RE: What IS good, and how do we determine it?
June 23, 2015 at 9:49 pm
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2015 at 9:49 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(June 23, 2015 at 6:24 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: PT, if the war is in the realm of defense, then I would call this a justifiable war. This can include a nation defending themselves, or a nation defending another people that are being killed. Personally, I think very few wars fall into this category.
Actually, wars aren't that clean-cut. Firstly, every war has an offensive and a defensive side, and what's even funnier, those sides can change from offense to defense or vice-versa at any time in the war.
The German soldiers fighting and dying in 1940 were doing so in order to secure Germany's hold on Europe, with all that implies about that regime's evil policies. And the German soldiers fighting and dying in 1944 were doing so in order to defend (your standard for justifiable war) that same regime. In 1940, the Allies were defending. In 1944, the Allies were attacking. The idea that defense is the only acceptable reason to excuse the killing done by soldiers is clearly silly. All wars fall into this "category", as you put it, of being a defensive war; it is certainly defensie for one side.
Furthermore, the morality of their killing clearly relies upon the circumstances of the battle, the nations and practices they are fighting for, and the time, place, and circumstances of the shots fired.
Shooting an enemy soldier in a fortress and shooting an enemy soldier in your own PoW camp both have the same result: one enemy soldier dead. Yet you and I both know that the morality of the two acts are entirely different. Shooting a Frenchman defending a parliamentary democracy was entirely different from shooting a German wishing to subjugate a continent. Shooting a German soldier was obviously different from shooting a German civilian.
The principle objection I have to the concept of moral objectivity is that it invariably ignores nuance, and invariably uses a broad brush, just as your pronouncement here that "all killing is evil unless in self-defense" has been shown to be hollow.
So, if you'd do me the favor of answering my question: if all killing is immoral, is the killing done by a soldier immoral?
