ABSTRACT
James Turner Johnson is a foundational historian, theorist, and moralist of contemporary just war thinking. Through his historical work, he has demonstrated the outlines of how Western civilization has thought about the just use of force. In addition, Johnson has demonstrated the continuing significance and relevance of the historical materials by constructing a moral and ethical framework by which we can evaluate the use of force today. This framework is based on the assumption that violence and injustice are an inherent part of the human story and that any peace that is achieved is, in light of human limits, temporary. Johnson understands both the just war tradition and his contribution to its recovery in the 20th and 21st centuries as a retort to, on the one hand, pacifists, who are unrealistic about human beings and their limits, and, on the other, realists, who fail to see the existence and import of cultural and historic values to international affairs.
