Volume 34, Number 17 · November 5, 1987
Is Nuclear Deterrence Moral?
By J.M. Cameron
Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism
by John Finnis, by Joseph M. Boyle Jr., by Germain Grisez
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 429 pp., £30.00
The Catholic Church in World Politics
by Eric O. Hanson
Princeton University Press, 485 pp., $24.95
This is the dilemma Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez explore in their impressive book. About the authors themselves one need only say that they are all three Roman Catholics, that they are professional philosophers—one of them, Finnis, is a notable student of jurisprudence—and that they stand outside the syndrome-thinking[1] that dominates most debate by Christians and secularists over the morality of the nuclear deterrent and over most other moral issues that arise out of the consideration of public policy. While they are all of them in a loose sense attached to the Aristotelian tradition in moral philosophy, they are more strongly influenced by the moral principles of the Old and New Testaments—they are children of Moses and Paul; and they are also influenced by modes of argument and styles of thinking drawn from analytical philosophy in the English-speaking countries.
Review, 5831 words
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