Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just-War Tradition

ISBN: 0226527964

Author: Miller, Richard B. B.

Condition: New

With today's world torn by violence and conflict, Richard B.Miller's study of the ethics of war could not be more timely.Miller brings together the opposed traditions of pacifism andjust-war theory and puts them into a much-needed dialogueon the ethics of war.Beginning with the duty of nonviolence as a point ofconvergence between the two rival traditions, Miller providesan opportunity for pacifists and just-war theorists to refinetheir views in a dialectical exchange over a set of ethicaland social questions. From the interface of these two long-standing and seemingly incompatible traditions emerges asurprisingly fruitful discussion over a common set of values,problems, and interests: the presumption against harm, therelation of justice and order, the ethics of civildisobedience, the problem of self-righteousness in moraldiscourse about war, the ethics of nuclear deterrence, andthe need for practical reasoning about the morality of war.Miller pays critical attention to thinkers such as Augustineand Thomas Aquinas, as well as to modern thinkers like H.Richard Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Martin Luther King, Jr., JamesDouglass, the Berrigans, William O'Brien, Michael Walzer, andJames Childress. He demonstrates how pacifism and just-wartenets can be joined around both theoretical and practicalissues.Interpretations of Conflict is a work of massivescholarship and careful reasoning that should interestphilosophers, theologians, and religious ethicists alike. Itenhances our moral literacy about injury, suffering, andkilling, and offers a compelling dialectical approach toethics in a pluralistic society.Richard B. Miller is assistant professor of religiousstudies at Indiana University.