Cosmopolitan War

by Cécile Fabre

War is about individuals maiming and killing each other, and yet, it seems that it is also irreducibly collective, as it is fought by groups of people and more often than not for the sake of communal values such as territorial integrity and national self-determination. Cécile Fabre articulates and defends an ethical account of war in which the individual, as a moral and rational agent, is the fundamental focus for concern and respect--both as a combatant whose acts of killing need justifying and as a non-combatant whose suffering also needs justifying. She takes as her starting point a political morality to which the individual, rather than the nation-state, is central, namely cosmopolitanism. According to cosmopolitanism, individuals all matter equally, irrespective of their membership in this or that political community. Traditional war ethics already accepts this principle, since it holds that unarmed civilians are illegitimate targets even though they belong to the enemy
community. However, although the traditional account of whom we may kill in wars is broadly faithful to that principle, the traditional account of why we may kill and of who may kill is not. Cosmopolitan theorists, for their part, do not address the ethical issues raised by war in any depth. Fabre's Cosmopolitan War seeks to fill this gap, and defends its account of just and unjust wars by addressing the ethics of different kinds of wars of national defence, wars over scarce resources, civil wars, humanitarian intervention, wars involving private military forces, and asymmetrical wars.

Genres: Philosophy

324 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Shelly Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written in an analytic style that I find incredible tedious. Fabre innovates in the field of just war in at least two important ways, though. First, she develops theories of permissible and impermissible behavior in war (and leading to war) based solely on individual rights (rather than on discretionary associations like states or nations). Second, she considers the problem of wars based on subsistence rights (which is interesting, though still tediously written).

The most successful aspect of this text is the way that Fabre deftly weaves theory with history, presenting compelling case studies of the concepts, judgments, and distinctions that she wishes to make.