Publisher's Synopsis
<div>With today's world torn by violence and conflict, Richard B. <br>Miller's study of the ethics of war could not be more timely. <br>Miller brings together the opposed traditions of pacifism and <br>just-war theory and puts them into a much-needed dialogue <br>on the ethics of war. <br><br>Beginning with the duty of nonviolence as a point of <br>convergence between the two rival traditions, Miller provides <br>an opportunity for pacifists and just-war theorists to refine <br>their views in a dialectical exchange over a set of ethical <br>and social questions. From the interface of these two long- <br>standing and seemingly incompatible traditions emerges a <br>surprisingly fruitful discussion over a common set of values, <br>problems, and interests: the presumption against harm, the <br>relation of justice and order, the ethics of civil <br>disobedience, the problem of self-righteousness in moral <br>discourse about war, the ethics of nuclear deterrence, and <br>the need for practical reasoning about the morality of war. <br>Miller pays critical attention to thinkers such as Augustine <br>and Thomas Aquinas, as well as to modern thinkers like H. <br>Richard Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Martin Luther King, Jr., James <br>Douglass, the Berrigans, William O'Brien, Michael Walzer, and <br>James Childress. He demonstrates how pacifism and just-war <br>tenets can be joined around both theoretical and practical <br>issues. <br><br><i>Interpretations of Conflict</i> is a work of massive <br>scholarship and careful reasoning that should interest <br>philosophers, theologians, and religious ethicists alike. It <br>enhances our moral literacy about injury, suffering, and <br>killing, and offers a compelling dialectical approach to <br>ethics in a pluralistic society. <br><br>Richard B. Miller is assistant professor of religious <br>studies at Indiana University.</div>
