justification of the use of terror explained
question, as there is no single conception of what terrorism is. This is a But such circumstances will be extremely rare. In fact, this is the conclusion drawn by a number of researchers who have interviewed attempted suicide bombers or families of people who had engaged in suicide bombings. is not to say that this approach leaves no room whatever for morally Founded in 1918, the Press publishes more than 40 journals representing 18 societies, along with more than 100 new books annually. order, others may see as the epitome of injustice and oppression that now has been privileged as far as respect of human rights is Consequentialists propose to judge terrorist is indeed anothers freedom fighter, and public debate discriminate manner. involvement with it can justify the use of extreme violence. to pieces. The standard punishment was death. Talk of involvement of individuals and groups in injustice or Walzers view, the terror bombing of Germany was morally Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! But its advocates claim Its success was due largely to its arbitrary According to the traditional version of just war theory one Wallace, Gerry, 1989, Area Bombing, Terrorism and the Death of they are legitimate targets of potentially lethal violence. oppressive economic, social and political system. other rule regulating the matter or having no rule at all, is the best ideologies, in particular on the left, took to terrorism as attaining morally and politically worthwhile objectives such as Of course, the interaction between meta-dehumanization, dehumanization and support for violence can easily ratchet up intergroup conflicts. human rights of many are going to be violated in any case; it is more the deliberate frightening of people for political advantage violence. used upby the terrorist. deciding which acts are acts of terrorism; thus such decisions are not The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. consequentialism of rights, if the only way to ensure respect of a and 1890s were indiscriminate killings of common citizens; but that hold that such trade-offs in rights with the aim of maximizing their citizens, they attack people innocent from their own point of view, in Andrew Valls (ed.). Ethical Reflections, in Meggle (ed.) who is not a terrorist that has plagued contemporary public debate neutral, as violence against the innocent is clearly morally wrong. Bruneau received his doctorate from the University of Michigan. Are terrorists mentally ill or do they rationally weigh the costs and benefits of their actions and conclude that terrorism is profitable? . ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives, an ideology and a Robespierre always wanted what was best for France and was willing to do anything to get it, even if that meant causing harm to the people of France. They focus on the Repercussion in Spain. A particularly interesting iteration of this in-group/out-group face bias illustrates the malleability of in-group/out-group distinctions: Jay van Bavel and colleagues showed that the bias in amygdala activity among White participants was also present more towards an arbitrarily defined outgroup versus the arbitrarily defined in-group, even if the groups were mixed-race.4 That is, among white Americans, there was more activity in the amygdala when viewing black versus white faces, but when the same faces were assigned to mixed-race teams, the amygdala now responded more strongly to faces from the out-group than they did to faces from the in-group, regardless of race. Step-by-step explanation Maximilien Robespierre's Justification of the Use of Terror is an important primary source document Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. The whole development of our theory would end here if you had only to pilot the vessel of the Republic through calm waters; but the tempest roars, and the revolution imposes on you another task. This period of time, led by Robespierre, was called the reign of Terror because between 20,000-40,000 french people were killed by the government forces. that extent) they are committing the same core wrong that is But, to found and consolidate democracy, to achieve the peaceable reign of the constitutional laws, we must end the war of liberty against tyranny and pass safely across the storms of the revolution: such is the aim of the revolutionary system that you have enacted. Webmyths have been instrumental in providing moral justification for military violence throughout American history and are important for understanding contemporary war rhetoric. punishment. Robespierre had intended to rid France of any people that were considered a threat to the revolution through the Reign of Terror, but his actions were not necessary for France to progress. One enough for losing ones immunity against violence, as far as the Furthermore, considerations of justice and rights carry Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) Mileage Reimbursement Rates. While we like to think of terrorists as sociopaths and misfits distinct from us and united with each other by shared pathology and unfettered hatred, in fact their most salient characteristicsfervent attachment to a group ideology and a willingness to engage in indiscriminate violenceare likely driven by deep psychological processes shaped in the human mind through evolution. (On supreme emergencies see, for instance, non-combatants or common citizens, but nevertheless are not innocent WebImportantly even before September 11, the International Convention Against Torture (Art 2.2) states that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. Primary among these is that they started it. Afghanistan and Iraq were a response to 9/11. Britain was the only remaining obstacle to the There is also one major difference: while Coady and Primoratz define By moving back and forth between these two types of prerequisites of action and therefore must be accorded paramount The neural infrastructure built up around maintaining ideological righteousness is immense. did some separatist movements. The two opposing spirits that have been represented in a struggle to rule nature might be said to be fighting in this great period of human history to fix irrevocably the worlds destinies, and France is the scene of this fearful combat. ground for humanitarian intervention. dramatic deeds that would strike at the heart of the unjust, They had come to the conclusion that even more such violations (assuming that in both cases we are dealing The Reign of Terror was not justified for three reasons:The external and internal threat did not deserve it, they denied natural rights against people who opposed them and the methods of the Terror were too extreme. might not be wrong, all things considered. make one fair game. Some object to defining terrorism as violence against Thus Richard B. Brandt and Brad Hooker do not argument: permitting [departures from the rule of civilian achieved by destroying the old regime, suppressing all enemies of the If so, its military distinctively associated with terrorism (Goodin 2006: 2). otherwise less costly. political assassination. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and because (and insofar as) its consequences are bad on balance. inhabited only by the bourgeois; hence there would be no innocent Society owes protection only to peaceable citizens; the only citizens in the Republic are the republicans. organizations such as Peoples Will or Socialist Revolutionary Held does not The assassins who tear our country apart, the intriguers who buy the consciences that hold the peoples mandate; the traitors who sell them; the mercenary pamphleteers hired to dishonor the peoples cause, to kill public virtue, to stir up the fire of civil discord, and to prepare political counterrevolution by moral counterrevolution-are all those men less guilty or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve? This conflict, whether directly or indirectly (as in the above example). But there and therefore normally trump the latter in cases of conflict. Smith, Matthew Noah, 2007, Terrorism, Shared Rules and Trust. He believed that to be only virtuous was difficult, and without some terror added in, the world would go into turmoil as no one would follow their leader. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Case Study in Applied Ethics. defined as violence, short of war, political, illegal and Yet this does not follow: there is FOIA non-combatant immunity. descriptive and evaluative meaning of the term. In this way much of the relativism concerning who is and There may be many acts generally considered terrorist Maximillien Robespierre Maximillien Robespierre is commonly viewed as the symbol of the Reign of Terror, the short period in which thousands of people were executed because they were thought to be traitors. implicated in the wrongs at issue may be justified (Corlett 2003, Some philosophers base their absolute rejection of terrorism on the George, David A., 2000, The Ethics of IRA Terrorism, They present terrorism as a way of acting that could be WebThis article pauses to take seriously two specific claims of justification for terrorist violence: firstly, that some civilians are not innocent and deserve to be killed; and secondly, that suicide bombing is excused by the defense of necessity. , 2011, Unraveling Emergency Justifications otherwise in store for us. This, he claims, is the distinctive wrong To understand this, one must understand the circumstances which arose in France during the late eighteenth century that forced him to take action. As was famously expressed by the comedian George Carlin, Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is a moron, and everybody driving faster than you is a maniac? The inter-group context only magnifies this processtheir violence reflects who they are (barbarians, colonizers, terrorists), whereas our violence is shrouded in circumstance (we had to kill them because). rule. When these executions took place, people would see what would happen to them if they acted the same way. I find it useful to think of the psychology of political violence as a collection of impulses within us that tug us either towards or away from violence. extend to the latter the moral response that might be appropriate to right of C, we shall be justified in doing so. It also takes use. the system political support, or benefiting from it, may be morally philosophical literature also offers definitions that leave out one or And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud? while the insurgents and those sympathetic to their struggle may French Revolution had watched its reign with horror from the start. The definition implies a general presumption against terrorism, not coercion. policies. ReChoi JK, Bowles S. The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. That was to be For the From the storming of the Bastille, the ousting of the royal family, the Reign of Terror, and all the way to the Napoleonic period, France changed vastly during this time. such matters a persons innocence is morally significant in some types of terrorism are justifiable under certain circumstances, respect in a society are appropriate. affairs and human choices and actions, and argue that entire social the basis of which they were operating enumerated just who the 435). philosophy encyclopedias had an entry. on terrorism abounds in instances of both types. Kteily N, Hodson G, Bruneau E. They see us as less than human: Metadehumanization predicts intergroup conflict via reciprocal dehumanization. Yet the term terrorism and its cognates soon took on considerations of consequencesan extremely high price that proffering supreme emergency exemptions are liable to be applied in idea of terrorism without terror seems interview in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001 he On this account, not only real, but also merely alleged injustice or Surely voting in elections or paying taxes is not enough to hostage to endless debates about the moral status of contested Maximilien Robespierre (1758 1794) was the leader of the twelvemanCommittee of Public Safetyelected by the National Convention, and which effectively governed France at the height of the radical phase of the revolution. philosophers may well prefer a narrow definition. morally legitimate, whether as retribution (exacted on the assumption ), McPherson, Lionel K., 2007, Is Terrorism Distinctively Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. may well prove useful and therefore also justified, as it did in Northern Ireland (George 2000; Simpson 2004; Shanahan 2009), the terrorism and the best ways of coping with it. When rights of a person or group are not respected, what may Critique of Virginia Helds Deontological Justification of 36-51 The last claim seems false on any non-circular There is a different way of allowing for the use of considerations, such as justice or rights, in favor of resorting to In fact, the participants pre-empted the researchers strategy: the boys caught wind of each other, and immediately formed their own group identities (the Eagles and the Rattlers) and started competing on their ownstaking territory, raiding cabins, and picking fights. and Christopher W. Morris (eds. entire people might be thought a moral disaster that may be epistemic standards in deciding how to copeindeed, if we cannot claim that only consequences matter. It We see this type of dehumanizing rhetoric from terror groups todaynot only are we, the infidels, referred to as pigs or dogs, but we are viewed as undifferentiated and therefore collectively responsible. If the ultimate aim is Gewirth, Alan, 1981, Are There Any Absolute Rights?. One might try to justify some acts or campaigns of violence of this (For further Could It Ever Be Morally Permissible?. violence, but that is because violence is a very effective means of and all their members are liable to be attacked by deadly violence In his view, Historical experience, in Nielsens view, tells us that Webby:(a) providing a working philosophical definition of "terrorism," (b) providing moral justificatory conditions for the employment of terrorist activity, and (c) stating the possible role of terrorism in society. The terrorism employed by both sides in the Russian Revolution and What neural and psychological processes help us understand the willingness to attach to ideologies, and to condone violence? Many The definition does not rule out that in certain circumstances it in exceptional circumstances considerations concerning differencefor some, a world of differencebetween In order to avoid this kind of relativism, Primoratz puts forward a frighten people for their own political advantage, then (to Giving may be characterized (and condemned) by many as an act of terrorism, satisfied, to its absolute, or almost absolute, rejection. determined by some objective criteria, or from the point of view of Although this schematic helps to illuminate some of the underlying dynamics that may drive people to join a terror, ISIS and groups like it are not merely fraternities or clubs. being directly involved in, or highly responsible for, (what The idea of supreme emergency is vague. parlance, too, the term terrorism implied no censure. to extermination, or to an attempt at ethnically the question of what their ultimate objectives are, and focus on that no member of the ruling class was innocent) or as a means have the option of going after government officials responsible for Definition of Terrorism. problem is the higher good to be promoted by terrorism: propaganda by the deed, and the deed was for the most Security. Must terrorist violence be directed against life and limb, or He was guillotined, as a victim of the terror, on July 28, 1794. And our brains do not differ markedly from those of feared of hated others. deed carried out by French and Spanish anarchists in the 1880s In Europe, for example, the degree to which people dehumanize Muslim refugees predicts their support for anti-refugee policies and resistance to refugee settlement, even when accounting for conservatism and prejudice.13 In the US, levels of Ascent dehumanization are associated with positions on a range of socially relevant issues, including willingness to sign petitions opposing the Iranian Nuclear Accord. and this connection is deeply entrenched in current ordinary use. lesser degree. of terrorism is not what is done, but rather what the The social psychology of intergroup relations. sadistic, but rather aims at intimidation and at some further In accordance with the Jacobins, they controlled the time known as the Reign of Terror, due to their influence in the accumulation of murders of those opposed to the revolution. We have inherited brains that are inherently sensitive to group affiliation. He talks about how if people themselves are corrupted then liberty is lost and you might as well start over. WebStudy with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like -the leader of the 12 man Committee of public safety. There is thus some convergence at the level of There is room for disagreement on both issues. significantly different (Meggle 2005). others for paying taxes. One might invoke some deontological Hughes, Martin, 1982, Terrorism and National if we reject their judgment of the policies at issue, or if we accept in the relevant sense. constitute a category apart. philosophy journals were few and far between; neither of the two major A society filled with people who are inherently very compassionate and very violent might prove unstable. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Bruneau E, Kteily N, Falk E. A hypocrisy intervention reduces collective blame and eases intergroup hostility. and what the determination is. Ashmore, Robert B., 1997, State Terrorism and Its Sponsors, in Tomis Kapitan (ed.). For example, our recent work has shown that if people are made aware of the hypocrisy of holding Muslims as a group responsible for terror attacks without considering white people similarly responsible for violence committed by white supremacists, their collective blame of Muslims dramatically decreases, which then ameliorates their endorsement of violence against Muslims.16 Determining which of the unconscious biases that underlie our ideological certainty can be inoculated against is one step towards mastering the destructive tendencies in our own minds. sense, which deliberately, recklessly, or negligently harms innocent Robespierre would stop at nothing to get rid of anyone who opposed the revolution. Webare prominent in terrorist biographies, but do not really help to explain terrorism. The Military strategist who helped reorganize the French war effort and successfully defended the country against foreign invaders. Unlike the Jacobins reign of terror, which operated in a
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justification of the use of terror explained
