Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace

Reichberg, Gregory M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139095884

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…By refusing to consider this broader context, Davis translates his way into the claim that in the passage I quote, Aquinas is simply discussing “disturbing the peace” even though a) Aquinas was discussing bellum or public war; b) Davis’s source, Cajetan, refers to persecution and Turkish invasions; and c) impedio retained its primary meaning of to hinder, prevent, or obstruct. I note that Reichberg in his recent study of Aquinas on war cites this sentence of Aquinas as summing up the mainstream position of scholastic theologians on “Religious Rationales for Resort to Armed Force” at least beyond Christendom (, 260, 263; see also Suárez , 741 [18.1.2]).…”

Section: Capricious Textual Readings and Speculationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Response to G. Scott Davis

Endy¹

2019

Journal of Religious Ethics

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This defense of my essay on Vitoria and Suárez argues that my use of the term “religious war” is based on religious authority at least as much as religious cause, and that Davis’s decision to discuss only Vitoria limits his ability to come to terms with my thesis. To Davis’s argument that for Vitoria war was justified against the Indians only as a necessity of simple justice and to protect the innocent, I argue that his disjunction between simple justice and religious cause is a false one that fails to come to term with the church’s primary reason for approaching Indians, with the Thomistic understanding of the relation between nature and grace and between reason and revelation, and with the distinction between what justice requires in relation to the church and Christians and what it requires for others. I explain finally that my claim is not that the Catholic political rulers readily responded to papal calls for war except when it was in their interest, but that papal war was central to the normative just‐war tradition of the church in canon law and among major theologians like Vitoria and Suárez.

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Section: Capricious Textual Readings and Speculationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Response to G. Scott Davis

Endy¹

2019

Journal of Religious Ethics

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“…52 As Reichberg notes, Aquinas thinks "every just war aims at peace." 53 He sees war as just when it does so, as specified by the common good (not the Gospel directly). This includes the authority to declare war; 54 "punishment" to remedy or deter injustice; 55 and "offensive war" in the sense of rectifying standing injustices not perpetrated by war against the intervening authority (similarly to humanitarian intervention).…”

Section: Thomist Directions In Just War Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…53 He sees war as just when it does so, as specified by the common good (not the Gospel directly). This includes the authority to declare war; 54 "punishment" to remedy or deter injustice; 55 and "offensive war" in the sense of rectifying standing injustices not perpetrated by war against the intervening authority (similarly to humanitarian intervention). 56 In a line of Thomistic just war thinking channeled through Catholic social tradition, the criteria justifying war become increasingly restrictive, and the values of peace and nonviolence correspondingly prominent in reinforcing a bias against armed force.…”

Section: Thomist Directions In Just War Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This includes the authority to declare war; 54 "punishment" to remedy or deter injustice; 55 and "offensive war" in the sense of rectifying standing injustices not perpetrated by war against the intervening authority (similarly to humanitarian intervention). 56 In a line of Thomistic just war thinking channeled through Catholic social tradition, the criteria justifying war become increasingly restrictive, and the values of peace and nonviolence correspondingly prominent in reinforcing a bias against armed force. 57 Gerard Powers sees the Catholic approach to war as "highly restrictive" and as "just one, relatively marginal element of a much wider and more important project of strengthening peacebuilding."…”

Section: Thomist Directions In Just War Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…88 Yet some Thomists share Augustinian worries about whether just peace advocacy is endangering just war as a "role incumbent upon statesmen." 89 Referencing European Catholic debates of the 1930s about whether international law supersedes or should rely on just war "doctrine," Reichberg argues that the former opinion (proposed in a 1932 declaration of French, Swiss, and German theologians) was that states no longer have an "unrestricted right of war," and must subordinate their interests to that of international society. He believes this view, by severely restricting legitimate defense and anticipating the displacement of just war by "international policing," detrimentally eroded traditional just war terminology in subsequent papal statements.…”

Section: Just Peacementioning

confidence: 99%

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Cahill

2019

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While Roman Catholic ethics of war and peace develops more restrictive criteria of just war and reprioritizes nonviolence, an important strand of Protestant theology defends war as a God-given instrument of government's multiple ends. A newer ethics of just peace and peacebuilding emerges from Christian initiatives to transform armed conflict at intra-state and cross-border levels. This essay assesses these approaches and pacifism, concluding with a perspective from the Global South.

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Applying AI on the Battlefield: The Ethical Debates

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Because lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) are designed to make targeting decisions without the direct intervention of human agents (who are “out of the killing loop”), considerable debate has arisen on whether this mode of autonomous targeting should be deemed morally permissible. Surveying the contours of this debate, the authors first present a prominent ethical argument that has been advanced in favor of LAWS, namely, that AI-directed robotic combatants have an advantage over their human counterparts, insofar as the former operate solely on the basis of rational assessment, while the latter are often swayed by emotions that conduce to poor judgment. Several counter arguments are then presented, inter alia, (1) that emotions have a positive influence on moral judgment and are indispensable to it; (2) that it is a violation of human dignity to be killed by a machine, as opposed to being killed by a human being; and (3) that the honor of the military profession hinges on maintaining an equality of risk between combatants, an equality that would be removed if one side delegates its fighting to robots. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the moral challenges posed by human-AI teaming in battlefield settings, and how virtue ethics provides a valuable framework for addressing these challenges.

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Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace

Cited by 28 publications

References 58 publications

A Response to G. Scott Davis

A Response to G. Scott Davis

Just War, Pacifism, Just Peace, and Peacebuilding

Applying AI on the Battlefield: The Ethical Debates

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