POL101Y1 Study Guide - Final Guide: Jus Ad Bellum, J. Walter Thompson, Moral Universalism
Document Summary
Diodotian argument - political communities do no hold responsibility to each other; the pursuit of one state"s own advantage may conflict with another state, though, the conflict should be without gratuitous harm. War is only a conflict of interests, no one is guilty or in the wrong. Vittoria"s doctrine may sit less on christianity than we assume. Main diff b/w modern thought, and past christian thought: priority of the community > priority of the individual/primacy of duty (what you owe to the community) vs primacy of rights (what the community owes the individual) He is educating princes on the proper procedure to engage in war. Through reason and appeals to christian values, he limits what princes can justly do (there are no checks on the authority of kingship as citizens have no means to rescind their authority as we do in democratic states)
