The Just War: An American Reflection on the Morality of War in Our Time
Temes, president of Antioch New England Graduate School and author of Against School Reform, delivers a philosophical argument about the ethics of war; he not only wants to inform readers but to convert them as well. His cause, "a personal preoccupation" as he calls it, is just war philosophy, which both accepts war as an inevitability and provides moral imperatives "not only between right and wrong but often between wrong and wrong." Although he intends the book for academics and nonacademics, he relies heavily (but quite lucidly) on a daunting roster of thinkers (Cicero, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, von Clausewitz, Orwell, Arendt and others) to create a moral-historical framework for examining the implications of war. Temes argues that war has evolved from the tribal orientation (with a focus on the honor of the individual) to a more modern notion (with a focus on the geopolitical concerns of the state). In this historical progression, moral burdens have slowly shifted from the individual to the state, and as a result, Temes rightly worries that "we risk a loss of the humane." As an antidote to this loss, just war philosophy condones war only when the war itself sanctifies human life, when it strengthens the principles of individual rights and when its objectives concern the future and not the past. Although a timely and intelligent commentary on the recent war in Iraq, the book's chief gift is its empowerment of the reader to make informed moral observations on future wars, which appear sadly inevitable.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.