Michael Walzer, Political Theorist, to Address Responsibility in War
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, will give a talk titled "Proportionality and Responsibility in State/Non-State Wars" at Williams College on Thursday, April 23. The talk is scheduled for 8 p.m. in Griffin Hall 3 on the Williams campus.It is open to the public and free.
Walzer is well known for his work on just and unjust wars. His lecture will address this theme within the context of the so-called "small wars" that dominate today's headlines.
He is noted for arguing that political theory must be grounded in the traditions and culture of particular societies and opposed to what he sees to be the excessive abstraction of political philosophy.
His interests include a focus on the revitalization of a just war theory that insists on the importance of ethics in wartime while eschewing pacifism. His theory of "complex equality" holds that the metric of just equality demands that each good be distributed according to its social meaning, and that no good (like money or political power) be allowed to dominate or distort the distribution of goods in other spheres. Further, he has argued that justice is primarily a moral standard within particular nations and societies, not one that can be developed in a universalized abstraction.
Walzer is the author of 27 books including "Politics and Passion: Toward A More Egalitarian Liberalism"(2004), "Arguing About War"(2004) and "War, Politics and Morality"(2001) and published over 300 articles on topics as varied as tolerance, citizenship, civil society, the principles of liberal democracy, and the history of Jewish political thought.
He is co-editor of "Dissent" magazine and is a frequent contributor to "The New York Review of Books" and "The New Republic."
The lecture is sponsored by the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
