This article disputes the premise dominant in moral philosophy and the social sciences that a strict definition of terrorism is needed in order to evaluate and confront contemporary political violence. It argues that a definition of terrorism is not only unhelpful, but also impossible if the historicity and flexibility of the concept are to be taken seriously. Failure to account for terrorism as a historical phenomenon produces serious analytical and epistemological problems that result in an anachronistic, ahistorical, and reductive understanding. (...) Because there are no historically or contextually stable answers to the question what terrorism is, this article argues for a novel account of terrorism that replaces the attempt to define terrorism with an analysis of its meaning and function within a specific context. (shrink)

For thousands of years people have saved their loudest praise for individuals who made ?the ultimate sacrifice.' Recently, however, many people have begun to equate suicide terrorism with sacrificial heroism. These assertions benefit from a general lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of sacrificial heroism itself. Therefore, this paper aims to explore, describe, and define sacrificial heroism, arguing that it requires two primary things: the risk of something highly valued; and the attempt to achieve a directly morally positive result. (...) The paper then reviews four representative scenarios, including two types of suicide terrorism and two types of sacrificial heroism, in order to highlight several critical differences between those actions that deserve to be praised as supremely heroic and those which clearly do not. (shrink)