Ends and Means

This page gives the syllabus for a course I am teaching at Haverford College in Spring 2016: "Ends and Means: Moral Choices in Politics." The course revolves around one question: How should we balance between the demands of morality and the demands of political responsibility? When--if ever--can good political ends justify bad means? Feel free to e-mail me with questions about the course at tjdonahueAThaverford.edu.

Are the Police at War with Black America? If So, What Should Members of Both Parties Do about It?

(BBC Newsnight, 13 July 2016; fair use)

SYLLABUS

ENDS AND MEANS: MORAL CHOICES IN POLITICS

Thomas J. Donahue

Haverford College, Spring 2016

POLSH274B001

MW 10-11:30

Office Hours: W, 2-4, CPGC Café

Mailbox: Hall Building Faculty Mailroom

E-mail: tjdonahueAThaverford.edu

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

--Gandhi

To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

--Attributed to Robespierre

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it.

--William Penn

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.

--Thomas Jefferson

Sacrifices for short-term goals, coercion, if men’s plight is desperate enough and truly requires such measures, may be justified. But holocausts for the sake of distant goals, that is a cruel mockery of all that men hold dear, now and at all times.

--Isaiah Berlin

Can politics be moral? Many people think not. They cite a litany of moral disasters produced by politics and government: civil wars, mass murder, systematic lying to the public, mass rape, dirty wars of mass torture and “disappearances,” white-supremacist government, cruel and unusual punishment, war for the sake of profits for a few, political corruption, class domination ratified by the state, show trials, political witch hunts, intentional punishment of the innocent, and on and on. Faced with such a record, many well-meaning people wash their hands of politics and government, preferring to cultivate their own garden or work toward anarchy. They refuse to participate in government. For them, politics is anathema, because it falsely thinks that the end justifies the means.

They may be right in their anathema. But they pay a high price for their refusal. For politics will continue while they cultivate their garden. And while anarchy may be the right long-term goal, it is still a long way off. What should we do in the meantime?

This course is for those who wish to think about what we should do in the meantime: those who want to understand whether and how one can make moral choices in politics. Can the end justify the means? If it can’t, then is politics inherently morally wicked? To answer these questions, the course tries to pick out what the following have in common: Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, civil disobedience, rebellion, detaining suspected terrorists without trial, interrogational torture, accepting economic exploitation so as to pick the fruits of economic growth, Stalinism, the Bolshevik rejection of human rights, conservatism, and the debate between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Each of these, the course will argue, represents a response to one of the central problems of political life: the problem of dirty hands. In everyday life, we accept certain moral rules: don’t lie, don’t cheat, keep your promises, don’t steal, and don’t kill. If we are social and politically aware, we may add another rule: don’t support injustice. But, in politics, we often find ourselves face to face with grave injustices or—occasionally—impending moral disasters. In those circumstances, it sometimes seems that we could alleviate the injustice, or avert the disaster, if only we broke the ordinary moral rules. Indeed, many people in such circumstances have thought that breaking those rules is the only morally responsible thing to do. They profess contempt for those who refuse to dirty their own hands. “Don’t want to get your hands dirty, eh? You must not be too worried about (saving the republic/ending the oppression/avoiding the disaster).”

In such cases, what should we do? This is the dirty hands problem: How do we balance between the demands of morality and the demands of political responsibility? This course examines some of the leading practical responses to this problem, as well as theoretical treatments of it. The course aims to give students the tools to build a well-supported answer to the problem of what to do in such cases. Can the end ever justify the means? Was William Penn right when he said that, “A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it”? Or was Penn just obtusely refusing to acknowledge that, sometimes, all the actions open to us are evil?

To help students answer these questions for themselves, we begin with Machiavelli’s and Sartre’s famous analyses of the choice between saving the republic or ending oppression, on the one hand, and respecting ordinary morality, on the other. We then examine Zionism and Palestinian nationalism as responses to enduring injustices suffered by both sides; treatments by Albert Camus and others of whether to seek justice or peace after the overthrow of an oppressive regime; the debate between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X over whether nonviolent protest or violent self-defense is the best response to oppressive violence; Henry David Thoreau’s argument that civil disobedience against unjust laws outweighs the value of being law-abiding; the controversy between Leon Trotsky and John Dewey over whether loyalty to the moral rules inevitably entrenches injustice and oppression; and whether or not conservatism in the strict sense is a dirty-hands proposal for how to avoid political and social evils. Our focus in the latter half of the course will be the ethics of war and peace, for the dirty hands problem arises with special urgency in decision-making about when to go to war, what to do once in it, and what to do when the fighting stops. We shall therefore examine the moral principles that should guide us in going to war; the principles that govern fighting wars and war crimes, including especially whether it can ever be acceptable or tolerable to target civilians and their property, or to commit other war crimes; and the ethics of post-war settlements and restoring peace.

The course aims to hone students’ skills in analysis and argument. Much attention will be given to structures of reasoning and the shape of models and theories. The goal is to strengthen skills of reasoning and analysis that will be useful in public life, in the professions, and in graduate school.

Pre-requisites. No pre-requisite courses. Only a desire to understand how to use theories and arguments. However, to do a good job in this course, you need to have a handle on the key concepts and problems of at least one of ethics, political theory, or economics. If you haven't had a course in any of the three, then you should read a primer that will give you such a handle. Here are some good ones:

Simon Blackburn, Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford UP, 2001), Parts II and III. You can skip Part I.

David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP 2003)

Partha Dasgupta, Economics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP 2007)

Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume One: Microeconomics (Hill & Wang, 2011)

" " " " , The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume Two: Macroeconomics (Hill & Wang, 2011)

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:

(1) Participate in class discussion. I know many people find this daunting. Nevertheless, try. One main aim of the course is to help you improve in argument.

(2) Submit 6 response papers. Each session, you may submit in hard copy a paper, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper should state the thesis and then argue for or against it. If you argue for it, you should provide your own reasons for it--not the author's reasons. Here's an example: "Judith Shklar argues that it was better to proceed with the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials than to summarily punish the accused, as Winston Churchill had proposed. I shall argue instead that it would have been better to follow Churchill's proposal and summarily punish the accused. My main reason will be that summarily punishing the top leaders while avoiding trials would have given the world the punishment it wanted to see, while ensuring that no one could argue that the Allies were using corrupt and unjust legal procedures to obtain predetermined political results. By contrast, the trials muddied the distinction between normal times and extraordinary times, and thus encouraged people to think that the Allies valued neither legality nor justice." Click here for guidelines on writing response papers. Note that for full credit, you need only submit 6 such papers. MOREOVER: YOU MUST ALSO SUBMIT THE PAPER TO THE FORUM ON THE COURSE'S MOODLE PAGE.

(3) Submit a paper proposal. You are required to submit, in Week 8, a proposal for your final paper. The proposal should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), give the key reasons by which you will defend the thesis, state two serious objections to your thesis, and state how you will respond to the objections. The proposal should be not more than 800 words long.

(4) Submit a final paper. You are required to submit, on the last day of exams, a final paper. The paper should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), defend the thesis with argument, state two serious objections to your thesis, and respond to the objections. The paper should be not more than 4,000 words long.

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; Response Papers: 30% (5% each); Paper Proposal: 20%; Argumentative Paper: 30%

Course format. The course will be discussion oriented. I will usually begin sessions by presenting a thesis advanced in the week’s reading. I will discuss its implications. I will then ask one or many of you whether you think the thesis true or false, and why. We shall then examine the reasons you offer for your view. We shall then turn to the reasons the text offers in defense of the thesis. I will ask you what you think of those reasons, and so forth. The course in part aims to improve your skill in reasoned argument.

Course Objectives. By the end of the course, students should

(1) Have become familiar with the key concepts of the theories and arguments about public and private morality covered in the course;

(2) Have strengthened their skills in applying these concepts to current debate about the problems of political morality;

(3) Have honed their ability to specify how and why specific values clash when dealing with problems of politics;

(4) Have improved their skills in specifying the disagreement over the relevant facts involved in disagreement over problems of political morality.

(5) Have learned how to accurately describe the structure of a theory, specifying its key concepts, its main claims, the basic model underlying it, and the question to which it is an answer;

(6) Have honed their skills in specifying the structures of arguments, breaking them into premises-axioms, middle premises-lemmas, and conclusions-theorems;

(7) Have improved their ability in distinguishing between similar concepts denoted by the same word and spotting equivocations;

(8) Have honed their skills in evaluating and challenging the premises of an argument with rational and well-ordered arguments of their own;

(9) Have improved their ability to evaluate the deductive validity or inductive strength of an argument’s progress from premises to conclusions;

(10) Have worked out for themselves a detailed and developed argument arguing a thesis about one of the questions covered in the course.

E-mail policy. You are welcome to e-mail me with questions about the course. I try to answer e-mails within 48 hours of receipt. Don’t expect an answer before then. Fast generally means shoddy.

Academic Dishonesty: Don’t do it! Here is Haverford College's official language on the subject:

"A Note from Your Professor on Academic Integrity at Haverford:

"In a community that thrives on relationships between students and faculty that are based on trust and respect, it is crucial that students understand a professor’s expectations and what it means to do academic work with integrity. Plagiarism and cheating, even if unintentional, undermine the values of the Honor Code and the ability of all students to benefit from the academic freedom and relationships of trust the Code facilitates. Plagiarism is using someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as your own without attribution. Plagiarism can also occur in more subtle forms, such as inadequate paraphrasing, failure to cite another person’s idea even if not directly quoted, failure to attribute the synthesis of various sources in a review article to that author, or accidental incorporation of another’s words into your own paper as a result of careless note-taking. Cheating is another form of academic dishonesty, and it includes not only copying, but also inappropriate collaboration, exceeding the time allowed, and discussion of the form, content, or degree of difficulty of an exam. Please be conscientious about your work, and check with me if anything is unclear."

I may, at any time, use tools like turnitin.com to detect plagiarism.

Students with Disabilities, Special Needs, or Having Difficulties: Here is the Haverford Office of Disability Services' Statement, which I affirm:

"Haverford College is committed to supporting the learning process for all students. Please contact me as soon as possible if you having difficulties in the course. There are also many resources on campus available to you as a student, including the Office of Academic Resources, and the Office of Disability Services. If you think you may need accommodation because of a disability, please contact Gabriela Moats, Coordinator of Accommodations, Office of Disabilities Services at he-odsAThaverford.edu. If you have already been approved to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester with your verification letter."

Writing response papers: Here are guidelines on what I’m looking for, and what I’m not looking for, but other teachers might be: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/writing-response-papers

How to understand and use theories: Puzzled? You're not alone! Even the professionals find this difficult. Click here for some tips on how to do it: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/using-theories

How to do political philosophy: The approach used in this course is political philosophy. For some tips on how to do it, click here:

https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/political-philosophy-why-and-how

REQUIRED BOOKS

[1] Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Basic Books, 2006)

[2] Albert Camus, Neither Victims Nor Executioners: An Ethic Superior to Murder (Wipf & Stock Publishing, 2008)

[3] Chaim Gans, A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (Oxford University Press, 2008)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

[1] Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials , reprint ed. (Harvard University Press, 1986)

[2] Virginia Held, How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence (Oxford UP, 2008)

[3] Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, ed. Igor Primoratz (Palgrave, 2005)

[4] Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, 2nd edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013 )

[5] Carlos Santiago Nino, Radical Evil on Trial (Yale University Press, 1998)

[6] Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research (University of Chicago Press, 2008). Available online through all of the Tri-College Libraries.

[7] Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (Hackett, 2008)

[8] Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Blackwell, 2001)

WRITING GOOD PAPERS: THE PROSE, THE PROBLEM, AND THE ARGUMENT

[1] Richard Lanham's Paramedic Method.

It transforms slow-starting sentences with obscure subjects into sentences with clear actors and actions.

[2] The Bennett rules for writing decent prose in theoretical papers.

Jonathan Bennett says: Prefer verbs to nouns. Prefer adverbs to adjectives. Avoid intensifiers ( like "very" or "extremely"). Use sparingly the abstract nouns--big words from Latin and Greek ending with "--ation," "--ity," "-ism," "-ology," "-nomy," etc.--; don't cram a sentence full of them.

[3] Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Longman, 2010).

Explains why and when to use Lanham's Method and Strunk and White's rules; and when to break them. Explains how to organize information in a sentence: put the familiar at the front, and the new at the end. Also explains how to make paragraphs coherent: each paragraph should have a point sentence articulating its main point, and this should come either at the end of the paragraph's introductory sentence, or at the paragraph's end.

[4] "From Questions to Problems," Section II.4 of Wayne Booth et al., The Craft of Research.

Crucial for writing research papers. You need more than a topic. You need more than a research question. You need more than a thesis. You need a research problem, which tells a definite audience what is the bigger question they can't fully answer until they've followed your answering of your research question.

[5] Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (Hackett, 2008).

SCHEDULE

Jan 20. Week 1. Session 1. Introduction. The Problems of End and Means, Dirty Hands, and the Clash between Public and Private Morality

Optional reading:

Passages from Machiavelli, The Prince, Chs. XV, XVIII, VIII,

Leszek Kolakowski, "The Conspiracy of Ivory Tower Intellectuals," in The Essential Works of Marxism, ed. Arthur P. Mendel (1961): 347-360, pp. 350-356.

A dialogue considering how the arguments of the dirty-handed Marxist-Leninist revolutionary oppose and are opposed by the arguments of a reluctant intellectual, like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky. or Marxism-Leninism's many liberal critics.

Jean-Paul Sartre, two-page dialogue from the English translation of Les mains sales (Dirty Hands)

So you'd like to know more...

"Les mains sales," dir. Fernand Rivers and Simone Berriau (1951), adapting Sartre's play to the big screen.

Jan 25. Week 2. Session 1. The Ethics of Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Paul Fussell, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Other Essays (New York: Summit, 1988), pp. 13-37

Michael Walzer, “An Exchange of Views,” in Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb, pp. 38-42.

Fussell, “An Exchange of Views,” in Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb, pp. 42-44.

Elizabeth Anscombe, “Mr Truman’s Degree,” Collected Philosophical Papers, Volume III: Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62-71

So you'd like to know more...

"Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped," with Peter Jennings (1995)

A perspective from the victims' nation: an op-ed in the Japan Times argues that President Obama should visit Hiroshima.

Jan 27. Week 2. Session 2. (1) Trying Leaders for Retroactive Crimes against Humanity: The Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. (2) The Problem of Legally Punishing Human Rights Violators for Actions that Were Legal at the Time.

Judith Shklar, “A National Ideology as Law: Tokyo,” Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Harvard UP, 1986), pp. 179-190

Shklar, “Political Trials,” “The Spirit of Political Judgment,” Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Harvard UP, 1986), pp. 143-170

Note, “Criminal Law. In General. German Citizen Who Pursuant to Nazi Statute Informed on Husband for Expressing Anti-Nazi Sentiments Convicted under Another German Statute in Effect at Time of Act,” Harvard Law Review 64 (1951): 1005-1007

H. L. A. Hart, “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals,” Harvard Law Review 71 (1958): 593-629, READ ONLY PP. 615-621

So you'd like to know more...

A view of the Tokyo trials from a U. S. perspective (documentary from Robert H. Jackson Center)

Judith Shklar, “A War on Trial," Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials, pp. 170-179

"Judgment at Nuremberg," dir. Stanley Kramer (1961)

Carlos Nino, “Retroactive Justice in Argentina,” Radical Evil on Trial (Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 41-104.

Feb 1. Week 3. Session 1. (1) Purging Ordinary Citizens for Complicity with a Horrific Regime. (2) The Bolsheviks’ Views on Means and Ends.

Henry Rousso, “The Purge in France: An Incomplete Story,” in Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy, ed. Jon Elster (Cambridge UP, 2006): 89-123

Steven Lukes, “Means and Ends,” Marxism and Morality (Clarendon Press, 1985): 100-138

So you'd like to know more...

A notorious episode in the French purges--Frenchwomen accused of sleeping with the enemy were forced to have their heads publicly shaved as a humiliating punishment.

Click here for materials on the Bolsheviks, their dirty-hands methods, and the Russian Revolution

A documentary on life in the Soviet Union in the 1960s--note that this is long after Stalinism was repudiated.

Feb 3. Week 3. Session 2. Albert Camus’s Response to Bloodthirstiness by Bolsheviks, U. S. Liberals, and French Republicans Alike.

Albert Camus, Neither Victims Nor Executioners: An Ethic Superior to Murder [originally published in Combat, November 1946]. READ pp. 27-61. (The essay and the Postscript)

So you'd like to know more...

Camus and Sartre's disagreement over how to respond to the revelations of the Soviet gulags (From a BBC documentary on Camus)

Feb 8. Week 4. Session 1. (1) Trotsky’s Theory of Means and Ends, and Rebuttal of Critiques of the Bolsheviks’ Methods. (2) John Dewey’s Response to Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky, “Their Morals and Ours,” [New International, 1938] republished in Trotsky et al., Their Morals and Ours: Marxist versus Liberal Views on Morality, 4^th ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969)

John Dewey, “Means and Ends: Their Interdependence, and Leon Trotsky's Essay on 'Their Morals and Ours' ,” [New International, 1938] republished in Their Morals and Ours [1969].

So you'd like to know more...

Richard J. Bernstein, "Dewey's Encounter with Trotsky," Inter-American Journal of Philosophy 3 (2012): 5-15

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT A RESPONSE PAPER

Feb 10. Week 4. Session 2. (1) An Analysis of the Problem of Dirty Hands. (2) Should Civil Liberties Be Suspended in a National Emergency?

Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160-180

Michael Ignatieff, “The Ethics of Emergency,” The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton UP, 2004), pp. 25-54

Feb 15. Week 5. Session 1. (1) Can Torture Ever Be the Lesser Evil? (2) Zionism as a Dirty-Hands Response to a Monumental Injustice.

Steven Lukes, “Liberal Democratic Torture,” British Journal of Political Science 36 (2006): 1-16

Chaim Gans, A Just Zionism (Oxford UP, 2008): 9-16, 34-84

So you'd like to know more...Click here for videos on justifications of torture.

So you'd like to know more about the injustices that led Jews to Zionism...

From "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews--5: The Search for Deliverance," dir. by Julian Krainin (1984):

1st part, 2nd part, 3rd part, 4th part, 5th part

"Heritage: Civilization and the Jews--6: Roads from the Ghetto," dir. by Julian Krainin (1984)

"Heritage: Civilization and the Jews--7: The Golden Land,"

Feb 17. Week 5. Session 2. (1) Continued: Zionism as a Dirty-Hands Response to a Monumental Injustice. (2) A Zionist View of Really-Existing Zionism’s Justice Deficit.

Chaim Gans, A Just Zionism (Oxford UP, 2008): 84-128

So you'd like to know more about the injustices done in establishing Zionism, especially to the Palestinians...

"The Zionist Story," dir. by Ronen Berlovich

"Exiles--Edward Said," (1986)

Feb 22. Week 6. Session 1. (1) Henry David Thoreau’s Defense of Civil Disobedience. (2) Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Argument for Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression.

Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau: Political Writings, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge UP, 1996): 1-22

Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” (16 April 1963)

So you'd like to know more...

James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. debate whether "The American dream has been at the expense of the American Negro" (Cambridge University, 1965)

James Baldwin interviewed by Kenneth Clark on Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and racial oppression (1963)

Feb 24. Week 6. Session 2. (1) Malcom X’s Argument for Violent Self-Defense against Oppressive Violence. (2) Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress's Theory of Contingent Non-Violence. (3) Black Power Nationalist Separatism and Black Corporatism: Two Dirty-Hands Responses to U. S. Racial Oppression?

Malcolm X, “Interview of 11 October 1963, UC-Berkeley.” Available at: https://archive.org/details/cabemrc_00001

Mabogo P. More, "Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko, and Nelson Mandela: The Philosophical Basis of Their Thought and Practice," in A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu (Blackwell, 2004): 207-215

Tommie Shelby, "Black Power Nationalism," We Who Are Dark: Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Belknap Press, 2005): 101-135.

Focus on the structures of Black Nationalist Separatism and Black Corporatism, rather than Shelby's arguments against them.

So you'd like to know more...

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Vintage, 1967)

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT THREE RESPONSE PAPERS.

Feb 29. Week 7. Session 1. (1) Is Lesbian Separatism a Dirty-Hands Response to the Oppression of Women in General, and Special Oppression of Lesbians in Particular? (2) Is the Capitalist-Growth-Makes-Nations-Richer Argument for Capitalism a Dirty-Hands Acceptance of Exploitation of Workers?

Claudia Card, "Pluralist Lesbian Separatism," in Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures, ed. Jeffner Allen (SUNY Press, 1990): 125-142, READ pp. 125-138 ONLY

Joseph Schumpeter, “Plausible Capitalism,” Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Harper & Row, 2008 ): 72-80

Joseph Schumpeter, “The Process of Creative Destruction,” ibid., pp. 71-75 ONLY

Allen W. Wood, “Capitalist Exploitation,” Karl Marx, 2^nd edition (Routledge, 2004): 242-253, 257-261.

So you'd like to know more....

Cheshire Calhoun, "The Shape of Lesbian and Gay Subordination," Feminism, The Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement (Oxford UP, 2000): 75-107

March 2. Week 7. Session 2. (1) Who May Resist Occupation, and How? A View from the Republican Tradition, with special reference to the Occupation of the West Bank. (2) The Ethics of Revolution.

Karma Nabulsi, “Hope and Heroic Action: Rousseau, Paoli, Kosciuszko, and the Republican Tradition of War,” Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance, and the Law (Oxford UP, 1999): 177-241, READ pp. 177-204 ONLY.

Reinhold Niebuhr, “Justice through Revolution,” Moral Man and Immoral Society (Scribner’s, 1932): 169-199

SPRING BREAK.

Mar 14. Week 8. Session 1. (1) The Price of War. (2) The Distinction between the Ethics of Going to War (Jus ad Bellum) and the Ethics of Fighting War (Jus in bello).

(3) Are All Soldiers Morally Equal? Does Every Soldier in War Have an Equal Right to Kill an Enemy Soldier? Or Do Only Those Fighting with Just Cause Have a Right to

Kill Their Opponents, So that a Soldier Fighting for an Unjust Cause Who Kills an Enemy Soldier Has Committed Simple Murder? (4) The Law of Going to War

Michael Walzer, “The Crime of War,” “The Rules of War,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 21-47.

Hans Kelsen, "War: Its Legal Interpretation," and "War (Use of Force) under the Charter of the United Nations," Principles of International Law (New York: Rinehart, 1952), pp. 33-44, and 44-63

Mar 16. Week 8. Session 2. (1) What Is War, Anyway? (2) Can War Be Limited, as the Ethics of War Supposes? Clausewitzian Answers.

Richard Wasserstrom, “On the Morality of War—A Preliminary Assessment,” Stanford Law Review 21 (1969): 1627-1656, READ ONLY pp. 1627-1636

Michael Howard, “Temperamenta Belli: Can War Be Controlled?” in Just War Theory, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (NYU Press, 1992): 23-35.

W. B. Gallie, “War: An Inherently Cumulative Process,” Understanding War (Routledge, 1991): 51-68.

So you'd like to know about whether international relations is a domain in which morality does not apply...

Marshall Cohen, “Moral Skepticism and International Relations,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 13 (1984): 299-346

PAPER PROPOSAL DUE IN HARD COPY AT BEGINNING OF CLASS

Mar 21. Week 9. Session 1. When May We Go to War? (1) Three Different Traditions. (2) Tolstoy’s Pacifist View. (3) Are There Alternatives to War as a Means of Stopping Unjust Aggression?

Karma Nabulsi, “Conceptions of Justice in [Going to] War: From Grotius to Modern Times,” in The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions, ed. Richard Sorabji and David Rodin (Ashgate, 2007): 44-60

W. B. Gallie, “Tolstoy: From War and Peace to The Kingdom of God Is within You,” Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge UP, 1979): 100-132

Andrew Alexandra, "Political Pacifism," Social Theory and Practice 29 (2003)

So you'd like to know more about the structure of political pacifism (pacificism) and its differences with absolute pacifism

Robert L. Holmes, “The Alternative to War,” On War and Morality (Princeton University Press, 1989): 260-296, READ pp. 260-279 ONLY.

Mar 23. Week 9. Session 2. (1) An Argument That Modern War’s Hierarchically Ordered Violence Makes All Such War an Atrocity. (2) When May We Go to War? The Against-Aggression or Human-Rights-Violations Answer.

Robert L. Holmes, "The Killing of Innocent Persons in Wartime," On War and Morality, pp. 183-213.

Michael Walzer, “Afterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 329-335.

So you'd like to know more about pacifism and non-violent law-breaking aimed at achieving it...

Check out In the King of Prussia, dir. Emile de Antonio (1982). The Plowshares 8 break into General Electric's King of Prussia, Pennsylvania facility and sabotage nuclear warheads.

Mar 28. Week 10. Session 1. (1) Continued: When May We Go to War? The Against-Aggression or Human-Rights-Violations Answer. (2) What May We Demand of Our Adversary in Order to Stop Fighting?

Michael Walzer, “Law and Order in International Society,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 51-73

Michael Walzer, “Anticipations,” “Interventions,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 74-108

Michael Walzer, “War’s Ends, and the Importance of Winning,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 109-117 ONLY

So you'd like an overview of the conditions for just cause...

Brian Orend, “Jus ad Bellum # 1,” The Morality of War (Broadview, 2006): 31-67

So you'd like to know about whether punishment can be just cause for war...

David Luban, “War as Punishment,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 39 (2011): 299-330

Mar 30. Week 10. Session 2. Jus in Bello: Walzer’s War-Convention View, with Illustrations.

Michael Walzer, “War’s Means, and the Importance of Fighting Well,” “Noncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity,” “War against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades,” “Guerrilla War,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 127-197

Optional material on sieges:

Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7, "Leningrad." (1941; dedicated to the people of Leningrad during its 900-day siege by the German Wehrmacht)

Optional material on guerrilla war (WARNING: THIS MOVIE HAS SOME DISTURBING SCENES OF VIOLENCE AND TORTURE):

The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966; English subtitles by clicking CC button)

So you'd like to know more about the moral dilemmas of how to fight guerrillas or terrorists...

"The SAS and Shoot to Kill" (BBC Panorama, 1988)

Apr 4. Week 11. Session 1. (1) Reprisals. (2) The Treatment of Prisoners. (3) The Doctrine of Supreme Emergencies: An Escape from the Norms of Jus in Bello?

Michael Walzer, “Reprisals,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 207-223

David Luban, “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights," Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 9-14

Michael Walzer, “Winning and Fighting Well,” “Supreme Emergency,” Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 225-232, 251-268

So you'd like to know more...

Michael Walzer, “Prisoners of War: Does the Fight Continue after the Battle?” Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Harvard UP, 1970): 146-166

Apr 6. Week 11. Session 2. (1) Military Occupation: What May An Occupying Force without Just Cause but Trying to Fight Justly Do? (2) What Counts as Terrorism?

Jeff McMahan, "The Morality of Military Occupation," Loyola Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Review 31 (2009)

Michael Walzer, "Terrorism," Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 197-204

Igor Primoratz, “What Is Terrorism?” in Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, ed. Primoratz (Palgrave, 2004): 15-30

So you'd like to know more about McMahan's underlying idea: that those who fight in an unjust cause do not as a matter of basic morality deserve to be protected by any of the norms of Jus in Bello, i.e., that they are simple murderers--and the only reason we don't treat them as such is that wars would become too terrible...

Jeff McMahan, "The Morality of War and the Law of War," in Just and Unjust Warriors: The Legal and Moral Status of Soldiers, ed. David Rodin and Henry Shue (Oxford UP, 2008)

So you'd like to know more about military occupation...

Yoram Dinstein, The International Law of Belligerent Occupation (Cambridge UP, 2009) (Great coverage of legal questions in Israel's occupation of Palestine)

Apr 11. Week 12. Session 1. The Ethics of Terrorism.

Igor Primoratz, “State Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism,” in Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, ed. Primoratz (Palgrave, 2004): 113-127

Virginia Held, “Terrorism and War,” How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence (Oxford UP, 2008): 13-29

Virginia Held, “Terrorism, Rights, and Political Goals,” How Terrorism Is Wrong, pp. 71-90, READ pp. 76-90 ONLY

Apr 13. Week 12. Session 2. How to Distinguish Collateral Damage and Military Targets.

C. A. J. Coady, “Collateral Immunity in War and Terrorism,” in Civilian Immunity in War (Oxford UP, 2007): 136-159

Henry Shue, “Bombing to Rescue? NATO’s 1999 Bombing of Serbia,” in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee and Don Scheid (Cambridge UP, 2004): 97-117

So you'd like to know more...

Check out the story of the 1985 Philadelphia Osage Street bombing. After exchanges of gunfire with armed black radicals holed up in a rowhouse on Osage Street, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on the roof of the house, causing a fire which quickly spread to other houses. The Police Commissioner ordered the Fire Department not to contain the blaze, but instead to "let [the street] burn. Several surrounding blocks burned to the ground as a result. The police and city government suggested that this was tragic collateral damage of the battle.

David Rodin, “The Ethics of Asymmetric War,” in The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions, ed. Richard Sorabji and David Rodin (Ashgate, 2007): 153-168

Argues that in asymmetric war, the more powerful side should be held to higher standards of jus in bello.

Apr 18. Week 13. Session 1. Who’s Responsible Enough to Be Liable for Attack?

Erin I. Kelly, "The burdens of collective liability," in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee and Don Scheid (Cambridge UP, 2004): 118-139.

Burleigh T. Wilkins, “The distribution of liability,” Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (Routledge 1992): 127-149

So you'd like to know more...

Jeff McMahan, “Collective Crime and Collective Punishment,” Criminal Justice Ethics 16 (2008): 4-12

Richard Tuck, "Democracy and Terrorism," in Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn, ed. Bourke and Skinner (Cambridge UP, 2009): 313-332

Virginia Held, “Group Responsibility for Ethnic Conflict,” How Terrorism Is Wrong, pp. 91-109

Apr 20. Week 13. Session 2. (1) What To Do about War Crimes? (2) What to Do about War Rapes?

David Luban, “War Crimes: The Law of Hell,” in War: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Larry May (Cambridge UP, 2008): 266-288.

Sally Scholz, “Just War Theory, Crimes of War, and War Rape,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2006): 143-157

Optional material on war crimes (killing prisoners of war)

Breaker Morant, directed by Bruce Beresford (1980)

So you'd like to know more about whether all fighting in an unjust cause should count as a moral war crime, even if not a legal war crime...

Jeff McMahan, "The Morality of War and the Law of War," in Just and Unjust Warriors: The Legal and Moral Status of Soldiers, ed. David Rodin and Henry Shue (Oxford UP, 2008)

So you'd like to know more about war rapes...

Claudia Card, "Rape as a Weapon of War," Hypatia 11 (1996): 5-18

Apr 25. Week 14. Session 1. (1) Reconciliation as Central to Jus Post Bellum. (2) Responsibility to Protect and Rebuild as Central to Jus Post Bellum.

Gary J. Bass, "Jus Post Bellum," Philosophy and Public Affairs 32 (2004): 384-412.

Larry May, “Reconciliation of Warring Parties,” After War Ends: A Philosophical Perspective (Cambridge UP, 2012): 85-105

So you'd like to know more about the ethics of ending wars...

Daniel Statman, "Ending War Short of Victory? A Contractarian Defense of Jus ex Bello," Ethics 125 (2015): 720-750.

So you'd like to know more about the role that restoring the rule of law should play in jus post bellum...

Larry May, “Reconciliation and the Rule of Law,” After War Ends, 106-123

So you'd like to know more about who should pay for post-war rebuilding...

Pablo Kalmanovitz, "Sharing Burdens after War: A Lockean Approach," Journal of Political Philosophy 19 (2011): 209-228.

Larry May, “Responsibility to Rebuild and Collective Responsibility,” After War Ends, READ PP. 145-155 ONLY

Apr 27. Week 14. Session 2. Does the Clash between Public and Private Morality Arise Because It Is Groups—Not Individuals—Who Are Taking Many of the Actions We’re Talking about?

Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 9 (1980): 209-229

Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Conflict between Individual and Social Morality,” Moral Man and Immoral Society, pp. 257-278

So you'd like to know more about utilitarianism's attempt to reconcile the two moralities...

Henry Sidgwick, “Public Morality,” Practical Ethics (1898): 52-82

FINAL PAPER DUE VIA E-MAIL LAST DAY OF EXAMS BY NOON EASTERN TIME (FOR SENIORS, 5pm EASTERN Sat May 7

Session we didn't have time for...(1) Conservatism: A Clean-Hands Refusal to Dirty One's Hands in Ending Injustice? Or A Dirty-Hands Acceptance of Injustice in Pursuit of Avoiding Evil?

Anthony Quinton, “Conservatism,” A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Goodin, Pettit, and Pogge, Volume One (Blackwell 2007): 285-309, READ ONLY pp. 285-301.

So you'd like to know more about conservatism as a program for avoiding evil...

John Kekes, “Avoiding Evil,” A Case for Conservatism (Cornell UP, 1998): 68-90

Albert Hirschman, “The Jeopardy Thesis,” The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Belknap Press, 1991): 81-132

So you'd like to know more about conservatism in general...

Roger Scruton sketches his account of conservatism as a means of creating a community to which the most people possible can have stable loyalties