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14Terrorism and the Right to Resist: A Theory of Just Revolutionary WarCambridge University Press. 2015.The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyrann…Read more
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23Political Violence: The Problem of Dirty HandsThe Journal of Ethics 27 (4): 561-583. 2023.This paper argues that the reason why political leadership often involves dirty hands is because of its relationship with violence. To make the case, it maintains that violent means create and assert a form of dominating power that is in tension with the proper ends of political action. This power casts a wide shadow, frequently dominating large numbers of non-targets and empowering unscrupulous agents. On the other side of the balance, characteristically political justifications for violence ar…Read more
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135Violence and Revolutionary SubjectivityEuropean Journal of Political Theory 5 (4): 373-397. 2006.The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between revolution and violence in Marxism and in a series of texts drawing on Marxian theory. Part 1 outlines the basic normative frameworks which determine the outer limits of permissible violence in Marxism. Part 2 presents a critical analysis of a series of later discussions - by Sorel, Fanon and Žižek - which transformed the terms in which violence was discussed by developing one particular aspect of Marxist thought. By teasing out …Read more
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71Terrorism, Resistance, and the Idea of "Unlawful Combatancy"Ethics and International Affairs 24 (1): 91-104. 2010.When faced with security threats from terrorism and other forms of nonstate political violence, how should liberal-democratic states respond? Finlay discusses books by Tamar Meisels, Seumas Miller, and Timothy Shanahan.
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18The Perspective of the Rebel: A Gap in the Global Normative ArchitectureEthics and International Affairs 31 (2): 213-234. 2017.If people have a right to rebel against domestic tyranny, wrongful foreign occupation, or colonial rule, then the normative principles commonly invoked to deal with civil conflicts present a problem. While rebels in some cases might justifiably try to secure human rights by resort to violence, the three normative pillars dealing with armed force provide at best only a partial reflection of the ethics of armed revolt. This article argues that the concept of “terrorism” and the ongoing attempt to …Read more
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30The Deadly Serious Causes of Legitimate Rebellion: Between the Wrongs of Terrorism and the Crimes of WarCriminal Law and Philosophy 12 (2): 271-287. 2018.This article challenges the tendency exhibited in arguments by Michael Ignatieff, Jeremy Waldron, and others to treat the Law of Armed Conflict as the only valid moral frame of reference for guiding armed rebels with just cause. To succeed, normative language and principles must reflect not only the wrongs of ‘terrorism’ and war crimes, but also the rights of legitimate rebels. However, these do not always correspond to the legal privileges of combatants. Rebels are often unlikely to gain bellig…Read more
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30Self‐Defence and the Right to ResistInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (1). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
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135Legitimacy and Non-State Political ViolenceJournal of Political Philosophy 18 (3): 287-312. 2009.No Abstract
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35Justification and Legitimacy at War: On the Sources of Moral Guidance for SoldiersEthics 129 (4): 576-602. 2019.Attempts to simplify ethics in war by claiming exclusive legitimate authority for the law of armed conflict underestimate the moral complexities facing soldiers. Soldiers risk wrongdoing if they refuse moral guidance that can independently evaluate their legal permissions. State soldiers need to know when to object to a legal duty to fight; nonstate fighters need to know when to disregard legal prohibitions against fighting. And both might sometimes best discharge their moral duties by following…Read more
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203Introduction: Legitimate Authority, War, and the Ethics of RebellionEthics and International Affairs 31 (2): 167-168. 2017.
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24Hume’s Theory of Civil SocietyEuropean Journal of Political Theory 3 (4): 369-391. 2004.This article interprets David Hume’s social and political thought as a ‘theory of civil society’, arguing that as such it constituted an important challenge to the civic humanism of much early 18th-century British political argument. Since republican theorists invoke the historical traditions of civic thought in current debates, Hume’s theory of civil society therefore is of especial interest in relation to the foundations of contemporary neo-republicanism. The first part argues that, in A Treat…Read more
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10Fabre, Cécile. Cosmopolitan Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 368. $70.00 (review)Ethics 128 (2): 467-473. 2018.
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112Dirty hands and the romance of the ticking bomb terrorist: a Humean accountCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (4): 421-442. 2011.On Michael Walzer's influential account, "dirty hands" characterizes the political leader's choice between absolutist moral demands (to abstain from torture) and consequentialist political reasoning (to do what is necessary to prevent the loss of innocent lives). The impulse to torture a "ticking bomb terrorist" is therefore at least partly pragmatic, straining against morality, while the desire to uphold a ban on torture is purely and properly a moral one. I challenge this Machiavellian view by…Read more
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15A Foreign Policy for the Left, Michael Walzer , 216 pp., $30 clothEthics and International Affairs 32 (4): 504-506. 2018.
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115Hannah Arendt's Critique of ViolenceThesis Eleven 97 (1): 26-45. 2009.This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we tur…Read more
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7Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War, Cian O'Driscoll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 192 pp., cloth $94, eBook $92.99 (review)Ethics and International Affairs 36 (4): 542-544. 2022.
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18Ethics, Force, and Power: On the Political Preconditions of Just WarLaw and Philosophy 41 (6): 717-740. 2022.Benbaji and Statman’s contractarian ethics of war offers a powerful new philosophical defence of orthodox conclusions against revisionist criticism. I present a two-pronged argument in reply. First, contractarianism yields what I call ‘decent war theory,’ a theory in which war between decent states is paradigmatic. I argue, by contrast, that states should treat wars against indecent states as paradigmatic, resulting in a Rawlsian alternative that issues in an ethics closer to revisionism. The se…Read more
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15Deconstructing Nonviolence and the War-Machine: Unarmed Coups, Nonviolent Power, and Armed ResistanceEthics and International Affairs 35 (3): 421-433. 2021.Proponents of nonviolent tactics often highlight the extent to which they rival arms as effective means of resistance. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, for instance, compare civil resistance favorably to armed insurrection as means of bringing about progressive political change. In Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos cites their work in support of the claim that similar methods—organized according to Gene Sharp's idea of “civilian-based defense”—may be substituted for regular arme…Read more
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29On canons and question marks: The work of women’s international thoughtContemporary Political Theory 21 (1): 114-141. 2022.
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43Assisting Rebels Abroad: The Ethics of Violence at the Limits of the Defensive ParadigmJournal of Applied Philosophy 39 (1): 38-55. 2022.In this article, I analyse the theory and practice of interventions in foreign civil wars to assist rebels fighting against violently oppressive government. I argue that the indirect nature of this kind of intervention gives rise to political complications that are either absent from or less obvious in humanitarian interventions aimed chiefly at defending human rights from imminent threats. An adequate theory must therefore accommodate three additional components. First, it requires a theory of …Read more
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166Just War, Cyber War, and the Concept of ViolencePhilosophy and Technology 31 (3): 357-377. 2018.Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war…Read more
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34Just War, Cyber War, and the Concept of ViolencePhilosophy and Technology 31 (3): 357-377. 2018.Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war…Read more
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17Hume's Social Philosophy: Human Nature and Commercial Sociability in A Treatise of Human NatureBloomsbury, Continuum. 2007.In Hume's Social Philosophy, Christopher J Finlay presents a highly original and engaging reading of David Hume's landmark text, A Treatise of Human Nature, and political writings published immediately after it, articulating a unified view of his theory of human nature in society and his political philosophy. The book explores the hitherto neglected social contexts within which Hume's ideas were conceived. While a great deal of attention has previously been given to Hume's intellectual and liter…Read more
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38Is Just War Possible?Polity Press. 2018.The idea that war is sometimes justified is deeply embedded in public consciousness. But it is only credible so long as we believe that the ethical standards of just war are in fact realizable in practice. In this engaging book, Christopher Finlay elucidates the assumptions underlying just war theory and defends them from a range of objections, arguing that it is a regrettable but necessary reflection of the moral realities of international politics. Using a range of historical and contemporary…Read more
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The Concept of Violence in International Theory: a Double-Intent AccountInternational Theory 9 (1): 67-100. 2017.The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a sp…Read more
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59Terrorism and the Right to Resist: a Theory of Just Revolutionary WarCambridge University Press. 2015.The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyrann…Read more
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Self-Interest Before Adam Smith (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (4): 500. 2004.
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18Naming violence: A critical theory of genocide, torture, and terrorism (review)Contemporary Political Theory 19 (4): 267-270. 2018.
Areas of Specialization
2 more
War and Violence |
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Value Theory |
Political Theory |
History of Political Philosophy |