ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I noted that consequentialists have tended to join in the condemnation of terrorism. While conceding that under some circumstances terrorism could perhaps be justified, consequentialists have quickly proceeded to assert that, of course, such circumstances are in fact rare or non-existent and that, given the world as we know it, terrorism cannot be justified. R.M.Hare, in a wellknown essay on slavery,1 has maintained that it is one of the virtues of consequentialism that its adherents have taken the trouble to determine what the harmful consequences of slavery actually are before rejecting it; but although Hare in his essay on terrorism has examined the immediate consequences of a single, hypothetical terrorist act, neither he nor any other consequentialist has examined the long-term consequences of a series of acts of terrorism, either real or hypothetical, which are interconnected and aimed at a common goal. Here, as elsewhere, what one might say on the micro-level of what an individual has done need not coincide with what one might say on the macro-level where a social practice is concerned. In this chapter I shall examine in some detail arguments against terrorism which have been presented by Hare, Kai Nielsen, and Ted Honderich, who, despite major differences among them, can all be considered as being in some sense consequentialists.
