ABSTRACT

The tradition of just war defines such a framework; efforts to recast it or to deny it simply miss the point of seeing the world as it is. On the terms of the Augustinian political theory that provided the basis for the traditional conception of just war, the community's general good is described as depending on the three goods or perfections toward which the practice of politics should aim: order, justice, and peace. Paul Ramsey, who insisted that the just war idea should be understood as a particular element in a theory of good politics, describes the just war idea as having to do with permission of force. The origins of the changed understanding of politics trace to the efforts of various authors during the era of the Enlightenment to describe new political structures that would, in Rousseau's memorable term, establish "perpetual peace". The "perpetual peace" movement provides the intellectual background for the rise of internationalism in the twentieth century.