Reviews for Ethics Of War

The average rating for Ethics Of War based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-26 00:00:00 John Teichman This is the creature that ate half of my summer. It's a big chunk of reading, some of it a bit frustrating as these war ethicists tend to repeat each other. Indeed, my main complaint with the book is that the editors failed to identify how each author actually innovated in the field, if at all. The best they can venture about any of them is "he was one of the first to treat..." or, even more cautiously, "he was one of the first systematically to treat..." Some of the "new ideas" identified in the introductions had actually been introduced earlier, some of the ideas refuted by later authors only existed in those author's minds and some passages excerpted clearly parallel earlier ones, as if the author was offering a running paraphrase or commentary on a classic in the field. I'd like to see a shorter anthology that actually identified what was new in each author and focused on it, so that the original thinkers stood out.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-23 00:00:00 Nicholas Evans Read in its entirety for a class on the Just War Tradition. Great book broken down into different eras ranging from the ancient Greeks and Romans all the way through von Clausewitz and ending with Kofi Annan. If you want to learn about the tradition and would prefer to get info on many thinkers in a more concentrated and concise form, you can pick the author from this book and read just about them. The sections for each author are broken down into two parts, an interpretation of the actual writings of the author followed by the actual writing of the author. Reichberg attempts to pull together the major voices of the Just War Tradition and keep the personal bias to a minimum. Good read if you are interested in the topic. I did read it in many different parts to support the class syllabus and I believe that added to the readability (class was broken up by era).