Time is politics: temporalising justifications for war and the political within moral reasoning

Abstract

This article explores the intertwining of the political and the moral, focusing on just war theory (JWT). It argues that a crucial venue through which adversarial politics infiltrates moral reasoning is the latter’s need of temporalisation, especially when called upon to perform moral judgment. Temporalisation is facilitated by temporal contexts and narratives so that the temporal boundaries of the situations-to-be-judged become essentially contested. The essential contestedness of temporal boundaries can subjugate normative language and moral reasoning to the dictates of adversarial politics and relativism. Temporalisation can change morality into an instrument of politics, rather than the other way around. To overcome these problems and salvage morality from relativism, the article suggests that we focus on the structural facilities of international institutions. It argues that international institutions can salvage moral reasoning by changing the structure of incentives facing politicians and encouraging politicians not to aim predominantly at their own, domestic audience, but equally at international and universal audiences.