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[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 ¶ …

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[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 the abstract noun coincides generally with the emergence of the centralistic territorial state. Almost immediately there was a sharp termino…

[German Version] The notion of a league of nations – drawn in part from motifs of Judeo-Christian eschatology (Isa 2:2–4) – goes back to widely broadcast plans for an organization devoted to world peace that were developed in the early 14th century (Pierre Dubois), in the 17th century (Maximilien de Sully, W. Penn), and at the beginning of the 18th century (Abbé de St. Pierre), but above all in I. Kant's philosophical tract Zum ewigen Frieden (1795; ET: Perpetual Peace, 1915). Against this background, even during World War I but especially in his Fourteen Points of Jan 18,…

[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 fundame…

[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] 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 larg…

[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, implem…

[German Version] I. Concept and History – II. International Criminal Law I. Concept and History The German term Völkermord refers to a variety of actions undertaken to annihilate various social groups; the element of “murder” need not be fulfilled nor a ¶ “people” be the sole victims. The term “genocide,” coined by Raphael Lemkin (from Gk γένος/ génos: kind, people, tribe; Lat. caedere: to annihilate, kill) is more precise. Prompted by his study of the Turkish mass murder of the Armenians (Turkey), the persecution of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq at th…

[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 World War II, the collapse of the League of Nations led to plans for a new world peace organization, as described in the Atlantic Charter, the joint declaration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill published on Aug 14, 1941. On Jan 1, 1942, its goals were affirmed in the Declaration by United Nations (UN) signed by 26 countries at war with the so-called Axis Powers. The Charter, worked out by representatives of 50 countries, took effect on Oct 24, 1945. II. Goals and Principles According to article 1 of the Charter, the prim…

[German Version] I. Concept …

[German Version] I. History and Law – II. Theological Assessment I. History and Law 1. In Germany – and with some variation also in Switzerland and Scandinavia – church taxes originated with the secularization (II, 1) of the property of the church by the Principal Resolution of the Imperial Deputation in 1803. In compensation, the German princes acquiring this property undertook to meet the financial needs of the church. In the course of the 19th century, the German…

[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 s…

[German Version] I. Law – II. Ethics – III. Practical Theology I. Law The right to conscientious objection in Germany, which long existed only as a special privilege granted to the members of the historic peace churches (e.g. the Mennonites in Prussia; see II below), today enjoys special constitutional protection through art. 4 III of German Basic Law (“No one may be forced into armed military service against his conscience”) as the most common example of freedom of cons…

[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 males fit for m…

[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 O…

[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 a biological a…

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