war. The need for such a criterion, however, has been thrown into doubt recently, particularly in light of an increasingly influential approach to the ethics of war, as defended by Jeff McMahan, Cécile Fabre, Helen Frowe, and a number of other philosophers. The central tenet of this view is that the morality of war is wholly reducible to the moral principles that govern “ordinary” violence between private individuals. Proponents of this “reductivist” approach often take their view to have important revisionary implications for traditional norms of just war. In particular, many conclude that the authority requirement lacks moral foundations.