Search

1. Begriff und HaupttypenE. (griech. ēthik椃 [ téchnē], »E.«, die Kunst vom 椃thos, »Sitte«, »Brauch«, »Charakter«) ist die Reflexion auf das gute und gerechte Handeln – »Handeln« verstanden als dasjenige menschliche Verhalten, das aus Freiheit vollzogen und somit verantwortlichen Akteuren zugerechnet werden kann. Unbeschadet ihres Charakters als eigenständiger Theorieaufgabe geht E. aus einem gelebten Ethos hervor; und trotz ihres Anspruchs auf Allgemeingültigkeit setzt jede E. zunächst partikulare kulturelle, religiöse oder welt…

1. Definition and major typesEthics (Greek  ethikḗ [ téchnē], “ethics,” the art of  ḗ thos, “custom,” “practice,” “nature”) is reflection on what constitutes good and just conduct – “conduct” understood as human actions performed in freedom and thus capable of being imputed to responsible agents. Despite its character as an autonomous theoretical approach, ethics emerges from a lived ethos; despite its claim to universality, every ethics initially posits particular cultural, religious, or ideological convict…

[German Version] I. History Ever since classical antiquity, the theory of resistance and the right of resistance have been linked inseparably to the understanding of sovereignty and its limits in both civil society and the church. 1. In the Germanic tribal kingdom of Western, Central, and Northern Europe, three overlapping legal concepts legitimated a right of resistance: (1) the conviction that the ruler is not above the law but subject to the law (grounded in the tradition of the administration of justice by the community of all …

[German Version] Terrorism is the systematic employment of especially brutal and shocking violence in pursuit of political ends. The definition of the agent is disputed: historically, the term terrorism initially (after the French Revolution) referred to the reign of terror on the part of the state. Restriction of the term to forms of violence carried out below the level of the state is based on the observation that methods employed by the anticolonial struggle for liberation were adopted by other groups and employed in other ¶ conflicts. It would be good to distinguish between t…

[German Version] I. Religion and Mythology The evolution of language and the intelligent use of tools and weapons ran parallel courses. Technologically, weapons for hunting and weapons of war were initially identical. Weapons as funerary goods go back to the Upper Paleolithic (Burial: I; Dead, Cult of the: I). The deadly power of weapons explains their unique place in the history of religion. Specially designed knives are used in sacrificial rituals (Human sacrifice, Sacrifice, Ritual killing); their crafting and use is reserved to religious specialists. Daggers and swords are also employed in magic as well as in initiation rituals (dubbing). Punitive or male…

[German Version] I. Concept The formation of this concept goes back to the experience of the Kirchenkampf during the Third Reich and to the social significance that was ascribed to the churches in Germany aft…

[German Version] I. Security – from Latin securitas < s( in) e cura – subjectively means the sense of safety or freedom from apprehension; objectively it means a condition of safety and protection. With the emergence of the modern sovereign state, (public) security became a key concept for justifying the state’s monopoly on force (N. Machiavelli, T. Hobbes). The use of …

…

[German Version] I. General Concept “Public opinion” is one of the most ambiguous concepts in the history of political ideas and social sciences. on account of its dual empirical/normative status, the concept may refer both to a counterfactual claim and to a social reality. Its antecedent semantics ( fama popularis, vox populi, consensus gentium) may be traced throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages; in the early modern ¶ period, N. Machiavelli underlined the importance of the publica voce et fama as a condition of successful political action. As late as the 18th century…

[German Version] refers to the threat of force by which another person is to be restrained from transgressing a social norm. Deterrence as a function of the state monopoly on force becomes at first a topic of domestic political ethics in criminal law, then, in the international context, as a doctrine in security policy that intends to restrain a potential enemy from attacking by strong military means. The system of deterrence established in the East-West conflict based on the threat ¶ of use of atomic weapons of mass destruction raises the fundamental moral question whether it is permissible to threaten credibly with weapons whose employment is extremely problematic in terms of ethics and (international) law. The changes in the (Western) strategy of deterrence undertaken during the East-West confrontation did not resolve its aporias, but only sharpened them. Since it abandoned Europe to destruction, NATO (with the exception o…

[German Version] Political science distinguishes between international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). An IGO is a cooperating association which has been formalized in a multilateral treaty under international law by at least three states whose jointly fixed normative standards have internally led to a definition and balancing of expected mutual reactions; at the same time, the IGO functions externally by interacting with the member state…

[German Version] I. Ancient Near East and Old Testament – II. Islam – III. Ethics I. Ancient Near East and Old Testament The theory that ancient Israel was, under certain circumstances, accustomed to wage “holy wars” in addition to profane ones goes back to G. v. Rad (1947/1951), at least in the form that became a milestone of scholarly research. Drawing on the depictions of war in the OT, he developed a “theory of the holy war” based on three constitutive features: 1. the embedding of the war in rituals that made…

[German Version] Given the general prohibition of the use of violence in article 2 of the United Nations charter, the term international law of war covers only the body of international regulations that impose limitations on combat operations on both parties (including in some cases the UN itself) in an armed conflict that has already broken out. The modern law of war includes ethico-legal principles that were normative for ius in bello in the context of theories of a just war and have the force of customary law. Today, however, the international law of war is largely governed by…

[German Version] I. Social Sciences 1. Concept. War is conflict between large groups, peoples, nations, and states conducted by force of arms. The more precise definition of the term and its differentiation from peace are disputed. Behavioral science tends toward a broad definition: war is a specifically human form of intergroup aggression, functional in the context of competition for scarce resources; in it the use of weapons decreases our instinctive inhibition against killing. The theory that war is…

[German Version] The project of a world peace order has been on the political agenda since the early 20th century, when a classic war between states twice transmogrified into a world war. After 1945 realization of a world peace order was blocked initially because world peace was enforced by a balance of mutually assured destruction (Deterrence) between the two imperial powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. When the confrontation of the Eastern and Western blocs ended in 1989/1990, implementation of a w…

[German Version] I. Conc…

[German Version] I. Concept and History – II. Current Legal Situation – III. Ethics – IV. Conscription/National Service of Ministers I. Concept and History 1. Concept Conscription refers to a system of military recruiting based (in contrast to voluntary military ser¶ vice in an army of professional and/or regular soldiers) on the public, legal duty of all citizens capable of serving. Depending on the respective composition of the state's military, conscripted military service can be performed either in militia units or in a standing mobile troop. …

[German Version] I. The term “church politics” usually means either the politics of the state (or a party or social organization) toward the churches, or internal church politics. In a pluralistic community, the former meaning falls under ¶ the heading of religious politics and will therefore not be considered here. In both uses, the origins of the term (though not of the phenomenon itself) are intimately connected with the tendency toward mutual emancipation of church and state. In the 19th century, representat…

[German Version] I. Origin Soon after the outbreak of W…

[German Version] I. Conception – II. Greco-Roman Antiquity – III. Ancient Near East and Israel – IV. Church History – V. Fundamental Theology – VI. Ethics – VII. Church in International Law – VIII. Islam I. Conception 1. Legal conception International law is the quintessence of the legal norms that regulate sovereign relations between the international legal subjects. International legal subjects are primarily states, traditionally also the Apostolic See, the international organizations created by the states on a contractual b…