This paper explores whether a morally coherent philosophy of armed conflict remains viable in the twenty-first century. It is claimed that the crisis of just war theory is not only ethical nevertheless fundamentally epistemological, arising from the transformation of communication in contexts of hybrid and information warfare. The classical just war tradition, while still illuminating normatively, is not adequate conceptually after warfare turns asymmetric, hybrid, cybernetic and algorithmically mediated. Methodologically, the study brought analytical philosophy into dialogue with continental phenomenology and hermeneutic critique. Classical scholars such as Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Vattel, Walzer, McMahan, Levinas, Arendt, and Ricoeur were accessed. In constructive terms, Kant’s idea of perpetual peace and Galtung’s notion of structural violence are resorted in order to argue that peace must not be understood as a passive absence of hostilities but as an active praxis, which is normatively grounded. Contemporary scholars’ thoughts concerning the philosophical-political and philosophical-legal aspects of information warfare are as well included in order to demonstrate how communication itself has become an operational domain of conflict. The article concludes that ethical inquiry must move beyond justifications of violence to a philosophy of peace based on the reconstruction of communicative and epistemological conditions.
This paper explores whether a morally coherent philosophy of armed conflict remains viable in the twenty-first century. It is claimed that the crisis of just war theory is not only ethical nevertheless fundamentally epistemological, arising from the transformation of communication in contexts of hybrid and information warfare. The classical just war tradition, while still illuminating normatively, is not adequate conceptually after warfare turns asymmetric, hybrid, cybernetic and algorithmically mediated. Methodologically, the study brought analytical philosophy into dialogue with continental phenomenology and hermeneutic critique. Classical scholars such as Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Vattel, Walzer, McMahan, Levinas, Arendt, and Ricoeur were accessed. In constructive terms, Kant’s idea of perpetual peace and Galtung’s notion of structural violence are resorted in order to argue that peace must not be understood as a passive absence of hostilities but as an active praxis, which is normatively grounded. Contemporary scholars’ thoughts concerning the philosophical-political and philosophical-legal aspects of information warfare are as well included in order to demonstrate how communication itself has become an operational domain of conflict. The article concludes that ethical inquiry must move beyond justifications of violence to a philosophy of peace based on the reconstruction of communicative and epistemological conditions.
