Audience, politics, and the moral ambiguity of security – comments on Rita Floyd’s The Duty to Secure

In disciplines such as moral psychology and media theory, investigations of moral clarity versus ambiguity in narratives are increasingly important. Untested mechanisms have been proposed for how moral clarity and ambiguity might affect audiences. Based on literature regarding joint action and coordinated experiences, we reason that morally clear narratives elicit coordinated responses across audience members, which should increase within-group cooperation. By contrast, we reason that morally ambiguous narratives elicit divergent, uncoordinated responses across audience members, and this experience decreases cooperation. We conducted three independent studies (one using short text narratives, one using feature-length films, and one using morally and emotionally neutral stimuli). Results indicate that moral clarity is indeed associated with subsequently higher levels of group cooperation than moral ambiguity, and the effect cannot be attributed to changes in affect or moral priming.

Reviewed by: Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unifyby Andrew Duxfield David McInnis (bio) Andrew Duxfield. Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. viii + 164. $112.00. Scholarship has often focused on the role of excess in the plays of Christopher Marlowe, from his overreaching protagonists and their aggrandizing dreams of imperial expansion or accumulation of riches and knowledge to the sumptuousness of the playwright's "mighty line" and the exotic worlds created by Marlowe's language. Andrew Duxfield's study instead focuses on "the process of reduction and the ideal of unity" exhibited in Marlowe's tragedies (1). Noting the widespread concerns in the 1580s over "the discordance of society and desire [End Page 113]for a move towards unity" (3), Duxfield argues that Marlovian drama explores such anxieties but does so in tension with his more typically noted emphasis on expansion, renegotiating and undercutting any attempt at reduction via the sheer ambiguity of the plays (1). The drive to unity as Duxfield describes it encompassed state, personal, and spiritual concerns (5), and is treated skeptically by Marlowe, who consistently produces an air of "moral ambiguity" in his tragedies, often through irresolution (5). The first chapter, on Dido, Queen of Carthage, argues that Marlowe "presents the world as an indeterminate and ambiguous place which is resistant to reductive, unifying projects" (37), focusing on the moral ambiguity of Marlowe's Aeneas (his indecisiveness and lack of chivalry) and his failure to live up to Virgilian expectations. Authority itself is ambiguous in the world of Dido, where the petty and humanized role of the gods serves "to deny the audience a stable moral framework on which to build their interpretation of the play" (22). "Moral indeterminacy" is also fostered by the dichotomizing of duty and desire in this play, which serves as an "integral device" for the interrogation of authority (28). The reduction of the translatio imperiimyth to a vehicle for English imperial propaganda is resisted and problematized, and the attempt to unify through "national self-fashioning" (33) is seen as highly fraught. The megalomaniac Tamburlaine's attempts to "subdue the known world and unify it under his yoke" (39) is the focus of chapter 2, where the infinite variety of the world ultimately cannot be reduced to a map to confute blind geographers. Duxfield argues that a "profound uneasiness" accompanies the plays' attempts at colonial and cartographic reduction (46), and that Tamburlaine's ultimate failure is the result of the disjunction between his reductive view of the world and himself (he thinks only in absolutes) and the more complex reality. The moral, physiological, and religious ambiguities of the protagonist are examined, the latter (especially his oscillation between acknowledging various faiths and remaining atheistic) preventing him from "creating a spiritually unified self-projection" (54). Familial and emotional factors further contribute to the fundamental inability of Tamburlaine to reduce complexity to a unified and unitary identity (63). In chapter 3, Doctor Faustus's failure to achieve the "unification of knowledge" he so desperately craves (66) is seen as the source of his tragedy. The ambivalent nature of the protagonist's moral identity and the play's inherent generic ambiguity (caught midway, as it were, between a medieval morality play and a Renaissance tragedy, as numerous critics have noted) exacerbate the situation: the play displays "a sceptical awareness of the incompatibility of different ideologies that co-existed in this period" (87), offering to be everything but failing to unify as any one thing. An especially interesting contribution in this chapter is the reading of Marlowe's [End Page 114]play through the lens of Hermeticism and its attempts to reconcile religion with the pursuit of knowledge to "potentially provide a solution to the religio-political schism of the time" (87). The possibility of religio-political unification is pursued further in chapter 4's focus on both The Jew of Maltaand The Massacre at Paris, and the tension in each between the "multitude" and the "individual." In Malta, Barabas famously occupies a "paradoxical state of belonging and not belonging" (90), effectively sacrificed by the governor in order to bring about...

<i>Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century</i>. Tara Williams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Pp. vii+176.

Nigel Biggar (2015) argues that religion deserves a place in secular medicine. Biggar suggests we abandon the standard rationalistic conception of the secular realm and see it rather as “a...

This research analyzes the cat in Coraline as a character with moral ambiguity in children’s literature. This study used new criticism theory, focusing on the formal elements which are the plot of the story and the cat’s character and its characterization to analyze the cat’s role and its significance towards Coraline. By applying Janet Burroway’s character presentation methods, this research aims to analyze how the cat with moral ambiguity influenced Coraline in deciding her decisions and choice. This research also discusses the relationship between the cat with Coraline in order to know how deep Coraline’s trust towards the cat to know the significance of a character with moral ambiguity and to investigate the cat’s role in the novel by analyzing the plot of the story. The result shows that even though the cat has a bad and annoying attitudes towards Coraline, after she met the cat and having several conversations, there is a change in her mind about the point of view of the Other World so she could decide what to do in order to save not only herself but also the cat, her parents and the ghost children’s souls from the Beldam. The existence of a character with moral ambiguity is unusual in children’s literature which mostly have obvious narratives about polarity; nevertheless, the cat’s presence in Coraline has a significant role because not only guiding Coraline but also an illustration of not every people with bad attitude is an evil people; even though the cat has moral ambiguity in its character it accommodated Coraline in escaping from the Beldam.

This paper explores the spatial and moral semiotics of the animated series Adventure Time, drawing on Yuri Lotman's semiosphere theory to analyze how visual environments in children's media communicate ethical values. The study argues that in animated narratives, spatial design is not merely decorative but functions as a narrative device that visually encodes moral dichotomies. Through the lens of Lotman’s topographic, topological, and semantic spatial categories, the paper investigates how Adventure Time constructs realms such as the Candy Kingdom, Ice Kingdom, and Nightosphere as metaphorical spaces symbolizing moral order, ambiguity, and chaos. These symbolic geographies reflect deeper cultural structures and shape the viewer’s perception of good and evil. Furthermore, the research critiques how conventional animation often reinforces aesthetic stereotypes—such as beauty aligning with goodness and ugliness with evil—posing potential ethical implications for young audiences. However, Adventure Time occasionally subverts these norms, offering spaces where moral ambiguity is acknowledged. By applying Lotman’s spatial semiotics, this study highlights the pedagogical power of animated space and encourages a critical reading of visual storytelling in children’s media. The findings suggest that animated spatial aesthetics are deeply tied to cultural codes, and their ethical messaging warrants closer scrutiny in media studies.

Applying standards of virtue that define the "good doctor" in a complex and technologically sophisticated health care system is often challenging and sometimes confusing. What are the characteristics of a "good doctor," who wishes to live up to high ethical and professional standards but who also must live and work in a health care system in which moral ambiguity is pervasive? Medical educators are urgently faced with such questions as their schools try to equip students with the skills and capacities required of the virtuous physician. The author describes how Aristotelian concepts of virtue can be used to guide medical educators in defining and teaching virtue. He then discusses how such traits as the ability to tolerate moral differences and ambiguity, the ability to develop thoughtful individual moral positions, and the capacity to respect and understand various cultural traditions may be what might be considered virtues in today's health care system. A "good" doctor, then, would be someone who is thoughtful, fair-minded, respectful of differences, and committed to his or her professional values.

Preface Part I. Immediate Issues 1. By the Ocean of Time Time The Argument We Are Caught In Time and Drama Slow vs. Swift 2. The Heavy as Opposed to . . . The Heavy vs. the Exhilarating Freud, Civilization, and the Heavy The Descent into the Heavy 3. Moral Substance and Ambiguity Morality and Screenplays? Typing and Volition in . . . The Heavy and Moral . . . But What Are We Morally Ambiguous About? 4. Complexity vs. Fullness Belief vs. Disbelief: Complexity Fullness Typing, Volition, and Fullness Endings A Diagram Part II. The Cooked and the Raw 5. The Cooked and the Raw Cooked Emotion The Raw Blending the Cooked and the Raw Antecedents 6. The Smart and the Dumb Flat and Round Hamlet and the Dumb John Nash and the Smart Plot-Handling Implications Part III. The Lost Poetics of Comedy 7. The Lost Poetics of Comedy The Comic Universe Winnicott and Play Some Diagrams The Two Roads The Bones of the Comic Angle of Vision The Cooked and Comedy The New Beginning in Comedy Another Diagram The Smart and Dumb in Comedy Part IV. The Nature of Dramatic Action 8. The Weight of the Past What Is the Past? High Noon Lantana Wild Strawberries Lifting Weights 9. The Weight of the Wrong Decision The Wrong Decision in the Past The Wrong Decision in the Present True Heroines and Heroes and False 10. The Nature of the Hero's Journey Campbell's Hero The Dramatic Hero 1. Arresting Life 2. Complying with the False 3. Awakening 4. Confused Growth-and the Pursuit of Error 5. Failure of the False Solution 6. The Discovery of the True Solution 7. The Heroic Deed 8. Suffering 9. The New Life Part V. The Death and Life of Drama 11. The Death and Life of Drama Prometheus in Athens, Gladiator in Rome Shakespeare in Elizabeth's London The Argument We Are Having with Ourselves Appendix A Case Study: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander Notes Film and Drama List Index

The Kuwaiti policymaker has never overlooked the protection of market competition. Anticompetitive practices have always been a concern in Kuwait; from the Kuwaiti Constitution 1962, which allows a legal monopoly for a certain time, and the Commercial Law Act 68/1980, to the Competition Protection Acts (CPA) of 2007 and 2020. However, the legislative responses to anticompetitive behaviours in Kuwait have varied, with criminal prohibition being historically dominant. Recently, with the introduction of the CPA 2020, Kuwait has decriminalized cartel activity. Although it may have been expected that the criminal nature of cartel activity should have been maintained, the major shift in Kuwait was contrary to the global trend towards criminalization. Cartel activity is now being dealt with within a regulatory framework, with only administrative sanctions. This paper suggests that the decriminalization in Kuwait weakens the argument that the global trend towards criminalizing cartel activity has always been driven by a top-down process. This paper has three aims: the first is to explore this inadvertently ‘neglected’ research area in Kuwait; the second is to discuss why cartel activity has been decriminalized, with a focus on the problem of ‘moral ambiguity’ as an explanation; and the third is to argue for the re-criminalization of cartel activity. Competition, Cartel Activity, Decriminalization, Moral Ambiguity, Kuwait

The post-Cold War world poses challenges to traditional principles guiding the ethics of the use of force. Military intervention and the current war on terror are two phenomena that challenge just war criteria such as just cause, right authority, and reasonable hope for success. The just war tradition is helpful but needs to be expanded and re-thought to address the pressing issues of our time. This paper suggests Reinhold Niebuhr's category of ‘moral ambiguity’ as a contribution to the discussion. His application of moral ambiguity to his situation during World War II and the Cold War witnesses to the depth that such a category can add to current international circumstances fraught with moral complexity. Though it too requires critique, contemporary discussions on military intervention reflect many of Niebuhr's evaluations of the ambiguity in the use of force as different global actors seek humane alternatives to provide relief to intense human suffering.

The purpose of this study is to examine consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs, taking Starbucks as an example. We make a connection between consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs and cultural variation in the form of tightness and looseness. The U.S. and China – two of the largest counterfeit and knockoff markets – represent loose and tight societies, respectively. Through a quasi-experiment design (nationality: Chinese vs. U.S.), findings reveal that in the context of this study, U.S. consumers are more willing to patronize retail knockoffs than their Chinese counterparts. In addition, the study shows that moral ambiguity and face consciousness act as mediators in influencing consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies on consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs in the hospitality industry, taking face consciousness and moral ambiguity into consideration.

Reviews 367 Susan Brownell. Training the Bodyfor China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1995. Hardcover $49-95> isbn 0-226-07647-6. Paperback $18.95, isbn 0-226-07647-4. In a recent edition ofthe People's Daily there is a photograph depicting four middle-aged and elderly women in Yunnan sitting on a curb, each wearing a large number signifying her registration in an athletic contest. The text beneath draws our attention to the women's small (bound) feet and states that they are contestants in a run around the city. Anecdotal as this photograph may be, it brings into sharp reliefthe encounter between modern competitive sports and Chinese body culture, a topic that has received scant attention from scholars until now. For anthropologist Susan Brownell, "body culture" includes those bodily routines, techniques, dispositions, modes ofperception, moral sensibilities, and forms ofpublic exhibition that are shaped in die changing currents ofpolitical and public culture. The introduction ofcompetitive sports into China by Western missionary schools challenged the paramount culture and body politic of Chinese tradition diat gave slight regard to physical competition. The encounter stimulated reform-minded Chinese to revitalize their culture by promoting competitive sports. This included attempts to incorporate Western sports into a new culture and body politic, which in turn provoked resistance and counter-attempts to revive and raise the status ofindigenous forms ofphysical culture such as martial arts. While competitive sports became popular, attempts to form an occupational class ofathletes that could compete with their Western counterparts was, and continues to be, frustrated by the deeply rooted cultural prejudice mat favors mental discipline over physical discipline. Athletes are thus consigned to a position of "moral ambiguity" in the occupational hierarchy. The implications ofthis classbased moral ambiguity provide a major focus for much ofBrownell's discussion. Chinese communism, especially in its militant or Maoist phases, suppressed die sports establishment, especially that aspect ofit which emphasized competition for medals and trophies. The proletarian body culture ofthe Maoists favored icons that employed brute strength in economic production. In recent decades, however, the proletarian icons have begun to fade behind new icons of fashion and consumption. In the sports arenas, the emphasis on competition is driven widi a new fervor to win medals and bonuses in the quest for honor and wealth. Communist officials who previously rejected boxing because ofits "bourgeois"© 1996 by University appeal to base instincts now accept it for the forty-eight medals available in ofHawai'iPressOlympic competition. New forms ofcompetition include privately sponsored body-building contests that violate official sensibilities, especially when these con- 368 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 tests require female contestants to wear bikinis; but here, too, official China has relented based on the need to conform to international standards. Shaped outwardly by international standards, the new consumer-body continues inwardly to resonate Chinese cultural sensitivities. In one ofher most insightful and provocative chapters, Brownell analyzes the conflict in motivational structures between the Western tradition of "fair play" and the Chinese notions of "face." Brownell cites observations of how "Chinese are often not 'good sports'" (p. 302). There is often trepidation that a sporting event will end in open strife, and there is the constant promotion of "socialist spiritual civilization" and appeals for self-discipline. Generally absent from this discourse are appeals to "fair play," which is difficult in any case to translate adequately into Chinese. '"Fair play' focuses on the morality of the process by which the winner and loser are determined" (p. 302). Chinese, according to Brownell, show less appreciation for the game as an end in itself, and more concern for an end result that confers "face" (mianzi) in the sense of "prestige" on the winner. This focus on hierarchy coupled with the moral ambiguity of competitive sports in Chinese culture means that the "personal morality" aspect of "face" (lian) is not brought into play. Finding much to recommend in Brownell's analysis, I cannot help reflecting on how Americans, supposedly motivated by "fair play," conduct dieir sporting contests in a wash of money, ill-will, litigation, sabotage, and brawls. There is an important point here, however: different...

This article seeks to further our understanding of the effects of morality in the media on individual creativity. We present an experiment testing whether morally ambiguous (versus clear) narrative endings can enhance or diminish divergent thinking in a subsequent task. Recently proposed understandings of mass-media entertainment seem to imply moral ambiguity should diminish performance, whereas research on the ‘dark side of creativity’ seems to imply it should enhance performance for highly creative individuals. We elaborate on both views and show results indicating morally ambiguous stories actually decrease creativity (defined in terms of fluency in divergent thinking), at least in the short term, for individuals high on trait creativity. Discussion centres on the multidimensional relationships between media and creativity.

The study aimed to describe the ethical challenges global health programme (GHP) leaders encounter in their day-to-day work and to understand how they address these ethical challenges, as an important first step toward improving the relevance and precision of ethical guidance for GHPs. We employed a qualitative case study approach using grounded theory data collection and analysis methods. GHPs based at a major GHP hub in Decatur, Georgia, USA, providing a wide range of health services to more than 150 countries globally PARTICIPANTS: Leaders of all 15 GHPs in the programme hub were invited to participate and 9 were available and consented to participate. Two senior leaders of the programme hub also participated in the study. We identified 10 categories of ethical challenges encountered by GHP leaders: (1) ethical misalignment between funders and implementing partners; (2) budgets functioning as constraints on ethical decision-making; (3) the limited impact of programmes on improving host country capacity; (4) concerns about missed opportunities to benefit host country communities; (5) shortcomings in current ethics guidance (6) issues in data governance, stewardship and management; (7) navigating complex sociocultural contexts; (8) photography in the context of GHPs; (9) trustworthiness and reputational risks and (10) accountability for unintended consequences. The challenges often result in divided or conflicting loyalties for GHP leaders and uncertainty about what to do. We have characterised this form of uncertainty as 'moral ambiguity,' which we define as the inability to discern the best ethical way forward when there is tension or conflict among multiple stakeholder interests. Our findings suggest that moral ambiguity is a common experience for GHP leaders and that current approaches to global health ethics fail to guide and support GHP leaders to recognise and address moral ambiguity and limit the distress it can cause. The experiences of GHP leaders offer important diagnostic insights for improving the way GHPs are imagined, financed, delivered and evaluated.

First of all, let me record my gratitude to colleagues for their having taken the time and trouble to read and comment on my book. Their attention honors it, and their comments serve to test and develop it—sometimes confirming, sometimes correcting, and sometimes identifying further work that remains to be done.Charles Mathewes observes that all three wars that I analyze in detail—Britain's against Germany in 1914– 18, NATO's against Serbia in Kosovo in 1999, and the U.S.-led coalition's against Iraq in 2003—I reckon justified. This might well fuel skeptics' suspicion that just war reasoning is little more than the elaborate ethical rationalization of Realpolitik. In case that is so, let me point out that I do mention in passing two instances of belligerency that fall foul of “just war” criteria—the Spanish conquistadors' invasion of the Americas and the British bombardment of Canton in 1841 (2013, 161). I also imply a lack of justification for war-waging by the opponents of each of my justified belligerencies—Germany's against Britain, Serbia's against NATO, and Iraq's against the coalition. I would happily swell the ranks of unjust warriors with the Irish nationalists who staged the Easter Rising against the British in 1916. And, lest it seem that the Anglo-Saxons are always righteous in my eyes, let me add to the bombardment of Canton the British invasion of Cetshwayo's Zulu kingdom in 1879. That my list of unjustified wars is not longer yet is attributable simply to the limits of my historical knowledge.Both Mathewes and Cian O'Driscoll find In Defence of War weak in its admission of the tragedy and moral ambiguity of war. Mathewes suggests that its account of just war is unbalanced in the predominance of its “legal-ethical algorithmic” dimension over its appreciation of war's tragic and downright sinful aspects. Lisa Cahill leans in the same direction. I am sure that readers can find passages where I admit, even lament, the often tragic and sometimes sinful character of war. But if I have not made it clear enough, let me do so now: often the just warrior bears a measure of responsibility for the unjust warrior's wrongdoing, and sometimes military killing is so driven by hatred that it shakes off all restraint and becomes simply murderous. I do not doubt this for a moment. Nevertheless, it is true that that is not where the center of gravity of my thinking lies. Rather, it lies in how, despite tragedy and sin, the waging of war can nevertheless be justified—how it can be right for fellow sinners to wage it, how it can be motivated by love, how it can avoid intending the deaths of the enemy. So I acknowledge the imbalance. There is a reason for it, however, and I believe it to be a good one. When thinking and writing about war, I usually imagine myself in the shoes of those who bear the responsibility of making political and military decisions, and of doing so under the unrelenting pressure of time. These are they who cannot allow themselves to wallow in the mess and drift in the fog. These are they who have to cut through the complexity and the ambiguity with a decisive (and fateful) yes or no. These are they who have to pull the trigger, or not. I think it salutary for academic ethicists to stand in those shoes, and I think that Christian ethicists have a pastoral responsibility to do so. So I am not inclined to apologize for my book's bias toward ethical analysis and the crafting of decisive judgments, although I do accept that more overt lamentation of the tragedy and sin that attend war might have been rhetorically prudent.Both O'Driscoll and Mathewes would have had me ponder more than I did the moral and spiritual decay that the experience of combat causes and the correlative need for confession and penance, whether religious or secular. I do not doubt the problem or the need or their importance, and they are indeed among the several things that I could have considered, but did not. On reflection, I can muster three reasons why I did not consider them: first, because others with greater empirical authority than I have already written about them;1 second, because the moral and spiritual decay of combat soldiers is neither universal nor inevitable; and third, because the fact of them makes no difference to the possibility of the moral justification of war. This last reason issues from my general assumption that the world happens to be such that, tragically, we can be obliged to do things that cause terrible damage, which we should lament, and that an endeavor can still be morally justified while containing moments of wrongdoing, of which we should repent. It also occurs to me to add that, if combat soldiers sometimes need to repent of the sins of bloodlust and ruthlessness, those who refuse war sometimes need to repent of the sins of indifference and wishful thinking. Moral and spiritual decay need not always wear a uniform; sometimes they appear in mufti.O'Driscoll thinks that I distill complex historical experience into a series of stark moral dilemmas (e.g., Rwanda or Srebrenica), thereby occluding questions about such things as whether the West should have devoted more support to the 1993 Arusha Accords, or whether Europe should have engaged more extensively with nonviolent leaders of Kosovar resistance to Serbian domination such as Ibrahim Rugova. I agree: it is quite possible that there are things that we should have done, which we failed to do; that we therefore bear some responsibility for putting ourselves in the position of having to decide between war and not-war; and that we ought to let our consciences torment us over whether we could have done more to avoid it. Hindsight, of course, is a fine thing, affording us a quasi-Olympian clarity that is simply not available down in the fog-bound valleys of real-time human action. It also plays both ways: it is arguable, for example, that, had the West been more robust in its military support for the Syrian rebels in 2011–12, it could have prevented the rise of jihadism among them, the consequent fracturing of the opposition, and the current ascendancy of the murderous Assad regime. Besides, only in a daydream of wishful thinking does conscientious speculation about what might have been relieve us of the burden of responsibility for making a decision about what actually is, here and now.Cian O'Driscoll is absolutely right to point out that callousness is a dangerous virtue. I argue and I continue to believe that callousness is sometimes a virtue. The surgeon needs it when cutting into living flesh (especially where anesthetics are unavailable), the parent needs it when punishing the child, the manager needs it when making a colleague redundant—and the general needs it when ordering his own troops (maybe some of them his personal friends) to fight to the last man. Since it belongs to ordinary life that it is sometimes right that we should do things that have painful, even destructive, side effects, we all need a certain callousness—a certain thickened skin—to do them. Stefan Zweig was right: sometimes compassion and pity are vices.2 Sometimes a bleeding heart is a harmful self-indulgence. Having said that, a callous lack of compassion can also be a vice, of course, issuing in a dehumanized view of the enemy and in consequent atrocity. An important job of work remains to be done, therefore, in scrutinizing cases of compassion and callousness for clues about what makes them virtuous or vicious, and in working out how military personnel can be trained to exercise the right kinds and eschew the wrong kinds.In my book I hold that a vital part of making the case that war may be waged by Christians involves arguing that it can be motivated, and therefore qualified, by love—including love for the unjust enemy. Lisa Cahill demurs. She claims that compassionate care and love of enemies, not violence and killing, are works of love “properly speaking”; that war is “not fully compatible” with the intention of love; that the Christian gospel's vision is “nonviolent”; that the empirical evidence I adduce in chapter 2 demonstrates that war “not atypically” disposes to hatred and war crimes; and that to describe war as “loving” is to obscure its moral ambiguity, encourage wholehearted endorsement, and divert us from the need for constraints and the difficulty of maintaining them. One might infer from this that Cahill is a Christian pacifist, eschewing violence always and everywhere. Apparently not, for she admits that using violent force can “very rarely” follow from loving threatened neighbors.This is all very thought-provoking, even puzzling. It is clear that Cahill considers herself to be arguing against me. But how, exactly? Is it that she thinks that Christian love cannot qualify the use of violent force? No, because she claims that violence is not a work of love “properly speaking” and that they are not “fully compatible,” implying that violence is an improper work of love and that they are somewhat compatible. What sense should we make of this? The most promising candidate is that there is a prima facie oddness about an act of love that causes temporary pain or harm to the object of love—as, for example, when a parent punishes a child. In ordinary cases the appearance of oddness fades, once the benevolent intention becomes clear. When punishment involves the infliction of permanent or lethal harm, however, the oddness remains as an irreducible sign of lamentable tragedy. This I fully accept, but I observe two things: first, that it serves to confirm rather than deny my argument that Christian love can qualify the waging of war; and second, that it does not sit easily with the characterization of the Christian gospel as “nonviolent.” Nevertheless, I agree with Cahill that to describe war as “loving” simply and without qualification is to endow it with a dangerous lack of moral ambiguity, and if I have done that, I resolve not to do it again. I think it fair to point out, however, that I argue that it is precisely Christian love for the enemy as fellow sinner, whose life may not be taken malevolently or disproportionately, that generates moral constraints upon the use of violence. It does not—indeed, given its nature, it cannot—hand just warriors a carte blanche.Still, there is a crucial practical question, which both Cahill and O'Driscoll raise, about how psychologically possible it is for combat soldiers to withhold themselves from hatred. This is crucial, since, if it is not possible, then Christian love cannot actually qualify the use of violence. Cahill reports that the chapter where I address this question “actually proves that not atypically war tends to form dispositions to hatred and war crimes.” O'Driscoll is less cautious, claiming that I cite testimony indicating that soldiers “are frequently prone to animus in battle.” Neither report is accurate, my readers having seen what they wanted rather than what was there. The phrase “not atypical” is a curious one, meaning, I suppose, “not exactly typical, but not very far from it.” In contrast “frequently” has the merit of being unequivocal. In fact, all that I say and show is that rage can overtake soldiers in combat under certain circumstances, that it is not always unwarranted, that it is not normal, that it can be contained, that its prevalence depends on the quality of military leadership and discipline, and that combat soldiers in several wars have been horrified to find a prevalence of hatred among civilians that was entirely missing among their comrades. My recent rereading of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia has added further empirical backing to these claims.3While Cahill finds my account of intention and double effect rather better than some others, Scott Davis certainly does not: he finds it “seriously flawed.” He objects to my stipulation that an unintended evil effect (e.g., the death of the enemy) of a deliberate action should be accepted with appropriate reluctance, although he concedes that it would be appropriate to “regret” it. The distinction between reluctance and regret seems to me a very fine one, and I struggle to see what hangs on it. But let me put that aside, for the heart of Davis's objection is that to claim, as I do, that soldiers should not intend to harm the enemy but should instead accept that harm with reluctance, is to say that they do not intend the lethal means that they choose and are therefore not responsible for its evil effect. Our quarrel here turns on different meanings of “to intend.” By it I mean “to want.” I prefer this meaning, in order to make clear what is wrong with intending an evil effect, namely, the corrupting identification of the agent, via his will, with evil. I also distinguish intending from choosing, since one can choose what one does not want, and according to the principle of double effect, one may choose what one should not want. Therefore, when I say that a soldier should not intend the death of his enemy, I am not saying that he should not choose it or that he is not responsible or accountable for his choice. He is accountable, but he can give a justifying account, if, among other things, he can say that he did not want the evil effect he chose to bring about, and if he can substantiate his not wanting by evidence of reluctance. And here it becomes clear to me why I prefer reluctance to regret: reluctance requires the soldier to prefer disabling his enemy to killing him, if that is practicable, and it withholds him from killing his enemy, once disabled.Lisa Cahill also objects to my characterization of just war as a form of punishment. This is because she thinks that it implies that vengeful retaliation is a sufficient purpose, and that it shifts the focus from the good to be protected to the grievance suffered, thus loosening the reins on anger and resentment. Instead, she prefers to think of justified war in terms of defense of the common good. I do not entirely disagree. Just war is certainly defensive of public goods, but it is defensive of them against wrongful harm, and the defense that it offers is hostile and coercive toward the perpetrators of that harm. In this sense, it seems to me that just war is irreducibly punitive—and indeed, retaliatory and retributive. Nevertheless, I do take care, I think, to distinguish punishment, retaliation, and retribution, on the one hand, from retributivism and vengeance, on the other, and to say that just punishment can never be retributivist in the sense of seeking the suffering or destruction of the wrongdoer per se or vengeful in the sense of seeking them excessively. Suffering and destruction should never be ends in themselves but only tragically necessary means to defend public goods, stop and deter wrongdoing, and reform wrongdoers. To talk about defense without talking about punishment is to shield oneself from the unpleasant fact that in this case justified defense requires that wrongdoers be coerced, violently.If Lisa Cahill doubts that In Defence of War is Christian enough (since the gospel is “nonviolent”), Nahed Artoul Zehr is inclined to think it too Christian. She rightly discerns that I intend to address a broad readership, but she is therefore puzzled by my explicit self-identification with a particular, religious tradition and by my making theological claims. How can Christian ideas guide the ethical decision making of non-Christians? Moreover, this confessional stance she deems “exceptionally uncomfortable” in a post-9/11 environment, where the and other have been of a My is I do not believe in the possibility of That is to I do not believe that there is a of terms that is between which of a should when with each other about public do I believe that religious are per se and that public be in order to be There is no view from there are only they or can we By out and what we think and by others to do the by in the of by identifying of by reasoning about of and by from one I do not doubt that readers find in my book and with which they disagree. But I am that of them find that they can all, the common world that we does in the of our What is different are absolutely to one certain of and for example, and both and are more theological than moral usually care to for the of the they no more (and with a good reason to stop their against the in Christian tradition than in the world with a good reason to stop their against the in all that, Zehr has a of In Defence of In to address both my fellow Christian ethicists and others in the same I have the of the who might have no in Christian or find religious terms or even a certain toward them. on an Mathewes did that, in order to readers on I should not the book with the chapter on Christian I fully the of his and it but in the I that had to take over the same however, I made a point of readers in the that each chapter is enough that they can to that no for them. Nevertheless, I that some readers would be is, and to themselves to in case they might Moreover, it to me that public and would be if more to that religious are not all about to do if my of is not too to Christian its is then how can it be or and why should be by he the of and the of their to and just war thinking. He I think, that is a more than I admit, and he observes the difficulty in over common of On the other hand, to in the he questions my about the for in the of ethical out that my to a universal implies the possibility of has put his on an important and in my and he is quite right to for further me some of First of all, to that a Christian is to believe that a is certainly not to that only Christians have such a nor yet to make a about how Christian is its their own of that but those need not be or I have been for example, by the between and thinking about just on the one hand, and the Christian “just war” on the other, the fact that and of each other the Nevertheless, it is true that not all Christian for example, not be to of the to the to avoid pain and then nor or are the of there is as it of what is and I agree: is a which since it is the of of always be by some of them and for example, even if does the to in the of a to stop the and the never acknowledge that in a of all, because their are not so second, because their is to the of the and its of is also the reason for my about the of Therefore, while is a of about it is not the only one. in lies the of in But cannot be the last for while is a guide to universal it has no of and have been to it So the consciences and the of be they or ethicists or that it is possible that and George (and their actually the of Iraq better than most and That is what I argue in the chapter of my where I that the invasion was justified. finds this even in the of the moral that my analysis she thinks that war is too complex a to be of she suggests that my to the Iraq war might have prevented and she considers me too in of doubt and and too inclined to She also offers a of more that the of is not to the of right that the lack of to Iraq by might be attributable to doubts about the of by the that the coalition's to the responsible for the of its is of wrong that I should have a more analysis of harm to and that my argument on in the book that the killing of the can be justified by an to their if to implies that of is morally they not and that the civilians obliged to give their are two reasons why I my argument to a first, the of the chapter is to use the case of Iraq to work out how the of just war can be and and second, I do not think that should themselves a of that is to decision I of course, that war is a complex and I believe that the invasion of Iraq was more morally complex than But a complex a that is not a complex that is I am to and and whether that my others for I hold no for I to being an of Nevertheless, I believe that, when writing the chapter on the I was to that it had indeed been a in my very on the I was more than I give of I do so to what has to me the lack of on the part of of the because of what I to be the between the reasoning and their and because one needs good reasons to withhold of and in this case I have not them. I of course, it is because they are not to their should be more to me can only be by down into the and the of So let me to each of that I have I do not argue that the of is to the of only that a action can be in part without being or if the for can be the of indifference to the of the then a to intend the of a just would be however, the is attributable instead to a about the means of political then that could still be with a intention of the That it was in fact so is by the evidence I that a for the was one of the in both and and by the fact that the of and over in to the of is quite that the lack of to Iraq by could have been by doubts about the need to or not it was so depends upon the empirical My of the suggests that that was not the the invasion the and all that Iraq had and and was on and that the was about the the of I think it fair to report that I do several the out that the of most of the not but that the bears responsibility in that it failed to and order Nevertheless, is in that my thinking about the general justification of killing the implies the of I am not with that but I see no to avoid it. I do not think that it makes sense to say that have a and right not to be do have a right not to be which that they be But it does not them in the of on military I imagine that most readers of this agree with me that the invasion of in was of the fact that it the deaths of us that it had or that in have its I cannot see am that the of justifying the killing of civilians on the that they have a to their seems and I it I am also of one case in which an has the of his own the invasion a by in the of a in made a point of on the as he to never see this for which I have for so but I that through my death others be the his was then what was true of him was true of of of that the of an of war should be that of a to since, the political she is to the use of it. O'Driscoll in the same when he observes that just war are part of war that they are to and how one can to the of without I of course, that those with political should be made accountable and therefore to I also agree that our if they their for rather than public I agree that political are to have their reasoning by the it And I agree that just warriors who never a war they do not one waged by their own are That I believe that we should all of to all of to and to as well as to public And I believe that our only the moral right to be when it has to be and and to withhold from the of and I do what O'Driscoll means when he of war do a of their sometimes which is to And yet where he a I see of in public who are more morally and than the less and who have and taken that me have to Our from the exercise of political is not just an it is also a to too the of righteous to in wishful to daydream among the and never to the necessary