Original scientific paper

CONTEMPORARY TERRORISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL TOPIC

Igor Primorac ; Centar za primijenjenu filozofiju i javnu etiku Sveučilišta u Melbourneu

Abstract

In this paper the author undertakes three tasks. First, he considers the claim that since the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, terrorism is radically different from what we had to contend with earlier. He argues that the true watershed in the history of terrorism was in the early twentieth century, when “direct” or “individual” terrorism was replaced by its “indirect” or “mass” variety. Second, he offers a definition of (contemporary) terrorism meant to be helpful in discussions of its moral standing, and to avoid the pitfalls of relativism that hampers most public debates about terrorism. To this end, we need to put aside both the identities of the agents and their ultimate aims, and to focus on just what is done and what the proximate aim of doing it is. The definition proposed highlights violence against the innocent with the aim of intimidating and coercing some other person or group into doing things they otherwise would not to. Third, there is a brief discussion of the morality of terrorism, thus defined. The author rejects the consequentialist view of the morality of terrorism as a matter of its consequences, good and bad. Terrorism is wrong in itself, and very seriously wrong at that. But that is not to say that terrorism is absolutely wrong – impermissible in all actual and conceivable circumstances. The correct position on the morality of terrorism is that terrorism is almost absolutely wrong. (A longer version of this paper is forthcoming in English in Cardozo Law Review.)

Keywords

terrorism; moral vindication of terrorism; applied philosophy; ethics; violence

Hrčak ID:

41750

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/41750

Publication date:

22.6.2007.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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