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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1285130" data-attributes="member: 3146">Since we've moved the discussion to Just War Theory, I think it's worth discussing whether or not it's applicable. My understanding of Just War Theory is admittedly not as subtle as Elear's but I was under the rather distinct impression that Just War Theory did not always view war as an evil--even if it might be necessary. On the contrary, a just war might actually be good--something that citizens were morally obliged to support and that governments were morally obliged to prosecute.Similarly, I get the sense that there are many who would say not only that justified killing does not make the killer evil, but that it might actually be good and even obligatory. In the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" morality, it is certainly seen as admirable. (Well, Saturday Morning Cartoon may not be right because nobody dies in most of them--it's certainly the case in the classical world and even much of the early modern world though.  It would be hard to read the Greek epics or the stories of the knights of the round table or Beowulf, etc without getting the sense that the use of deadly violence in socially acceptable venues was not only tolerated but actually approved, lionized, and admired).Both of those perspectives seem to be worlds apart from a perspective that says that even a necessary war or a justified killing is still evil--even if it doesn't necessarily make the warrior or the killer evil. The idea that "there is no good war" is certainly light years from the so-called Saturday Morning Cartoon version of World War II or the American Civil War.And I think that it is the view that wars can be good and obligatory that animated Western civilization through the majority of its history (probably until World War II in most of Europe and until the Vietnam War in the US). While there are traditions that view war/killing as evil whether or not it is just/justified, I don't think that they have--except possibly in very recent years in Western Europe--come to dominate thought and discourse to such an extent that we could use them as examples of what a culture that thought war a necessary evil might look like.</blockquote>

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