Just War
The term just war refers to the major moral tradition of Western culture that deals with the justification and limitation of the use of force by public authority. Just war tradition has particular relevance for moral reflection about many scientific and technological developments related to military affairs.
Historical Background
Just war tradition can be traced back to Saint Augustine (354–430) in the fourth and fifth centuries and through him to the Old Testament and the ideas and practices of classical Greece and Rome. Augustine, however, did not write systematically or at length about the idea of just war; his treatment of these issues is found in passages about the use of force in works on various topics. A coherent, systematic body of thought and practice on just war did not emerge until the Middle Ages. The thought of Augustine and other earlier Christian writers was drawn together by the canonist Johannes Gratian, whose Decretum dates to the middle of the twelfth century. Two generations of canonists who built on Gratian's work, the Decretists and the Decretalists, took the development of the just war idea into the thirteenth century. In the second half of that century theologians, including most notably Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), placed the canonical materials in an overarching theological framework that showed both a strong dependence on Augustine's thinking and a new effort to give ideas about just war a footing in natural law.
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