Guerre juste, devoir de protéger et intervention armée | Just War, Duty to Protect and Armed intervention

Collège universitaire dominicain - Dominican University College

Faculté de philosophie - Faculty of Philosophy

Colloque / Symposium

GUERRE JUSTE, DEVOIR DE PROTÉGER ET INTERVENTION ARMÉE,  
EST-CE QUE LA DISTINCTION ENTRE COMBATTANTS ET INNOCENTS DEVIENT DÉNUÉE DE SENS?

JUST WAR, DUTY TO PROTECT AND ARMED INTERVENTION, 
HAS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN COMBATTANTS AND "NON-HARMING" PEOPLE BECOME MEANINGLESS

15 - 17 novembre 2012 - November 15-17, 2012

96, avenue Empress, Ottawa 

Salle Albert-le-Grand / Albert the Great Hall

« Aux prétentions d’une guerre qui se veut justifiée par le nouvel état de choses qu’elle déclare vouloir instaurer s’oppose l’idée d’une guerre juste dont la légitimité serait scrupuleusement établie et qui serait assortie de limites morales fortes. L’exigence d’une justice de la guerre vaut face aux guerres qui disent vouloir établir le bien [...] Quand des civils meurent pour que des civils soient sauvés, le constat que les civils ainsi secourus sont plus nombreux que les civils qui ont été atteints ne suffit pas à régler moralement la question et ne justifie aucunement l’intervention » [Monique Canto-Sperber, L’idée de guerre juste, P.U.F., Paris, 2010, p. 61 et 109]

“The policy of attacking the civilian population in order to induce an enemy to surrender, or to damage his mo-rale, seems to have been widely accepted in the civilized world, and seems to be accepted still, at least if the stakes are high enough. It gives evidence of a moral conviction that the deliberate killing of noncombatants —women, children, old people— is permissible if enough can be gained by it. This follows from the more general position that any means can in principle be justified if it leads to a sufficiently worthy end. […] There seems to be a perfectly natural conception of the distinction between fighting clean and fighting dirty. To fight dirty is to direct one's hostility or aggression not at its proper object, but at a peripheral target which may be more vul-nerable, and through which the proper object can be attacked indirectly. This applies in a fist fight, an election campaign, a duel, or a philosophical argument. If the concept is general enough to apply to all these matters, it should apply to war—both to the conduct of individual soldiers and to the conduct of nations". [Thomas Nagel, "War and Massacre" in: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 2, 1972, p. 127]

Voir le programme | See Program