Situationism and the Individualization of Responsibility in War

Abstract

Abstract Defenders of traditionalist just war theory, otherwise known as ‘collectivists’, have forwarded both normative and practical objections to individualist revisionists. In this chapter, Benjamin Valentino presents another crucial practical defence of the traditional view: ‘situationism’, which contends that human beings tend to overestimate the power of stable personal character traits while underestimating the effects that the external environment and context have in shaping behaviour. Valentino asserts that situationism ought to have profound consequences for how we think about individual moral responsibility and justice in war, how we apportion blame, assign punishment, and how we regulate the conduct of war. In short, an appreciation of situationism ought to inform the ways we attempt to apply individualization to war in the real world. In taking situationism seriously, Valentino argues that we would do better to focus our efforts on restructuring the situations and institutions that encourage immoral behaviour in the first place by dividing authority so as to prevent one person from commanding total obedience, or by encouraging diversity among peer groups to prevent destructive conformity and peer pressure.