: The concept of a war on terrorism creates havoc with attempts to apply rules of war. For "terrorism" is not an agent. Nor is it clear what relationship to terrorism agents must have in order to be legitimate targets. Nor is it clear what kinds of terrorism count. Would a war on terrorism in the home be a justifiable response to domestic battering? If not, do similar objections apply to a war on public terrorism?

This paper argues that philosophers require a strict canonical definition of terrorism if they are to be of any use in morally evaluating the changing character war. This definition ought to be a narrow, critical one, articulating precisely what is wrong with terrorism and strictly specifying which incidents fall into this derogatory category and which do not. I argue against those who avoid definitions or adopt wide and apologetic ones. The latter claim neutrality for themselves and accuse those who define (...) terrorism strictly of political bias. The apologetics of terrorism often allege that stringent, critical, definitions of terrorism beg important questions of justification, rendering terrorism unjustifiable by definition. The apologetics of terrorism however, have an obvious political agenda. Those who deliberately blur the distinctions between terrorism and other forms of violence cannot claim academic ?neutrality? or ?objectivity? for their wide, defensive definitions, which are in fact deliberately designed to advance particular political views. (shrink)

Much stalking consists in behavior which would normally be permissible; indeed, many stalking behaviors are protected liberties. How, then, does the stalker wrong the victim? I consider and reject different answers as failing to identify the essential wrong of stalking: stalking perpetuates gender oppression; it threatens or coerces, disrespects autonomy, or violates privacy. I argue that the stalker forces a personal relationship on the target and that our interest in being able to refuse such relationships is strong enough to ground (...) a right. It is a benefit if my account changes the standards of which intimacy-seeking behaviors we consider permissible. (shrink)

This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term "evil" in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States' "war on terrorism." At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as "evil" but only when considered among a multiplicity of "evils" comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

Pacifism and realism both presuppose an unbridgeable gap between war and morality. The pacifist, abhorring the suffering caused by violence, concludes that war is the consummate evil and rejects it under any circumstances. The realist, beginning from a similar assessment regarding the evil of war, concludes that those who bring war on a peaceful nation deserve all the maledictions its people can pour out. These views reflect the negative duty not intentionally to harm innocent persons, on one hand, and the (...) positive obligation that innocent persons be protected, on the other. The pacifist views the prohibition against harming others as more fundamental; the realist accepts the positive duty to protect others as more basic. Historically, the just war tradition has provided an alternative to these extremes. Recent events in the conduct of wars around the world have, however, called into question the relevancy of certain aspects of the just war tradition for modern wars. In this work I critically examine the notion of a just war in terms of both jus ad bellum, or the justifications for going to war, and jus in bello, or the just means of waging war, as it is reflected in international law. I begin with a discussion of various formulations of the realist's and pacifist's positions and argue that the just war tradition provides a reasonable alternative to either of these extremes. I then briefly trace the historical development of the just war tradition beginning with Roman Law. The purpose of this historical analysis is to identify those moral principles and arguments that inspired the development of various aspects of the just war tradition so that these same principles and arguments can be used as a basis for reevaluating existing rules in light of modern tactics and technology. Finally, I expose and discuss serious deficiencies with the way the just war tradition is reflected in current international law and offer proposals for how these problems might be addressed. My conclusion is that the just war tradition can provide effective guidelines for ameliorating the tragedy of war now and into the 21st Century if the issues I identify are adequately addressed. (shrink)

This articles exposes the methodological errors involved in attempting to operationalize or value-neutralize the concept of 'terrorism.' It defends, instead, an effects-based approach to the taxonomy of 'terrorism' that builds out from a central conceptual connection between the term's negative connotation and a widely shared moral presumption against the killing of innocent non-combatants. Although this approach to the core meaning of 'terrorism' is far from value-neutral, it has a number of virtues to recommend it. First, it has the political virtue (...) of even-handedness in the way it enables competing appraisals of asymmetric conflicts. Second, it is has the ethical virtue of being flexible enough to accommodate nuanced appraisals of various modes and degrees of terrorist violence. And third, it has the empirical virtue of being useful for purposes of rigorous social scientific research. (shrink)

The international community has not been able to agree on a definition of “terrorism,” which has been a controversial term for decades. In order to understand the controversy, here the meaning of “terrorism” is analysed by means of the inferentialist framework developed by Robert Brandom. It will be shown that there is wide agreement about (at least some of) the consequences of application of the term, whereas the conditions of application are precisely what is at issue. Three consequences of application (...) will be distinguished: epistemic, evaluative, and programmatic. Evaluative and programmatic consequences of application of the term “terrorism” are widespread and very serious, even in the absence of a precise definition, and that explains why the conditions of application are a controversial matter. In the end, the controversy is best understood as a clash of interests regarding when the consequences of the term should apply. (shrink)

Many contemporary conceptualizations of terrorism inadvertently reify political conceptions of terrorism. Mainly because they in the end rely on the intentions of terrorists in defining ‘terrorism’, the process of terrorism, which involves an unfolding dialectic of actions and reactions, is omitted from researchers’ focus. Thus, terrorism becomes simplified to intentional actions by terrorists, and this short-cutting of the causal chain of the process of terrorism facilitates both a political ‘negation of history’ and a ‘rhetoric of response’. In this paper, I (...) put forward a conceptualization of terrorism that transcends existing definitions and conceptualizations by first of all discerning between ‘terrorism’ and ‘terror’, and by subsequently conceptualizing terrorism as a paradox: what terrorism is, is inextricably bound to the reaction to terrorism. It is, in fact, the reaction of some states to terrorism that, in a sense ex post facto, constitutes an act as ‘terrorism’ by ‘refolding’ actions that unfolded subsequent to an event into that event as the root cause of the entire chain of events. (shrink)

: This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term "evil" in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States' "war on terrorism." At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as "evil" but only when considered among a multiplicity of "evils" comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.