Dirty Hands and the Romance of the Ticking Bomb Terrorist: A Humean Account

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 14.4 (2011): 421-442.

On Michael Walzer’s influential account, ‘dirty hands’ characterizes the political leader’s choice between absolutist moral demands (to abstain from torture) and consequentialist political reasoning (to do what is necessary to prevent the loss of innocent lives). The impulse to torture a ‘ticking bomb terrorist’ is therefore at least partly pragmatic, straining against morality, while the desire to uphold a ban on torture is purely and properly a moral one. I challenge this ‘Machiavellian’ view by reinterpreting the dilemma in the framework of the Humean theory of justice and moral sentiment. By interpreting the ticking bomb scenario as a dramatic narrative, I argue that it appeals to properly moral sensibilities, which speak in favour of the use of force against the terrorist. The absolute ban on torture, by contrast, is an ‘artificial virtue’ and a product of political prudence. On this account, the ticking bomb terrorist dilemma therefore imposes a different burden on the political leader from Walzer’s version: an ethic of political responsibility demands that the political leader be prepared to sacrifice her moral soul by upholding the law against moral but politically imprudent demands to break it; while the ticking bomb ‘romance’ appeals to her feelings of compassionate moral concern towards particular individuals. She dirties her hands morally, not by authorizing torture, but by allowing the terrorist’s bomb to detonate and take the lives of the innocent.

Fairness and Liability in the Just War: Combatants, Non-Combatants, and Lawful Irregulars

Forthcoming in Political Studies. For a slightly earlier version of the essay, please follow the link.

Critics of non-uniformed ‘irregular’ warfare argue that it is unfair both to non-combatants and to enemy ‘regulars’. I contest that view by asking how the leaders of a people forced to fight a just war should distribute risks within their own population. Insofar as all are the victims of aggression or unjust occupation, I argue, no citizens on the just side are morally liable to attack. But to benefit from the restraining effects of the principle of discrimination, some members must be rendered legally liable. Political leaders must therefore find the most appropriate distribution of the risk of harm, first, by deciding which and how many citizens to select as ‘combatants’; and second, by specifying how far to distance combatants from civilians. I identify four normative considerations that must be taken into account: each possible arrangement must (1) fulfil basic requirements of fairness domestically; then, between equally fair arrangements, leaders ought to determine which offers the most auspicious balance between (2) the goal of survival during the war (of the society and as many of its members as possible) and (3) the goal of winning it and, hence, eliminating the injustices that caused the war; finally (4) the arrangement should not be unfair to enemy combatants. On this basis, I argue that in spite of the increased risks it poses to civilians, limited ‘irregular’ warfare might be deployed legitimately against occupiers where the use of uniforms would have rendered insurgents vulnerable to targeted assassination or arrest prior to actual combat.

Terrorism, Resistance, and the Idea of "Unlawful Combatancy" (Review Essay)

Ethics and International Affairs, 24.1 (2010):

Legitimacy and Non-State Political Violence

Journal of Political Philosophy, 18.3 (2010): 287-312.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2009.00345.x/abstract

How to do things with the word "terrorist".

Review of International Studies, 35.4 (October 2009): 751-74.

Recently, some commentators have argued that the word ‘terrorist’ should be abandoned as it has become overloaded with undesirable ‘rhetorical’ connotations. This view is premised on the assumption that an adequate distinction may be drawn between principled, ‘logical’ usages and merely ‘rhetorical’ ones. This article argues that the use of the word ‘terrorist’ normally has a ‘rhetorical’ aspect and that theorists must therefore find ways to distinguish between principled and unprincipled rhetorical deployments. I distinguish three rhetorical possibilities for using the word ‘terrorist’: the first invokes interlocutors' established background commitments to moral and descriptive norms, seeking agreement on the application of the word to a particular case; the second seeks to innovate, challenging either moral norms, descriptive criteria or, less often, the illocutionary force of the term; the third resists innovation but deploys the term in metaphorical ways for moral-rhetorical emphasis. Based on this taxonomy, the article reviews both polemical and scholary debates about definition and then proposes pragmatic, rhetorical considerations for adjudicating between competing definitional arguments. Finally, I review the implications of these considerations for the contentious issue of whether or not the term ‘terrorist’ properly applies to states.

Reform Intervention and Democratic Revolution

Published in the 'European Journal of International Relations', 2007.

Can interventions be used to assist oppressed peoples in overthrowing their governments? According to the influential non-interventionist arguments of J.S. Mill and Michael Walzer, reform interventions are incompatible with a principle of national self-determination. This article challenges Mill and Walzer, arguing that, in limited cases, interventions could in principle support revolutionary movements in such a way as to facilitate democratic transition. It does so by tracing a lack of conceptual clarity back to Mill's argument in `A Few Words on Non-Intervention'. In particular, it is argued that Mill's and consequently Walzer's account of domestic revolutionary conflicts fails to distinguish the salience of military from properly political forces. Mill's Considerations on Representative Government provides the starting point for a clearer set of distinctions through which to reconstruct the principle of non-intervention on a stronger footing.

Hannah Arendt's Critique of Violence

Published in 'Thesis Eleven', May, 2009.

Abstract: This essay critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt’s writings. A central element in Arendt’s argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction be-tween instrumental justifications and approaches emphasising the ‘legitimacy’ of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn’t really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt’s view is seen when we turn to On Revolution and resituate the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt’s commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that while tactically instrumental is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt’s view is distinct, the essay also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin.

Violence and Revolutionary Subjectivity, Marx to Zizek

Published in the 'European Journal of Political Theory'

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between revolution and violence in Marxism and in a series of texts drawing on Marxian theory. Part 1 outlines the basic normative frameworks which determine the outer limits of permissible violence in Marxism. Part 2 presents a critical analysis of a series of later discussions - by Sorel, Fanon and iek - which transformed the terms in which violence was discussed by developing one particular aspect of Marxist thought. By teasing out the implications of revolutionary theory for the commission and permission of violence, it is possible to specify those points at which it tends towards excess. This in turn points towards limits that an adequate normative theory of revolutionary violence should establish.

Self-Defence and the Right to Resist

Published in 'The International Journal of Philosophical Studies,' 2008.

Rhetoric and Citizenship in Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society

There is a tension apparent in Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society between his naturalistic account of the history of societies as emanating from principles of human nature on the one hand, and on the other, the rhetorically charged moralism that readers have generally noted in his critique of contemporary polished and commercial societies. This is related in the article to questions about the appropriate relationship between forms of rhetoric and the writing of moral and political philosophy as they appeared in early-modern political thought and were taken up by other figures in the Scottish Enlightenment (most notably Hume). The article shows how reading Ferguson's text as an exercise in political rhetoric, which harnesses the additional force of forensic and demonstrative forms of eloquence, can provide a basis for understanding not only the intended relationship between the two sides of its argument but also its relationship with Ferguson's role as a teacher of morals at Edinburgh University.

Hume's Theory of Civil Society

Published in 'The European Journal of Political Theory,' 2004.

This article interprets David Hume’s social and political thought as a ‘theory of civil society’, arguing that as such it constituted an important challenge to the civic humanism of much early 18th-century British political argument. Since republican theorists invoke the historical traditions of civic thought in current debates, Hume’s theory of civil society therefore is of especial interest in relation to the foundations of contemporary neo-republicanism. The first part argues that, in A Treatise of Human Nature, by analysing various different kinds of relation between human beings, Hume articulated a fundamental distinction between society and the state. The second examines Hume’s Essays and Political Discourses, focusing in particular on the relationship between the respective interests of society and government, the effects of commercial refinement on virtues and sociability, and on forms of mediation between society and the state. The concluding section reviews the historical and theoretical significance of Hume’s theory, focusing particularly on concepts of liberty.