Ethics

Explain how Nagel’s essay highlights the irresolvable dilemma between a utilitarian approach to War and the absolutist approach.
Walzer examines excuses for terrorism while granting that terrorism cannot be morally justified. What is the distinction between a justification and an excuse?
According to Valls, what are the two difficulties that arise when one is trying to define “terrorism”? What final definition of the term does Valls stipulate that he will use in his arguments?

ANSWER

Ethics

According to Nagel, utilitarianism is mainly concerned with the greater good. That means that if a country is at war with another and the country suspects that the biggest enemy’s base is hidden within a civilian city. You can drop a bomb in the area and end the war, although it will kill innocent civilians in this case. What does one do? In utilitarianism, one will only consider doing the evil for the greater good whole. In absolutism, one will have to think about the consequences of the action, which is killing innocent civilians to flash out the enemy (Nagel, 1972). This causes a dilemma on what should be done. This dilemma is an irresolvable dilemma between absolutism and utilitarianism, to which Nagel highlights that it is important for people to think about these dilemmas before executing any action.

An excuse is designed to avoid or remove guilt from negative judgment. Justification is a reason or explanation which provides convincing and morally acceptable support for certain behavior or an occurrence. Because terrorism cannot be morally justified, any explanations for why terrorist occurrences have happened are an excuse (Walzer 2019). For example, the terrorist who continues terrorizing the world today does it under the excuse that they are fighting the holy war. In reality, they are misinterpreting the Quran to continue committing acts of violence while excusing them using their religion. In reality, their religion does not support acts of violence, and any explanation they give to try and justify their acts is not a justification rater it is an excuse.

According to Valls (2000), the definition of terrorism suffers from two difficulties: it is often defined as murder or as intrinsically wrong and unjustifiable, and how many definitions of terrorism are too revisionist of its meaning in ordinary life. The challenge of giving terrorism a definition is in the fact that it is challenging to be specific because the motives, targets, and methods differ. Terrorism does not have one definition because acts of terrorism differ. There is domestic terrorism, there is even terrorism conducted by the government against its people, and there is international terrorism. The targets and the motivations of the cats of terrorism also differ greatly, and thus giving it one definition is almost impossible. Terrorism is too braid for it to be given one singular definition, as doing so could be leaving other acts of terrorism out of the definition.

In his argument, Vall chooses to define terrorism as any violence committed by non-State actors against persons or property for political purposes (Valls, 2000). This definition is quite narrow, but it simply means that if a foreigner commits acts of violence against citizens in another State and the acts of violence are politically motivated, then that person is considered a terrorist. This means if a US citizen goes to another country and kills people in a bid to stop a certain political movement from taking root in the country, they are a terrorist. This is because their actions are politically motivated, they are non-State actors, and they have caused acts of violence against the people. This definition covers some parts of terrorism, but it does not cover acts of domestic terrorism which is terrorism committed by local citizens, but their motivations ate politically motivated. If a person kills supporters of another movement because they disagree with them, that is also an act of domestic terrorism.

References

Nagel, T. (1972). War and massacre. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 123-144.

Valls, A. (2000). Can terrorism be justified?. Ethics in international affairs: Theories and cases, 65-79.

Walzer, M. (2019). Terrorism: A critique of excuses. In Problems of international justice (pp. 237-247). Routledge.