The tale of a contiguous Realist tradition, running the gamut from Thucydides to Morgenthau, occludes these thinkers’ strong normative commitments.
American intelligence community employees are devoted to the welfare of their countries and citizens, but they must deal with bureaucracies that often punish people who act on ethical insights.
Can torture be justified in exceptional circumstances? It is essential to relentlessly deconstruct both the premise of this question and the debates it engenders.
Ethics and the Just War tradition can be used to illuminate important questions in a way that clearly shows what is missing in the Obama administration’s approach to the use of drones.
Communicative ethics is not about passing moral judgement on the use of force in Kosovo, but rather of demonstrating legitimacy shortcomings by identifying constraints on communicative practices.
It is strange that we vest in a piece of machinery the moral blame that belongs to humans, and alarming that faith in technology and the power of numbers is leading us down a dangerous path.
The spectre of Killer Robots is haunting the world. However, it is by no means clear what they are. Humans have not needed much persuasion to kill. Are robots really any worse?
Realist accounts of phronesis are misguided. Phronesis is not just prudence in the sense of a reasoned recognition of the limits of what can be done, but also an ethical virtue that involves reflection on means and ends.
We cannot unmake the drone any more than we can unmake the nuclear bomb. They both sit in the world as technological anchors and lock-in a trajectory few of us can change.
Killer robots have long been a staple of science fiction. Yet, the prospect of so-called ‘lethal autonomous robots’ is now far more real. As a result pressure is growing to outlaw them before they become an established part of warfare.
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