Month: March 2005

I really want to like Sojourners magazine. The whole radical, neither-left-nor-right, consistent-life ethic thing really appeals to me. But when I actually read it I tend to find the articles rather flimsy and insubustantial. This could have to do with their more activist stance – they’re not likely to run thick, meaty “think peices.” Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that it often reads like preaching to the choir.

Which leads me to ask – where’s the liberal First Things? Say what you will about FT, it runs high quality pieces from some of the best Christian (and Jewish) thinkers around. (And, contrary to what is often claimed, it isn’t monolithically conservative, much less narrowly “neoconservative;” they have, for instance, run pieces quite critical of various aspects of the war by Stanley Hauerwas, Rowan Williams and Paul Griffiths as well as articles from younger scholars critical of the corporate capitalist order.) So, what I’m after is something comparable from a more liberal (or just non-conservative) perspective.

Is there a left-of-center magazine that fills such a niche? Maybe I should be reading the Christian Century?

Camassia gets best blog post title of the week award with “Fear of a Liberal Planet.”

Jennifer at Scandal of Particularity is back to semi-regular blogging (huzzah!) with a post on David Brooks, public life, family, and individualism.

Marcus reads Thomas Woods’ book so we don’t have to!

Eve Tushnet on the mystery of sin.

A short bit on Lutherans and Dispensationalism at Lutheran Confessions.

The return of Just War blogging! Hosannas all around!

One crucial element of modern just war theory (JWT) is the so-called doctrine of double effect (DDE). Though DDE has been applied to other areas of moral concern (such as medical ethics), its application to JWT is particularly important, since it purports to justify a great deal of killing.

Put simply, DDE attempts to outline conditions under which it is permissible to kill an innocent person. The conditions usually include:

• The death of the innocent person is unintentional but foreseeable (i.e. it is a reasonably expected outcome of the action undertaken)
• The death is not a means to the end sought by the action (i.e. you can’t kill innocents in order to bring about some purported good; their deaths can only be a side-effect of the action)
• The good accomplished by the action “outweighs” the evil of the death(s) of the innocent bystander(s) (this is also known as the requirement of proportionality)

The paradigm case of “collateral damage” that is licensed by DDE runs like this: person A, in order to fend off an attack by B, elects to use deadly force. However, A foresees that doing so will result in the death of C, an innocent bystander. Because A does not intentionally kill C as a means to defending himself, but only kills him as a foreseeable but unintentional side-effect, DDE permits A to act in a way that brings about C’s death.

This example rests on a crucial premise: that A has the right to self-defense, the enforcement of which permits the use of deadly force. That right has as a correlate that everyone else has a duty to refrain from aggressing against A’s person, so long as A has done nothing to infringe the rights of others (e.g. If A aggresses against B, then A loses his right of immunity from attack).

However, the assumption of a universal right of self-defense introduces a wrinkle (here I am following the argument of philosopher Camillo C. Bica). If A has the right of self-defense, then so does C (the innocent bystander in the example above). And it surely makes no difference to C that A doesn’t intend to kill him. C has the same right to respond to an attack on his person as anyone else (including A), even using deadly force if necessary.

As Bica argues, to assert a right of A to kill C as “collateral damage” implies (because rights and duties correlate) that C has a duty to give up his life to save A. But to give up one’s life to save another is, most of us would agree, an act of supererogation, not obligation. That is, above and beyond the call of duty.* Why (barring a special relationship) should C be obliged to sacrifice himself to save A?

But then it seems to follow that if C has no duty to give up his life to save A, then A has no right to take C’s life, even as an unintentional and foreseeable consequence of his actions (since “A is right in doing x” and “A has a right to do x” seem, for all intents and purposes, to be equivalent statements). And that seems to rule out the permissibility of “collateral damage,” at least in cases relevantly similar to the above.**

This argument doesn’t entail total pacifism, but, if correct, it would seem to entail a kind of “antiwar pacifism,” since virtually all modern wars involve killing innocents, even if unintentionally.***
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*Some utilitarians seem to deny that there is any distinction between obligation and supererogation. That is, they argue that we are obliged to bring about the state of affairs that will maximize utility, full stop. I happen to think this is a strike against utilitarianism, since the distinction between obligatory and supererogatory actions is so deeply embedded in our moral intuitions.

**It might require further argument, for instance, to show that collateral damage is impermissable in cases where multiple lives are on the line. Here questions of proportionality might be judged dispositive. However, that would mean abandoning the perspective of rights talk since, if my “right” not to be killed can be overridden by considerations of proportionality, it doesn’t seem to be much of a right.

***”Unintentionally” obviously does not here mean the same thing as “accidentally.” We are not, it is generally held, culpable for the unforseeable consequences of our actions.

Spider-Man’s Greatest Bible Stories!

(via Unqualified Offerings)

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

–from “Introduction to St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation“

I’m not qualified to comment on the constitutional issues (since when did lack of qualification ever deter a blogger??), but otherwise I agree with The Weekly Standard‘s Jonathan Last:

I’m sympathetic to those who argue in favor of capital punishment. I understand and appreciate its theoretical benefits. But at the end of the day I don’t know that whatever deterrent or cathartic effects it has are worth the harm it does to our culture. Life, all life, is precious. When there is a workable, practical alternative, the government–meaning we the people–should not be in the business of destroying life.

Every time the government executes a prisoner, it hardens us that much more to the act of abortion, or embryonic stem-cell research, or to the every-day moments where mercy is needed.

In general, courts shouldn’t make law. But this case, since it applies only to juveniles, is a smaller form of overreach. Hopefully popular opinion will one day swell so that legislatures, and not the judiciary, will make the death penalty a thing of the past.

That is not a snarky rhetorical question, but an honest inquiry when I see things like this (via Kim-Loi Mergenthaler). When people say “Stop the genocide!” I can only assume they mean actual armed intervention, since I somehow doubt strongly worded petitions are going to deter the Janjaweed from carrying out their bloody work.

Indeed, the site linked above explicitly calls for “humanitarian intervention” along the lines of what was done in Kosovo – should we take that to mean airstrikes, or are we actually supposed to put troops on the ground this time? Either way we face the unappealing choice of civilian casualties (airstrikes) or American boys (and girls) engaged in ground warfare against the Sudanese militias (and government?). And how long are we supposed to stay on afterwards to “keep the peace”?

I’m not necessarily opposed to an intervention, but let’s be clear on what we’re talking about.

http://purposedrivendrinking.blogspot.com

Also see this. Genius.

Stuff on the ethics of war, mostly. I recently finished Robert L. Holmes’ On War and Morality.

Also, various articles:

• “War, Peace, & the State” by Murray Rothbard
• “Killing, Letting Die and the Alleged Necessity of Military Intervention” and “Violence and Hypocrisy” by Laurie Calhoun
• “Strategies of Annihilation: Total War in US History” by Joseph Stromberg

Reading Holmes and Calhoun in particular has convinced me that the “principle of double effect” is more problematic than I had thought. I am no longer sure it can be used to justify the unintentional but forseeable killing of civilians during war.

More on this later, probably.

Interesting interview with disability-rights activist Mary Johnson on Million Dollar Baby, Hunter S. Thompson and the “right” to die.