The Idea of Just War in the Western Ethical Tradition (from Antiquity to the Mid-18th Century)

Abstract

The paper traces the historical process that formed the normative content of the idea of just war in the Western ethics. It was this content that was used by the contemporary just war theory – the most successful precedent of systematizing moral criteria that regulate a particular social practice. The author pays attention to the genesis of the notion of moral conditions for waging war and the notion of moral restrictions on the conduct of war in antiquity. He reconstructs the history of embedding the thesis that the attainment of just peace sometimes requires the use of military force into the Christian moral tradition. The apex of the catholic teaching on just war – the late scholastic treatises on the subject – is also analyzed. The late scholastics discerned the difference between just wars and holy wars and discussed virtually all elements of the contemporary just war theory at least as rudiments. The author considers a main event in the development of the early modern idea of just war the interplay between the just war and the regular war traditions. It initiated the reflection upon epistemological difficulties of establishing right cause in complex real-life situations and led to the farther elaboration of rules of the conduct of war.