Review of Lango's The Ethics of Armed Conflict

Review here.

McMahan lecture tomorrow at LSE

We are delighted to announce this year's Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture by Professor Jeff McMahan (Oxford)

Wednesday 11 March, 6:30-8 pm.

Liability, Proportionality and the Number of Aggressors
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
All are welcome; no tickets required.

Jeff McMahan is White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the author of The Ethics of Killing: problems at the margins of life and Killing in War.
Further info on:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/03/20150311t1830vHKT.aspx

With best wishes,
Alex Voorhoeve

Want to do a PhD in Military ethics in Australia?

PhD Scholarship in Military Ethics at the University of New South Wales.

UNSW Canberra – located at the Australian Defence Force Academy - is
offering a 3-year PhD Scholarship for a project on “What Motivates
Enlistment and Why it Matters, Morally and Politically”.

Traditionally the military has been thought of as an institution, not unlike
the Church, whose members answer a “higher calling” to sacrifice their
interests, ambitions, and if need be their lives for the sake of a greater
good. But according to some historians and sociologists the military now
resembles an occupation, governed by market principles, where workers
exchange their labour for material reward. Careerism, a fixation on building
a resume for post-military employment, and an ever greater reliance on
extrinsic incentives are the hallmarks of what George Moskos calls the
“occupational shift” in the modern military.

What are the ethical and political implications of the occupational shift?
If soldiers are employees, should familiar employee rights and labour
standards apply to them? Does the occupational shift threaten to obliterate
the moral distinction between national armed forces personnel and
mercenaries? Are “employee warriors” more or less likely to conduct
themselves in accordance with the principles of Just War Theory? Are they
more or less likely to show organizational commitment and loyalty? UNSW
Canberra is offering a PhD Scholarship to a suitably qualified candidate
interested in pursuing these and related questions.

The successful applicant, subject to admission to the UNSW Canberra PhD
program, will be awarded a Research Training Scholarship with an annual
tax-free stipend of AUD$26,392. This scholarship is for a period of 3 years,
subject to satisfactory progress reviews along the way. Applicants should
hold a Masters degree or an undergraduate qualification with first class
honours, preferably in ethics/philosophy, politics, or a cognate discipline.

For further information please contact:

Ned Dobos
Email: n.dobos@adfa.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 6268 6273

Military ethics conference at West Point

Details here. 

Conference in Cambridge

War & Strife in Ancient Philosophy (being the fifth meeting 2015 Graduate Conference in Ancient
Philosophy)

Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, 27th-28th March 2015.

Keynote Talks:

Lesley Brown (Oxford) ‘Philosophy as warfare? Plato’s Gigantomachia and other battles’

Angie Hobbs (Sheffield) 'The End of War? Heraclitus' Challenge and Plato's Response.'

Graduate Talks:

Jordan Corwin (University of Notre Dame) 'Strife and Justice from Hesiod to Parmenides'

Vincent Peluce (Central European University) 'Logos, Strife and Opposites in Heraclitus' Fragments'

Silvio Marino (University of Naples Federico II) 'Anomalia and Anomoiotes: Strife as Logical Principle
in Plato and Hippocratic Authors'

Pierre Ponchon (University of Tours) 'War as Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus'

Grant Dowling (Columbia University) 'The City of Pigs as an Alternative Model of Justice in the
Republic'

Romeo Domdii Cliff (KU Leuven) 'War and Virtue in the Critias'

The conference programme, and details on how to register, might be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/waraphil2015/


For any queries, please email Michael Withey at mpw44@cam.ac.uk

New paper by Charles H. Pence on military ethics

Here Pence argues that the military's use of genomics must be guided by an understanding of the connection between genotype and phenotype. However this is something too challenging to do. 

graduate reading retreat

Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace
2015 Graduate Reading Retreat
Bergamo University, Italy
10 – 11 September, 2015

Invited Faculty:
Seth Lazar (Philosophy, ANU)
Yitzhak Benbaji (Law, Tel Aviv)
Francois Tanguay-Renaud (Law, York University, Canada)Helen Frowe (Philosophy, Stockholm)
Jonathan Parry (Philosophy, Stockholm)Massimo Renzo (Philosophy, Warwick)

The Stockholm Centre is now inviting submissions for its next annual Graduate Reading Retreat. The 2015 Retreat will take place at Bergamo University, Italy. Up to six places are available for graduate students doing philosophical work in the field of the ethics of war and peace. Each student will have a plenary session (30 minute presentation, 15 minute response and an hour's discussion) on their submitted paper. All papers will be pre-circulated and each student will be allocated a respondent from the invited faculty, who will provide both written comments and a short response during the session. Any student who has their paper accepted will receive a generous contribution towards their travel, and will have the costs of all their meals and accommodation covered.

Those wishing to submit a paper should email it to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se no later than 1st of March 2015. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words, excluding references, and should be suitable for blind-refereeing. Please note that submitted papers should be unpublished, and not be under review at the time of the retreat. Please include your name, email address and affiliation in the submitting email, along with a one page CV. You should also attach a letter from your supervisor or head of department confirming that as of the 1st of March 2015 you are registered as a graduate student or within three months of your viva, and confirming your year of study. Please do not include letters of reference or other supporting materials. Papers are selected on merit. However, some preference will be given to students who did not participate in the 2014 GRR.

This event is kindly supported by the Philosophy Department of Bergamo University. (However, please direct all enquiries to Helen Frowe.)

----------------------------------

Dr. Helen Frowe (www.helenfrowe.weebly.com)
Director, Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace
Wallenberg Academy Research Fellow,

Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden
helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se

Just published:
Helen Frowe, Defensive Killing (OUP)
Helen Frowe and Gerald Lang (eds.) How We Fight: Ethics in War (OUP)
Available through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University Press at:
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199609857.do and
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199673438.do

Review of Frowe and Lang's new book How We Fight

Very nice review of Helen Frowe and Gerald Lang's new book How We Fight: Ethics in war. The book as a whole sounds interesting if you are into the kind of stuff discussed, which I am.

However, the reviewer makes some very important points at the end of his review which I think are worth repeating and adding to. The reviewer points out the conservative nature of the anthology and the fact that this is a problem. By this he means that the questions that are dealt with in the book are standard old questions of just war theory (JWT) and the methodology is that of technical analytic philosophy. I agree. More importantly, as the reviewer points out, good just war theory is able to guide policy makers and perhaps even soldiers make real decisions about real issues.

On that note, I'd also like to point out that although the cast of authors consists mostly of outstanding scholars, there is only one (best I can tell) of the lot who is a veteran of a military or a policy maker. Perhaps such collections would look different if they included and took into account more of such people. There are certainly no lack of scholars who have experience in militaries and with shaping military policy. 

Workshop on Analytic Just War Theory

From an email: 

Workshop on Analytic Just War Theory

Jindal Global University, New Delhi

09.30 – 17.00, 28 Feb 2015

Co-hosted by Jindal Global University, the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, and the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security.

The past decade has seen a surge of interest in the ethics of war amongst political, moral, and legal analytic philosophers. This is due in no small part to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the related issues of terrorism and drone use, and the number of recent civil conflicts in which it seems third parties might be permitted or required to intervene. There is a considerable amount of scholarship being undertaken in India that addresses some of these issues from a legal perspective. But there is surprisingly little work being done on the ethics of war per se, outside of some key historical, religious, and interpretive theological debates. Indeed, at present, there is virtually no philosophical work being done on the ethics of war in the analytic tradition—even in terms of how these may relate to the laws of war that India has claimed to adhere to ever since its independence. 

This workshop is a pilot event that is intended to be part of a larger project engaging with Indian researchers who are interested in participating in the very active debate currently going on in analytic just war theory, and developing international collaborative links with those researchers. The workshop will be led by Helen Frowe (Director, Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace) and François Tanguay-Renaud (Director, Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre). Key texts in contemporary just war theory will be assigned and form the basis of our discussion. Participants will be asked to prepare a brief comment or reaction piece, which they will be invited to present on the day. Attendance is free, but participants must register in advance by emailing jwtconference2015@gmail.com. More information can be found here. Please note that lunch will be served, and that the workshop will be followed by a dinner.

Smart weapons vs killer robots

Michael Horowitz and Paul Scharre have an interesting article about the difference between smart weapons and killer robots. Worth reading. (H/T WOTR)