War is not our Profession – Paradoxes for a Moralization and Morality of War
Here we go! It is with distinct pleasure sharing this paper with my everpresent SF audience. It is the first one for this year. The topic is extremely timely: the morality of war. This is a real philosophical paper for the journal Moral Philosophy/Filosofia Morale. I thank Professor Roberto Mordacci, dean of the faculty of philosophy of Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, for his kind invitation. It was the opportunity to write officially about Kant’s morality, one of my greatest philosophical conceptions. I reframed it and tackled the most difficult question in morals: can war be just? And the answer is resolute: no… but! And I leave you all with this hoping to have feedback on the reading. The paper can be found here: academia and on the journal’s webpage.
Abstract
War is the evil trivialized, and peace is the contextual precondition for ordinary morality. The essence of war is a suspension of morals, whatever the parties one wants to consider. However, not all sides in war hold equal responsibility in establishing the conditions for suspending ordinary morality. It is possible to ground accountability and responsibility of war and warfare on the ground of a compatibilist neo-Kantian morality. The account holds that war is the ultimate absence of morals, where only evil is possible, and, at the same time, the blame is one-sided. Ultimately, peace is a common good which is where proper moral actions are possible.
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