The Problem of Perfidy and the Failure of Forms

This commentary on Arthur Ripstein’s Tanner Lectures takes up several principal concerns with Ripstein’s powerful argument. First, the author suggests that Ripstein understates the tension, verging on contradiction, of the ius ad bellum and the ius in bello, where the former (in modern thought) treats wars as a great evil to be avoided at nearly all costs, while the second treats war as a legitimate form of interpersonal conflict. Second, the author queries whether Ripstein’s focus in Lecture I on the wrong of perfidy causes him to place too much emphasis on the specific value of a negotiated peace, as opposed to further, intrinsic concerns with the breach of trust and lack of honor. And third, the author questions whether formal features of an aggressor’s intention can make any difference to the (im)permissibility of killing civilians. Last, the author strongly endorses Ripstein’s conception of the ethics of war as grounded in politics, not individual, interpersonal morality.