Quo Vadis? On the role of just peace within just war

Bibliographic Data

ID12915971
AuthorsChristian Nikolaus Braun (0000-0001-5392-4547, Radboud University Nijmegen, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume15
Issue1
Pages106-128
Publication date2022-05-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1752-9719 • E-ISSN: 1752-9727
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1752971921000270
OpenAlexW4225284461
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited30

This article contributes to the debate about the future of just war thinking, which has been challenged by the emerging school of just peace. Just peace thinkers hope that by foregrounding nonviolent means just war reasoning will become obsolete. Recently, the German Catholic Bishops have argued that the traditional understanding of just war contributed to their predecessors' silence on the Second World War. Grounded in just peace thinking, their argument implies that had the new framework been in place at the time, it would have been easier for their predecessors to oppose Hitler's war. In this article, I defend traditional just war thinking as encountered in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, just war thinking was part of an encompassing ethics of war and peace. In fact, peace was the primary goal. Grounded in Aquinas's understanding of virtue, I argue that there is a place for just peace scholarship within the just war framework. The tools of nonviolence should be seen as an important complement to the justifiable use of armed force

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Bishops · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Just war theory · Political science · Scholarship · Silence · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Philosophy · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification

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Open DOIOpen Access