Terrorism, Humanity, and a Plurality of Principles

Abstract

Ted Honderich’s book After the Terror (2003) managed to be both eminently commonsensical and highly controversial. This was a sure sign that it had touched a raw nerve and identified confusions and contradictions in conventional moral thinking which needed to be examined and clarified. The aspects of the contemporary world which he addressed in After the Terror and in its successor, Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War (2006), were: (a) global poverty and the inadequate response to it on the part of the populations of the most prosperous societies; (b) the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories; and (c) political terrorism, particularly Islamist-inspired terrorist actions such as the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. These he discussed in the light of his proposed ethical framework, the principle of humanity, revealing the inconsistency between the popular abhorrence of (c) and the prevailing complacency with respect to (a) and (b). In this chapter, I shall be mainly concerned with philosophical questions about the principle of humanity, and its implications for moral attitudes to terrorism and political violence, but I shall preface that with a brief glance at the substantive practical concerns.