ETHICS, RELIGION AND HUMAN/E LIMITS IN WAR
ETHICS, RELIGION AND HUMAN/E LIMITS IN WAR

Summary/Abstract: This essay shows how changing ways of thinking about love and fear in armed combat have shaped intellectual responses to ethical behaviour in war. While there is a voluminous literature on the importance of reasoning in just war literature, the history of thinking about justice, ethics and war is also shaped by reflection on the role of love and fear in war, as existential emotions rather than as abstract principles. As reflection on ethics in war has increasingly taken on secular forms, the impression of prior religious traditions continues to play important roles. The essay shows how modern and contemporary responses to war can use multidisciplinary enquiries in order to bridge the gaps between factors that can be rationalised, and emotions related to love and fear, which demand more humanistic analytical approaches. The final part of the essay shows how such multidisciplinary enquiries have been used since 1945 in changing military education, and particularly in the development of new forms of ethics education in the military and in the changing focus of efforts by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to disseminate the values which protect people in war thanks to the development of International Humanitarian Law.

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