Is terrorism morally distinctive?

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-17

  Scheffler, Samuel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645152146     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00242.x     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. Many different definitions have been proposed. For discussion, see C. A. J. Coady, "Terrorism and Innocence," Journal of Ethics, 8 (2004), 37-58,
2. and Jenny Teichman, "How to Define Terrorism," Philosophy, 64 (1989), 505-517.
3. See Jeff McMahan, "The Ethics of Killing in War," Ethics, 114 (2004), 693-733, at p. 729.
4. Variants of the broad definition have been defended, for example, by C. A. J. Coady and David Rodin. See Coady, "The Morality of Terrorism," Philosophy, 60 (1984), 47-69;
5. Coady, "Terrorism and Innocence;"
6. Coady, "Terrorism, Morality, and Supreme Emergency," Ethics, 114 (2004), 772-789;
7. Rodin, "Terrorism without Intention," Ethics, 114 (2004), 752-571.
8. Two valuable early anthologies are R. G. Frey and C. W. Morris eds., Violence, Terrorism, and Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
9. and M. Warner and R. Crisp eds., Terrorism, Protest, and Power (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1990)
10. Two significant post-9/11 anthologies are V. Gehring ed., War after September 11 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lirtlefield, 2003),
11. and I. Primoratz ed., Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
12. See also the symposia on terrorism published in special issues of Ethics (Volume 114, Number 4)
13. and The Journal of Ethics (Volume 8, Number 1) in 2004.
14. See, for example, the writings by Coady and Rodin cited above. See also F. M. Kamm, "Failures of Just War Theory: Terror, Harm, and Justice," Ethics, 114 (2004), 650-92,
15. and Noam Zohar, "Innocence and Complex Threats: Upholding the War Ethic and the Condemnation of Terrorism," Ethics, 114 (2004), 734-51. The pioneering contemporary revival of just war theory is, of course,
16. Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
17. Walzer devotes one chapter of that book to terrorism, and he also discusses terrorism in several of the essays included in Arguing about War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
18. The application of just war theory to terrorism is vigorously criticized by Robert Goodin in What's Wrong with Terrorism? (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming).
19. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 13, paragraph 8.
20. Quotation taken from the edition edited by A. P. Martinich (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002), p. 95. Subsequent references, including chapter, paragraph, and page number in the Martinich edition, will be given parenthetically in the text.
21. 'The relevance of civilian or noncombatant status to the definition of terrorism is contested, but since I am setting aside questions of definition I will not address the issue. For pertinent discussion, see Coady, "The Morality of Terrorism" and "Terrorism and Innocence;"
22. Robert Fullinwider, "Terrorism, Innocence, and War," in Gehring ed., War After September 11;
23. Virginia Held, "Terrorism, Rights, and Political Goals," in Frey and Morris eds., Violence, Terrorism, and Justice, pp. 59-85;
24. Virginia Held, "Terrorism and War," Journal of Ethics, 8 (2004), 59-75;
25. Igor Primoratz, "The Morality of Terrorism," Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14 (1997), 221-233;
26. Noam Zohar, "Innocence and Complex Threats." There is, of course, a large literature on the principle of noncombatant immunity in wartime.
27. For a related discussion, see Jeremy Waldron, "Terrorism and the Uses of Terror," Journal of Ethics, 8 (2004), 5-35, at pp. 22-23.
28. Waldron has a good discussion of many of these aims in "Terrorism and the Uses of Terror," Section 6.
29. There are three misunderstandings to be avoided. First, in saying that there is "something distinctively repellent" about terrorism, I am not saying that it is more repellent than any other type of atrocity. I am saying only that some of the reasons why it is repellent are distinctive. Second, I am not saying that all of the reasons why terrorism is repellent are distinctive; obviously, it is also repellent for some of the same reasons that other types of unjustified violence are. Finally, I am not claiming that what is distinctively repellent about terrorism is also what is morally worst about it. What is distinctively repellent about terrorism is, roughly, that it treats the primary victims as means to a means, but what is morally worst about it may simply be that it involves (for example) the unjustified killing of the innocent.
30. This is related to Jeremy Waldron's distinction between "Jack Benny-style coercion" and "Arendtian terrorization."
31. See Waldron, "Terrorism and the Uses of Terror," pp. 15-16.
32. My discussion in this paragraph is indebted to Waldron, "Terrorism and the Uses of Terror," pp. 18-20.
33. Indeed, just as terrorist tactics are sometimes used, not to destabilize the entire social order but rather to make the place of a particular group within that order insecure, so too the apparatus of state terror is sometimes used against a subset of the population rather than against the population as a whole. Of course, such limitations tend to be unstable. Once terror is put to political use, it is hard to keep it within bounds.
34. I am grateful to Jay Wallace and to an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify these points.
35. Of course, show trials and public executions can also help to produce these effects, and they too are familiar devices of state terror. But silence and conformity are not normally achieved by setting off bombs in public places or by using other standard terrorist tactics.
36. See David Rodin, "Terrorism without Intention," p. 757.
37. Many other writers have insisted on the importance of fear for an understanding of the morality of terrorism. See, for example, Robert Goodin, What's Wrong with Terrorism?,
38. Jeremy Waldron, "Terrorism and the Uses of Terror,"
39. and Carl Wellman, "On Terrorism Itself," Journal of Value Inquiry, 13 (1979), 250-258.
40. This paper was originally written for a conference on terrorism organized by Joseph Raz at the Columbia Law School in December, 2004. A later version was presented as a lecture at the Mershon Center at Ohio State University in May, 2005. I am indebted to both audiences for valuable discussion. I also received helpful written comments from Julie Tannenbaum, Jay Wallace, Robert Goodin and three anonymous referees for this journal.