Regulating weapons : an Aristotelian account
Abstract
Regulating war has long been a concern of the international community. From the Hague Conventions to the Geneva Conventions and the multiple treaties and related institutions that have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, efforts to mitigate the horrors of war have focused on regulating weapons, defining combatants, and ensuring access to the battlefield for humanitarians. But regulation and legal codes alone cannot be the end point of an engaged ethical response to new weapons developments. This short essay reviews some of the existing ethical works on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), highlighting how rule- and consequence-based accounts fail to provide adequate guidance for how to deal with them. I propose a virtue-based account, which I link up with an Aristotelian framework, for how the international community might better address these weapons systems.
Citation
Lang Jr. , A F 2023 , ' Regulating weapons : an Aristotelian account ' , Ethics and International Affairs , vol. 37 , no. 3 , pp. 309-320 . https://doi.org/10.1017/S089267942300031X
Publication
Ethics and International Affairs
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0892-6794Type
Journal article
Collections
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