What, more precisely, are ethics and justice? How do metaethical theories differ about this? Is ethics basically different from irenology or any other empirical discipline? Why? What is my metaethic? How do I view justice? What methods will I use for determining justice? My responses will proceed in this order.įirst, I hope to clarify in the next section the meaning of ethics and describe several important metaethical schools whose arguments usually concern the nature and status of morality, ethics, and sometimes values. 5 It is a complex task, especially if it is to be accomplished within these several chapters with clarity and persuasiveness. Therefore, a complete answer to what is a just peace must provide an assertion, its explanation (theory), and the associated metaethics. ![]() If our ethics insist that human rights are good, metaethics would question what we mean by a "human right" and "good" and how we know or justify this "goodness." If "natural law" is the answer, then metaethics would ask why. ![]() Metaethics concerns the nature of ethics, how ethical terms can be defined, what methods of justification are appropriate to ethics, and how we can know any of this. 2 Ethics is the assertion 3 and justification of what is good, right, proper, or just. In ethics, of which questions about justice are a part, 1 we similarly divide ethics from metaethics. To further clarify what is involved here, observe that for empirical truth we fundamentally distinguish ontology (what is) and epistemology (how one knows this and can justify this way of knowing). In short, I must answer these questions: What is justice? Why? And how do I know? For a complete response must also justify both my prescriptive meanings and supporting reasons. However, my answer as to what is a just peace would then have only a first-order respectability. Since previous volumes contain all the elaboration necessary, my job would be to focus their contents on freedom and add practical details. I could give such a theory of a just peace here in a workmanlike manner in only a chapter or two. And these reasons can be further elaborated until a full theory of justice based on freedom is detailed. That is, we could say, as I later do, that freedom promotes a just peace because it best enables each individual and group to assert, test, and satisfy its own sense of justice, while minimizing collective violence. However, we can go beyond merely asserting (or assenting to) "X is a just peace" and present fundamental philosophical reasons for this answer. "A just peace is one of maximal equality." Or "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," "the satisfaction of human needs," or "obedience to God." Such stipulated answers abound in the literature of peace, which usually focuses on how a given just peace can be achieved or constructed. "What is a just peace?" This question is deceptively simple a direct answer easily stipulated: "A just peace is one of maximal human freedom consistent with the freedom of others." As easily, however, comes a different answer. ![]() So much is unclear so many different views have been taken-and not only, of course, about what is morally right or wrong, but about what it is to be morally right or wrong. Not everyone, naturally, feels this, but even if one does not feel it the record shows it to be so. 9:Implementation of a Just Peace:Incrementalismįirst of all, I would insist that we must start from the recognition that there is something peculiarly puzzling and problematic, peculiarly arguable, about the whole phenomenon of morals.
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