In his book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits offers a perceptive and timely ethics of truces based on the claim that we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ underpinning much current thought about conflict and conflict resolution. In this article, I concur that truces and ‘truce thinking’ should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with (...) a tradition of thought figuring only marginally in his reflections on truces, that is, just war theory. I argue this for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second, open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits wishes to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight. (shrink)

Moralism is often described as a vice. But what exactly is wrong with moralism that makes it aptly described as a character flaw? This paper will argue that the problem with moralism is that it downgrades the force of legitimate moral criticism. First, I will argue that moralism involves an inflated sense of the extent to which moral criticism is appropriate. Next, I will examine the value of legitimate moral criticism, arguing that its value stems from enabling us to take (...) a stand against immoral behavior. Finally, I will argue that unwarranted moral criticism downgrades the force of legitimate moral criticism and that this is why moralism should be seen as a vice. (shrink)

Moralism is an often-cited feature of populist politics; yet, as a concept, it remains under-theorised in current literature. This paper posits that to understand the threat that populism poses to democracy, it is necessary to develop this key feature of populism. Essential to discerning what moralism is is the difference between moralism, or moralistic blame, and moral criticism. While moral criticism is a restrained and thoughtful method of holding persons accountable for their actions, moralism amounts to a distinctly punitive form (...) of exclusion: it seeks to undermine the equal moral status of the target of criticism. As a key feature of populism, then, moralism enables a political actor to solidify a conception of the ‘morally-pure‘ while normalising hate and disrespect for particular persons and groups in society. Populism – shaped by the features of anti-pluralism and moralism – therefore presents a clear threat to democracy, especially if we consider pluralism and recognition-respect as two basic principles underpinning democracy itself. (shrink)

The conventional view of Just War thinking holds that militaries operate under “special” moral rules in war. Conventional Just War thinking establishes a principled approach to such moral exceptionalism in order to prevent arbitrary or capricious uses of military force. It relies on the notion that soldiers are instruments of the state, which is a view that has been critiqued by the Revisionist movement. The Revisionist critique rightly puts greater emphasis on the moral agency of individual soldiers: they are not (...) mere instruments of the state. Although Revisionism has something particularly important to contribute when applied to cases that are short-of-war, where an individual agent’s moral culpability plays a greater role, soldiers fighting wars are not wholly autonomous moral agents. An Institutionalist approach that responds to Revisionist criticisms is a plausible alternative to the conventional Just War account for grounding the moral exceptionalism of war. For the Institutionalist, soldiers are moral agents with state-imposed obligations whose fundamental responsibility is the performance of the proper moral ends of the military institution they serve. If this is true, then soldiers have a moral obligation to be attentive to the moral corruption of the military institution of which they are a part. (shrink)