Harry van der Linden

On the Violence of Systemic Violence: A Critique of Slavoj Žižek

Harry van der Linden — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:18:48 PDT

This paper questions the extension of the common notion of violence, i.e., “subjective violence,” involving the intentional use of force to inflict injury or damage, towards social injustice as “systemic violence.” Systemic violence is altogether unlike subjective violence and the work of Slavoj Žižek illustrates that conceptual obfuscation in this regard may lead to an overly broad and facile justification of revolutionary violence as counter-violence to systemic violence, appealing to the ethics of self-defense. I argue that revolutionary violence is only justified to counter subjective violence inflicted or organized by the state. Thus I reject in conclusion Žižek’s further defense of revolutionary violence as retributive and as “shock therapy” necessary to disrupt the old society.

Barack Obama as Just War Theorist: The Libyan Intervention

Harry van der Linden — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:54:02 PST

President Barack Obama has clearly placed himself in the just war tradition, and so we may ask how successful has President Obama in fact been as just war theorist? His justification of the recent NATO intervention in Libya shows that the record is at best mixed. More broadly, Obama’s failure as just war theorist is at least partly a failure of the theory itself: as long as this theory does not address issues of “just military preparedness,” it will fail to place real constraints on American resort to military force.

Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight

Harry van der Linden — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:37:18 PST

This article reviews The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities by Douglas L. Kriner and Francis X. Shen, published by Oxford University Press in 2010.

From Hiroshima to Baghdad: Military Hegemony versus Just Military Preparedness

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:13:18 PST

In this paper I question the morality of U.S. military supremacy or hegemony in terms of what constitute the legitimate use of military force and the proper preparation for using such force. I first discuss in a somewhat synoptic fashion how American hegemonic military force (from its very beginning with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima) has been justified in dishonest ways and wrongly executed. Next, I show that Just War Theory (JWT) needs to be revised in order to come to a convincing assessment of U.S. military hegemony and its use of military force. This leads me to propose “just military preparedness,” consisting of five principles of just military preparedness, as a new category of JWT. The failure of the United States to satisfy the principles puts into question its very capability of justly resorting to military force, of lawfully executing force, and of establishing a just peace after war. The principles also point to a more humane alternative of how the United States could meet security threats and sustain a peaceful international order.

Is Global Poverty a Moral Problem for Citizens of Affluent Societies?

Harry van der Linden — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 08:57:53 PST

This paper contests the view of R. Bittner that global poverty is not a moral problem for citizens of affluent societies. It argues instead that the affluent have a duty to alleviate this poverty because they are in various ways morally implicated in an unjust global economy of growing inequality, leaving one billion people without minimally adequate resources and opportunities.

From Combat Boots to Civilian Shoes: Reflections on The Chickenhawk Syndrome

Harry van der Linden — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:53:19 PST

From Radical Philosophy Review 13:2 (2010): 173-180. This essay is part of a symposium on Cheyney Ryan’s The Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility (2009). Ryan’s reply to his critics can be found on pp. 181-89.

Just Military Preparedness, U.S. Military Hegemony, and Contingency Planning for Intervention in Sudan: A Reply to Lango and Patterson

Harry van der Linden — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:53:14 PST

This paper rejects most aspects of John W. Lango and Eric Patterson’s proposal that the United States should plan for a possible intervention in Sudan on secessionist and humanitarian grounds and announce this planning as a deterrent to the central government of Sudan attacking the people of South Sudan if they would opt in a January 2011 referendum for independence. I argue that secession is not a just cause for armed intervention and that, rightfully, neither the American people nor many of its men and women in uniform would be prepared to engage in an intervention that might easily escalate. I also caution that American intervention against an Islamic regime might have high global security costs. For the sake of avoiding these negative consequences and harm to the people of Sudan, available nonviolent policy alternatives should be pursued. Still, I grant that the global community should intervene in Sudan if mass slaughter of civilians were to occur as a result of renewed hostilities between North and South Sudan. My objections to Lango and Patterson’s intervention proposal appeal to jus ad bellum principles as well as just military preparedness (jus ante bellum) principles.

Marx and morality: an impossible synthesis?

Harry van der Linden — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:36:01 PDT

A discussion of Allen E. Buchanan, Marx and Justice (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982); Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, and Thomas Scanlon, eds., Marx. Justice. and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Kai Nielsen and Steven C. Patten, eds., Marx and Morality, Supplementary Volume VII of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1981).

Questioning the Resort to U.S. Hegemonic Military Force

Harry van der Linden — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:53:08 PDT

This paper seeks to defend the thesis that this American project of military hegemony has a variety of global security costs of such combined magnitude that there is a strong prima facie case against the resort to armed force by the United States, so that its wars might be wrong even when there is a just cause. My thesis is based on the jus ad bellum principle of proportionality.

Barack Obama, Resort to Force, and U.S. Military Hegemony

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:22:14 PDT

Just War Theorists have neglected that a lack of “just military preparedness” on the side of a country seriously undermines its capability to resort justly to military force. In this paper, I put forth five principles of “just military preparedness” and show that since the new Obama administration will seek to maintain the United States’ dominant military position in the world, it will violate each of the principles. I conclude on this basis that we should anticipate that the Obama administration will add another page to the United States’ history of unjust military interventions.

Cohen, Collective Responsibility, and Economic Democracy

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:52:06 PDT

My main objective in this paper is to show that Hermann Cohen's ethics offers an important but hitherto neglected contribution to the- current debate within Anglo-American ethics on the moral status of the modern business corporation.

Hermann Cohen’s Political Philosophy and the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:16:38 PDT

My main aim here is to examine what the significance is of the communitarian critique of liberalism for Hermann Cohen's political philosophy. I will conclude that Cohen's socialist Kantianism can successfully meet this critique. Also, I will argue that his political philosophy can better deal with some of the problems that communitarians detect in our Western democracies than can communitarianism itself. One crucial reason for this is that Cohen completes the original Kantian liberal project by making all agents fully autonomous in the economic sphere.

Marx's Political Universalism

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:18:02 PDT

My main aim in this paper is to arrive at a defensible form of Marxian or socialist political universalism through a critical examination of Marx's own political universalism. In the next section, I will outline several moral errors that Walzer ascribes to political universalism, including Marx's, and show that Walzer largely misdirects his criticisms because what primarily accounts for Marx committing the errors is his Hegelian metaphysical conception of history, not his political universalism as such.

Review of Roger J. Sullivan, An Introduction to Kant's Ethics (1994)

Harry van der Linden — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:54:27 PDT

This solid but accessible and clearly-written introduction to Kant's ethics draws at times heavily from Sullivan's more technical and comprehensive Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (1989). The introductory work, however, fully stands on its own with one unfortunate exception: Only citations from the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals are referenced; with regard to all other citations from Kant's work, Sullivan states (p. 2) that the references can be found in the "relevant sections" of his 1989 work.

"Immigration," "Immanuel Kant", and "Kantian Ethics"

Harry van der Linden — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:32:33 PDT

Three encyclopedia entries from "Ready Reference: Ethics." Salem Press, 2004.

Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants

Harry van der Linden — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:35:08 PDT

The neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) famously wrote that Kant “is the true and real originator of German socialism.” This paper seeks to explicate Cohen’s socialist reconstruction of Kant’s ethics and show that this reconstruction overcomes some weaknesses of Kant’s ethics. In conclusion, the paper discusses the contemporary relevance of Cohen’s cooperative socialism.

Note: The full-text document linked to this entry contains both English and German versions of this book chapter.

Kant, the Duty to Promote International Peace, and Political Intervention

Harry van der Linden — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:57:32 PDT

Kant argues that it is the duty of humanity to strive for an enduring peace between the nations. For Kant, political progress within each nation is essential to realizing lasting peace, and so one would expect him to view political intervention- defined as coercive interference by one nation, or some of its citizens, with the affairs of another nation in order to bring about political improvements in that nation-as justified in some cases.! Kant, however, explicitly rejects all intervention by force, and some aspects of his work support an unqualified prohibition of political intervention. In this paper I will examine on which grounds, stated or inferred, Kant's practical philosophy upholds the absolute prohibition of political intervention, and conclude that, although these grounds are inadequate, they have the merit of pointing to important restrictions on justified political intervention.

Review of Kenneth Baynes, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, and Habermas (1992)

Harry van der Linden — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:57:31 PDT

Baynes's two main objectives are to show that Kant, Rawls, and Habermas share the view that "the idea of an agreement among free and equal persons [i. e., autonomous persons] ... constitutes the normative ground of social criticism" (p. 8), and that this "constructivist" view is more adequately developed and defended with each successive theorist. The study, however, goes beyond these aims and can often fruitfully be read as a comparative study of Rawls and Habermas.

Review of Helmut Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp (1986): Volume I, Ursprung und Einheit; Volume II, Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen

Harry van der Linden — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:58:50 PDT

This article reviews "Cohen und Natorp: Volume I, Ursprung und Einheit; Volume II, Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen," by Helmut Holzhey.

Review of Richard Dien Winfield, The Just Economy (1988)

Harry van der Linden — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:57:36 PDT

This article reviews "The Just Economy," by Richard Dien Winfield.