By Patrick M. DomeryPatrick Domery is a third-year law student at Albany Law School. Writing about philosophy was a return to old habits for Patrick, who graduated from Boston University in 2009, where he majored in philosophy and mass communications with a concentration in advertising. Patrick currently works for the New York State Education Department, and is an Associate Editor of the Albany Law Review.
Patrick's essay is the first in a series on Just War prepared for the International Law of War & Crime Seminar, Fall 2012.
As a philosophical matter, the concept of “just war” is one possible framework for answering a simple question. Any inquiry into just war boils down to the essential question of ethics: What ought we do? In more nuanced terms, just war theorists seek to define the boundaries of when war should be waged, and by what means.[1] Just war discussions have been taken up by a who's-who of classical ethicists such as Aristotle, Cicero,[2] Augustine, and Aquinas.[3] The discussion continues today in the realm of law and international relations.
As one more recent philosophy writer puts it, “War is a brutal and ugly enterprise. Yet it remains central to human history and social change. These two facts together might seem paradoxical and inexplicable, or they might reveal deeply disturbing facets of the human character.”[4] As such, war has proven to be fertile ground for philosophers and legal scholars who seek to rationalize, justify and explain this apparent contradiction.
From this philosophical urge, three major theories have developed: Realism, passivism, and just war theory.[5] The easiest way, it seems, to explain just war theory is to set it apart from the former two theories.
