Aleksandar Jokic

International law makes it explicit that states shall not intervene militarily or otherwise in the affairs of other states; it is a central principle of the charter of the United Nations. But international law also provides an exception; when a conflict within a state poses a threat to international peace, military intervention by the UN may be warranted. (Indeed, the UN Charter provides for an international police force, though nothing has ever come of this provision). The Charter and other UN documents also assert that human rights are to be protected—but in the past the responsibility for the protection of human rights has for the most part been allowed to rest on the government of the state where the violation of rights occurs. Not surprisingly in this context, the question of what protection (if any) should be provided by the UN or otherwise to individuals when their human rights are violated by their governments or with the complicity of their governments remains a contentious issue. Should the principle of respect for state sovereignty trump the principle of respect for human rights? Historically it has been allowed to do so, but recently it has been more and more widely argued that when states fail to respect the human rights of their citizens (or of others who reside within their boundaries), they may be held accountable for their actions. Is military humanitarian intervention justifiable? And if so, under what circumstances? Those are the questions addressed in this collection of essays. The focus of the volume is on the abstract principles involved; though reference is sometimes made to specific cases, the essays here consist primarily of philosophical reflection on the abstract issues. (A companion volume on the specific issues surrounding a particular case, Lessons of Kosovo, is being published simultaneously.)

The paper explores how language underscores our appreciation forinternational activism. An account of the tension between activismand international activism, especially in the context of thedeclarative and ``true'' character of the terms is offered. Thisis achieved through examining ``word games'' pertaining to theBalkan crisis with such expressions as ``democratic revolution'',``Serbian nationalism'', ``revenge killing'', and ``reverse ethniccleansing.'' The analysis points to a non-descriptive attitudinalcharacter of such phrases. Consequently, two defensive strategiesare suggested for international activists. First, they should getinformed on the history of the region as much as possible, becomingavid students of recent and more historically removed events ofimportance. And second, they must make sure they do not fall preyto the on-going word games that can obscure their overall goal andpurpose. Hence, the need to develop a proper ethics of internationalactivism, which we would be unable to do if we were to ignoremassive opportunity for manipulation residing in the attitude thathumanitarian workers are modern day saints. International law,whatever its final shape, must also take into account findingsdetailed here. All of this is linked to (international) activismand the double-edged sword it embodies: peace initiatives yetforeign invasions.

Yugoslavia existed as a country for several decades. Competing explanatory narratives as to why and how this state ceased to exist—labeled “the self-destruction of Yugoslavia” and “the Hegemon did it”—are contrasted, and connected to two related viewpoints on the question “What role did international law play in the process of dismantling Yugoslavia?”: “reformist optimism” and “traditionalist realism”. It is argued that the former position leads not only to the marginalization of state sovereignty, but also impunitism, genocidalism, humanrightism, and most alarmingly to the decriminalization of aggression. A brief review of essay contributions to this special issue on “Yugoslavia Dismantled and International Law” offers a further argument in favor of traditionalist realism as the preferred postion to take regarding the current state of international relations and international law. In this regard, the case of Yugoslavia is extremely instructive.

To ignore evil is to cause it to cease to exist, thought the ancients, and so, perhaps, think those who accuse former leaders of now dismembered countries, no longer in existence, of war crimes, and who would prevent those they accuse of raising the aggression which was committed against their country. Can the evil of aggression be willed out of existence if it goes unmentioned, and if international ad hoc bodies do not consider it a crime within their jurisdiction? And if the defendant is gagged, if judgments permit him to be removed from the courtroom altogether, will we be free from having to see and hear the evil he persistently identifies, and for which he points out there will be no justice? The Milosevic trial has been underreported to the point where “speaking evil” – that is, expressing criticism of the persistent procedural irregularities that have plagued the proceedings, and indeed the outright erosion of fair trial rights (heralded as “progress” in some quarters) – has become a demanding exercise. It is one we attempt here.

In this article we focus on the true nature of a disparity asserted in Leo Strauss's discussion of Machiavelli to amount to a virtue battle of sorts between Athens and Jerusalem. To convey this conflict Strauss is drawing both on his once Talmudic scholarship and his expertise in the history of political philosophy. We explore the stunning distortions, both theological and philosophical, in Strauss's discussion that appears aimed to support a conservative position on leadership, which calls for the magnanimous few to exercise power over the many (the lowborn, the poor and the vulgar). Not only does Strauss distort the interpretation of the Torah with respect to Isaiah, but he also does the same for the whole sequence of important figures in the history of philosophy: Kant, Marx, Spinoza, the Sophists, and Socrates. In the end we put in question whether there really is a meaningful contrast to be drawn between Athens and Jerusalem, and we suggest that the entire exercise by Strauss in his essay on Machiavelli is mostly an opportunity to espouse some extremist, or hard line Nietzschean views.

Consciousness is perhaps the most puzzling problem we humans face in trying to understand ourselves. It has been the subject of intense study for several decades, but, despite substantial progress, the most difficult problems have still not reached any generally agreed solution. Future research can start with this book. Eighteen original, specially written essays offer new angles on the subject. The contributors, who include many of the leading figures in philosophy of mind, discuss such central topics as intentionality, phenomenal content, knowledge of mental states, consciousness and the brain, and the relevance of quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness.

After a historically oriented discussion of the classical works on the methodology of science, and the most recent works on the subject of scientific discovery the following two questions are distinguished: Is there a logic of discovery? and Should philosophers of science be at all interested in the subject of scientific discovery? I argue that both those who advocate the methodological significance of scientific discovery and those who oppose this view only contribute to the current misformulation of the problem of discovery. Both positions involve major confusions regarding the meaning of "discovery." They all, mistakenly, conceive of the scientific enterprise as comprising several logically distinct stages, one of which is discovery. I show that an appreciation of the proper meaning of "discovery" proves this conception wrong, and both establishes that scientific discovery is a legitimate subject for the philosopher of science and provides a new account of the scientific enterprise as a whole

Sanctions such as those applied by the United Nations against Yugoslavia, or rather the actions of implementing and maintaining them, at the very least implicitly purport to have moral justification. While the rhetoric used to justify sanctions is clearly moralistic, even sanctions themselves, as worded, often include phrases indicating moral implication. On May 30, 1992, United Nation Security Council Resolution 757 imposed a universal, binding blockage on all trade and all scientific, cultural and sports exchanges with Serbia and Montenegro. In addition to expressing the usual "concern' and "dismay" regarding various events, the language of this Resolution also includes, on three occasions, unmistakably moral language "deploring" failures in meeting the demands of earlier resolutions.' There is no question that sanctions have political, economic, military and trategic consequences for the sanctioned state, perhaps exactly as desired by the sanctioning party. However, the question raised in this essay is whether in addition to these consequences, sanctions also produce morally reprehensible consequences that undermine their often-cited moral justification. If so, international economic sanctions are an immoral means of achieving primarily political goals. Six morally significant consequences are: 1) The unethical, elevated susceptibility of the sanctioned to olitical (and other forms of) manipulation, 2) the inherent and unjust paternalism in the process of sanctioning, 3) the abandonment of strict moral criteria on virtually all levels of evaluation, primarily inside the sanctioned country, but also in sanctioning states best exhibited in the attitudes toward the sanctioned, 4) the general decline in moral consciousness, 5) the subsequent rise of many forms of violence within the sanctioned state in connection with the increase in lawlessness, and a general decline of expectations in all areas of life, and 6) the continual, arbitrary redefining of conditions for a final lifting of sanctions. In light of this moral phenomenology we shall argue that sanctions, lacking in moral justification, are simply a means for achieving the mentioned immoral goals. Furthermore, the argument will be that sanctions are a form of siege and, as such, an act of war, requiring the sort of justification that would be needed to justify a war.

In the wake of the Cold War a characteristic style of genocide narratives emerged in the West. For the most part, philosophers did not pay attention to this development even though they are uniquely qualified to address arguments and conceptual issues discussed in this burgeoning genocide genre. While ostensibly a response to a specific recent article belonging to the genre, this essay offers an outline of an ethics of genocide narratives in the form of four lessons on how not to write about genocide. It is argued that to the extent that works on the subject of genocide are dominated by narrativism, genocidalism, activism, or extreme pacifism, they cannot properly be classified as scholarly endeavors and must be met with resistance per the requirements of academic ethics and proper scholarly methodology

This is an attempt to develop a more complete understanding of ``genocidalism of commission,'' or the genocidal use of ``genocide,'' defined stipulatively as ``the energetic attributions of ``genocide'' in less than clear cases without considering available and convincing opposing evidence and argumentation.'' Genocidalism is a widespread phenomenon regarding the discourse on international affairs in the advanced, liberal societies of the West, embedding a ``normative divide'' between the ways of attending to domestic (national) concerns and ways of attending to international issues. I argue that genocidalism is morally wrong, explore its likely causes, and suggest possible ways of getting rid of this hateful practice.

Having followed the literature on genocide since the beginning of 1990s I have been often struck that academic writing on genocide is very much like non-professional pursuits in youth sports: anything is considered 'a good try'. The French have a good phrase for what I mean here: n'importe quoi. Works exhibiting no sound methodology, replete with irrational claims without factual basis and beliefs about foreigners adopted on faith limited only by a 'the worse the better' criterion of plausibility dominate the literature on genocide. My only consolation in confronting this literature has been that philosophers, for the most part, had not been the ones taking part in this orgy of nonsense. The book Genocide and Human Rights takes even that solace away as it purports to be 'a philosophical guide' to genocide.

In the debate between those who hold the tensed theory and those who hold the tenseless theory of time, Arthur Prior’s famous “Thank Goodness Argument” has had a special place. Initially designed to help tensers, it has seen its fortune change many times. In this paper the focus is on a methodological aspect of the argument. The purpose is to defend the “new reading” of the argument, which is intended to resolve an ontological issue by focusing on an epistemic fact, against a recent charge by Nathan Oaklander that such an argument can be valid only if it is trivial, i.e., if “ceases to exist” contained in one of the premises had been already understood in the tensed sense. However, whether the argument is trivial or not depends also on whether the tensed reading is directly invoked or obtained only through the substitution of an extensional equivalent whose truth is not based on the presupposed truth of the tensed account. A possible extensional equivalent needed for the intended substitution is offered. It is based on the concept of in-the-world-inherent-modalities.

A step towards constructing an ethics of international activism is proposed by formulating a series of constraints on what would constitute morally permissible agency in the context that involves delivering services abroad, directly or indirectly. Perhaps surprisingly, in this effort the author makes use of the concept of ‘force multiplier’. This idea and its official applications have explanatory importance in considering the correlation between the post-Cold War phenomenal growth in the number of international non-governmental organizations and the emergence of the US as the sole, unchallenged superpower. Four moral constraints useful for morally assessing international activism are formulated and defended. The final outcome is an argument in favor of an overarching duty for any activist-minded Westerner to go local, while developing nations are urged to closely regulate, even criminalize, activities by international activists and ‘human rights organizations’ on their territory when not in solidarity or in support of local movements. The position defended, urging the normative primacy of local over international activism, also finds support in Immanuel Kant’s Third Definitive Article for A Perpetual Peace.