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Abstract
1. Introduction
The difficulties of labeling ‘‘one man’s terrorist as everyman’s terrorist’’ fundamentally reflect the irreducibly normative elements attached to the concept of terrorism. The contested interpretation of such a ‘thick’ concept captures one of BIISS JOURNAL, VOL. 37, NO. 2, APRIL 2016: 133-154
Mohammad Zahidul Islam Khan is Group Captain in Bangladesh Air Force and a Chevening scholar. He is
currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Reading. His email address is: zahid8244@yahoo.com. ©Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), 2016.
the enduring principles that the social world is ‘meaningful’ and ‘interpretive’ in nature which is essentially shaped by the ‘values’ as not by the ‘facts’ alone. Centered around the fact/value dichotomy, social science is often claimed to be value-laden and distinct from the natural science riding on the logic that values are ‘subjective’ or ‘untestable’ in a way the factual judgments are.1 ‘Fact’ is regarded as a statement of reality’s true nature, a description of what something is like. Science claims to be ‘factual’ – based on empirical observations often reduced to law like regularities. ‘Value’ is normative (i.e., prescriptive) about how something ought to be. Value, often equated to the expression of ideals, is a group of conceptions of the relative desirability of things.2 Arguably, values that are mind-dependent, non-observable and internal to observer are indispensable in any social science inquiry.
Philosophical dualism broadly implies the mind-body problem giving rise to many different dichotomous postulations including the fact/value dichotomy.3 The dualists view that consciousness and thought shaped by the mind and the physical world based on empiricism are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other. The idealists, however, view that the physical world is in fact inherently mental as anything empirical is indeed an inter-subjective product of collective interpretation of the experience originating from our mind. Thus, if our mind is always active ‘‘in choosing what to accept, revise or reject’’4 can there be any ‘fact’ prior to interpretation leading to a value neutral social science? How justifiable is such ‘philosophical dualism’ and the corresponding distinctions drawn between social science and natural science? Does the reliance of natural science on theory, rules, criteria, beliefjustification, etc. for rationale acceptance – that are essentially normative, implies that value judgments are no less testable than factual judgments are? What happens when the analysis involves ‘thick’ ethical concepts? Can we really separate the evaluative aspects from the descriptive aspects in thick social concepts? What would it take to create a world guided meaning of thick concept like terrorism, allowing us to regard one man’s terrorist as everyman’s terrorist?
For a detail account on conceptions of science and the historical and philosophical root of social science
see Robert C. Bishop, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, New York: Continuum, 2007, pp. 7-80. For an enlightening discussion on value laden concept in light of David Hume’s theses, see Rachel Cohon, “Hume’s Moral Philosophy”, available at, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/hume-moral/, accessed on 12 March 2016 and William A. Gorton, ‘’The Philosophy of Social Science’’, available at http://www.iep. utm.edu/soc-sci/, accessed on 12 March 2016. 2 The distinction (or the lack of) between fact and value, appears in many philosophical writings. The earliest amongst them includes David Hume, (1739) ‘‘A Treatise of Human Nature’’, available at: http:// michaeljohnsonphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/5010, accessed on 09 March 2016. Also see G.E. Moore, Principa Ethica, available at, http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica/, accessed on 09 March 2016. For the revised edition of Moore’s book , with an introduction of Thomas Baldwin (ed), 1993, available at http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/heathwood/pdf/moore_pe.pdf/, accessed on 15 March 2016. 3 Parallel to ‘mind-body problem’ implying values related to mind and facts to bodies was drawn by Howard Robinson, “Dualism”, available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/dualism/, accessed on 15 March 2016. 4 See Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.202-224.
Straddled between such puzzles, this paper aims to unpack the notion of philosophical dualism and the associated distinctions it promotes between social science and natural science by critically examining the fact/value dichotomy with a focus on thick ethical concepts in general and the concept of terrorism in particular. The paper is structured as follows. First, tracing the origin and philosophical reasoning of fact/value dichotomy the paper questions the utility and validity for such dichotomous postulation. It argues that the proposition “one cannot derive ‘ought’ from an ‘is’” restricts intellectual debate, growth of knowledge and remains impractical to achieve particularly in ‘thick’ ethical concepts. Distinguishing between the evaluative and descriptive aspects of thick concepts the paper demonstrates the centrality of ‘meaning’ and ‘interpretation’ in social science and highlights different peculiarities of meaning. Second, the paper highlights the concord and discord between the natural and social sciences and argues that both types of sciences are engaged in tracing the conceptual relations; the real difference lies in the aims, nature and methods of inquiry and not in the alleged fact/value distinction. It contends that to remain objective in social science inquiry, one needs to travel adequately through all the peculiarities of the meaning to arrive at acceptable proposition and causal connections. Third, the paper focuses on terrorism — a thick concept, to examine how the descriptive and evaluative aspects of the concept has shifted corrupting its meaning and interpretation. It concludes that arriving at a world guided meaning of terrorism, would require decoupling it from the war paradigm, religion and building a common ethos of reciprocity towards the act irrespective of the category of the actors. Such an ethos and the corresponding constitutive rules that emerge from, and are sustained by a web of social practices of the societies and the societies of states can only transform one man’s terrorist to be regarded as everyman’s terrorist.
The paper has been divided into eight sections. After introduction, the rest of
the paper has been organised as follows. Section 2 analyses the celebrated fact/value
dichotomy, while Section 3 tries to address whether value can be separated from fact.
Section 4 presents the ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ concepts in the context of identifying terrorism.
Section 5 describes value while Section 6 analyses ‘meaning’ and ‘objectivity’ from the
perspective of social sciences. Section 7 presents the case of global war on terror
followed by 9/11 attacks to describe the philosophical evaluative and descriptive
aspects of the notion of terrorism. Finally, Section 8 concludes the paper with an
attempt to formally frame one man’s terrorist as everyman’s terrorist.
2. The Fact/Value Dichotomy
The origin of the doctrine of fact/value dichotomy is often traced to the eighteenth century Enlightenment Thinkers, who ostensibly declared that the values (such as moral obligations) cannot be defined by facts. Introducing concepts and ideas like ‘Hume’s law’, ‘naturalistic fallacy’ they professed that one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ – an epistemic attitude that rejects the possibility of deducing ethical statements from non-ethical statements.5 David Hume (1711-1776), the 18th century Scottish philosopher is often cited as a standard reference to distinguish between the cognitive judgment and non-cognitive judgment. Hume in his book, A Treatise of Human Nature excludes moral judgments from the realm of knowledge and contends that morality is not an object of reason, because ‘‘the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason’’.6 He states that it is ‘altogether inconceivable’ to infer an ‘ought and ought-not’ based on the usual copulations of ‘is and is not’ because such a process of reasoning expresses some new relation or affirmation which could be entirely different that are not necessarily observed or explained in the first place. Setting out the distinctive boundaries between the ‘offices of reason’ (i.e., facts) and ‘matter of taste’ (i.e., values), Hume writes7 :
‘‘The former (i.e., reason) conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood; The latter (i.e., taste) gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution; The other has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation.’’
While many philosophers like Richard Hare, Frank Jackson and Karl Popper endorse Hume’s contentions and regarded the ‘Hume’s Law’ as ‘the simplest and the most important point about ethics’,8 others like Michael Blake, Arthur Norman Prior, John Rogers Searle, Hilary Putnam refutes the ‘uncontroversial truism’ of the fact/ value dichotomy calling for ‘pragmatic pluralism.’9
The distinctiveness of the ethical judgment from non-ethical premises also stems from G.E. Moore’s book Principia Ethica.10 Moore coined the term ‘naturalistic fallacy’ – which inherently implies that the content of the ethical thoughts is
5
Ibid, p.207 6 David Hume, op. cit., p.240. 7 See David Hume, ‘An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals’’, Appendix. 1, 1777, available at http:// www.gutenberg.org/files/4320/4320-h/4320-h.htm#2H_4_0003/, accessed on 25 March 2016. 8 Richard Hare broadly accepts the empiricist view of facts that excluded moral facts in any unetiolated sense. He argues that emotivism went wrong by connecting the meaning of moral language with its perlocutionary, rather than its illocutionary force. See Richard M. Hare, The Language of Morals, New York: Oxford University Press, 1952, pp. 112-14. Karl Popper, although appears to be contesting Hume’s argument on grounds of causality, nevertheless incorporates Hume’s Law in offering a logical analysis ‘‘that allows to explain certain psychological attitudes, better than the psychological analysis employed by Hume’’. See K. Popper, ‘‘what can logic do for philosophy?’’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 1948, pp. 141-150. Also see F. Jackson, ‘’Defining the autonomy of ethics’’. The Philosophical Review, 1971, 83, pp.88–96. 9 See M. Blake, ‘‘The gap between “is” and “should”, The Philosophical Review, 1964, 73(2), pp. 165–181. A. N. Prior, ‘‘The autonomy of ethics’’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1960, 38, pp.199–206. J. R. Searle, ‘‘How to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’’’, The Philosophical Review, 1964, 73, pp.43–58. Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 10 Thomas Baldwin, editor of Moore’s 1993 edition of Principia Ethica cautions that Moore’s thesis was more to ‘establish the distinctiveness’ of the content of ethical statements (i.e., ‘irreducibility’) and less about the debate on deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’(p. xviii). The later debate is more pronounced in the works of Hume.
irreducible. Moore explains such irreducibility through his inquiry of what is ‘good’. He distinguishes between two types of judgments: an ‘intrinsically good’ state of affairs (i.e., good in itself) and the state of affairs which is judged as ‘good in parts’. It would be a mistake to directly ‘reduce’ the later judgment into the former — i.e., something which is ‘good in parts’ cannot equate to something which is ‘intrinsically good’. Thus, Moore believes that the notion of ‘good’ cannot be by any manner of means explained to someone who does not already know it. Moore contends that ‘good’ is not completely analysable in terms of metaphysical or natural properties as he writes: “if I am asked what is ‘good’? My answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter.” He, however, clarifies that when a man confuses two natural objects with one another and defines one by the other (say pleased with pleasure) then it is not a naturalistic fallacy. But, if one confuses ‘good’ in the same sense with any other natural object (say pleasure or desire) then it constitutes a naturalistic fallacy because it is being made with regard to ‘good’ with a specific meaning. According to Moore, if ‘good’ is defined as something else, it would be impossible to prove that any other definition of ‘good’ is wrong or to deny any such definition. Thus, the normative and descriptive spheres must remain separated as any attempt to reduce an ethical concept amounts to the commission of the naturalistic fallacy.
What was apparently a benign inquiry into ‘morality’ and ‘goodness’ by Hume and Moore was later absorbed and expanded by the logical positivists of the 20th century, establishing it as a foundational dichotomy essentially prohibiting any attempt to deduce an evaluative conclusion from premises that are entirely nonevaluative. 11 Positivists emphasise the centrality of keeping values separated from facts in research and asserted that the ‘truth’ can only come from ‘facts’ – derived from experiment and observations; they depreciate ‘value’ originating from ethics, morals, religion, beliefs, feeling, etc., as mere ‘matters of taste’ as they are devoid of any rational or objective discussion. Thus, for the logical positivists, to ask whether the act of terrorism is wrong is problematic insofar the act is viewed through the lenses of non-cognitive ethical, moral or religious values as there is no experiment that could be performed to prove the truth of such a value-laden concept.
Over the years, several versions of this positivist and logical empiricists foundational dichotomy proliferated which include: ‘is’ vis-à-vis ‘ought’, ‘matter of fact’ vis-à-vis ‘relations of ideas’, ‘synthetic’ vis-à-vis ‘analytic’,12 ‘apprising’ verses
11 Positivist and ‘empiricist’ like Auguste Comte, John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume all held the
view that genuine knowledge of the external world must be grounded in experience and observation. See A. Comte, ‘‘The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte’’, H. Martineau (trans). 3 vols. London: George Bell & Sons, 1896; Gorton (op. cit.); Michel Bourdeau, ‘‘Auguste Comte’’, available at http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2014/entries/comte/, accessed on 25 March 2016. B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Fontana Press, 1985, p. 122. J. Tullberg and S. Birgitta, ‘’Facts and Values, A Critique of the Naturalistic Fallacy Thesis’’, Politics and the Life Sciences. 2001, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.165-174. And Gillian Russell, ‘‘In defence of Hume’s law’’ In Charles R. Pigden, (ed.), Hume on Is and Ought, Great Britain: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010, pp. 151-160. 12 Synthetic propositions are dependent upon experience for their validation; they are “empirical” or “a pos-
‘characterising’ value judgments,13 etc. While each of these dualisms has its unique
logic and distinctiveness, they all broadly contribute to the same notion and the
origin of knowledge that drew attention of many philosophers. For example, Willard
Van Orman Quine, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century,
rejects the synthetic-analytic distinction terming it as one of the ‘two dogmas’ of
empiricism14 (other being reductionism) while Hilary Putnam, in his book, Collapse
of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays convincingly refutes such dichotomous
assumption calling for ‘pragmatic pluralism’. Taking a more radical view, Leonard
Piekoff calls to eliminate the ‘malignant growth’ of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy.15
Thus, the contention that no ethical or evaluative conclusions whatsoever may be
validly derived from any set of purely factual premises was not left unchallenged
raising the question whether we can really separate value from the facts.
3. Can Values be Separated from Facts?
There are two main arguments that run against the notion of keeping values separated from facts. First, the dichotomous positioning of fact and value is regarded as an ‘‘anti-intellectual device’’ as it shields values from rational inquiry. Indeed, if the prescriptive “ought” is separated from the factual “is”, an intellectual analysis of the real world is by definition without normative value. Viewed this way, philosophical dualism works not only as a ‘‘discussion-stopper’’ but also ‘‘thought stopper’’ as one can easily refuse/withdraw from a debate by pointing that: ‘that’s a value judgment!’ Indeed the pattern of argument reflects that values are not just a statement about something in the world but also about one’s own relation to it. Such a personal relationship may not be open for much critique or general discussion and often becomes a position to defend or acknowledge. Thus, when one run out of logic, value is arguably invoked to save and end the discussion with an air of parity rather than defeat. Adding to such logic, the inherent indivisibility and the absence of a clear separation between beliefs within society and ideas within science that makes separating values from the facts more challenging as opined by many philosophers.
teriori” (i.e., ice floats on water) while the analytical proposition are validated merely by an analysis of the
meaning of its constituent concepts. (i.e., man is a rational animal). Kant’s distinction is derived from the 16th Century Aristotelian distinction between the logic of truth and logic of probability. See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, The Cambridge edition of the work of Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Trsns and eds), Cambridge University Press, ([1781]1998), p.4. 13 See Putnam, (op. cit. pp.11-23), for the distinction between Immanuel Kant and David Hume’s perspective. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science: Problem in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, New York: Harcolrt, Brace & World, 1961. And Bhaskar Roy, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of Contemporary Human Science, 4th Ed, New York: Routledge 2015, p.77 and note 88 for a critique of Nagel’s perspective. 14 W. V. Quine, ‘‘Main Trends in Recent Philosophy: Two Dogmas of Empiricism’’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 January 1951, pp. 20-43. 1 5 See L. Peikoff, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy; available at, https://campus.aynrand.org/ works/1967/01/01/the-analytic-synthetic-dichotomy/page1/, accessed on 25 March 2016.
Second, the positivists’ claim of ‘true knowledge’ coming only from ‘observable facts’ itself is problematic as it is not directly confirmable by the same criteria. Indeed, there is no observable test to which we could subject positivists’ claim that only the ‘synthetic statements’ (i.e., statements based on our sensory, data and experience) counts. A simple example, could amplify. In science, until the discovery of the concept of ‘mass’ and the concept of ‘weight’ as distinctly different physical properties, both were regarded as the same, hence there was only one ‘fact’ surrounding this issue. The first scientist who observed that a spring scale does not yield the same result as balance scale16 must have exclaimed: ‘it ought not to be like this!’ It resulted in creating two different concepts one that ties ‘mass’ (m) with inertial properties17 and ‘weight’ (w) with the gravitational force18 that every object must counter when holding it off the floor in a particular place. Until the discovery of such distinctions and the underlying conceptual theories, both were regarded as the same. Indeed, every new invention of scientific laws, challenges existing belief and are associated with such exclamation. Thus, scientific claim of knowledge rely on principles of ‘beliefjustification’ and ‘theory choice’ that are themselves normative. The centrality of such ‘background assumptions’ implies that the value judgments are no less testable than factual judgments are. The ‘ought’ therefore, is inherent in natural science and it comes to our attention only when we discover that the relations between things are not now or not yet what one thinks they ought to be. Therefore, the only thing that really exists is not the ‘matter of fact’ but the ‘relations of ideas’.
Arguably, such a view makes the fact/value dichotomy a supreme tool for controlling our concept – particularly in the context of social science. ‘Concept control’ implies that our thoughts and arguments to frame an (controversial) issue are channelled to use selective categories, terms, indicators and definitions. To illustrate, when we are given a choice like ‘‘either you are with us or with them’’ we embark on an effort to ‘define’, ‘categorise’ and ‘term’ the physical world in an effort to reduce it into ‘us’ and ‘them’ through observables. Such a reductionist view and exercise is often stained and gilded by our own perceptions and values that are not confirmable by the same empirical testing. Our quest to ‘empirically’ shape what it takes to be one of ‘us’ as opposed to one of ‘them’ apparently disregards the possibility that there could be a place in between. Thus, a dichotomous positing runs counterintuitive to the rationalintellectual quest for knowledge as it allows the people or societies with power to frame and define the agenda to eventually decide the outcome of the debate and impose what is to be accepted as true or false. In other words, as Piekoff succinctly puts: ‘‘it penalises knowledge for being knowledge’’ restricting our view of the world
16 The spring scale measures the force of gravity (weight) not mass; as such it needs to be calibrated on-site
and certified on that basis, while a balance scale measures mass by balancing the scale against a known (standardized) mass that remains constant even if the scale is moved from equator to pole. 17 Inertial properties implies the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. Hence the formula F (force) = m (mass) X a (acceleration). In other words m (mass) = F/a. 18 The size of gravitational force depends on the ‘mass’ of the object being pulled by the earth and the size of this force is the ‘weight’ (W) of the object. To standardize weights, scales are always calibrated to read the weight an object would have at a nominal standard gravity of 9.80665 m/s2 (approx. 32.174 ft/s2).
in binary terms instead of its many colours and corresponding shades.19 This raises the question as to how credible is philosophical dualism and is the ‘is’ of science truly separate from the ‘ought’ of ethics?
Viewed differently, the fact /value dichotomy may not be an omnipresent and
all important gulf, but simply an inflated concept, a mistaken category. The ability of
connecting ‘relations of ideas’ (i.e., value) with the ‘matter of facts’ (i.e., fact) parallels
the thought of being able to see the ‘forest’ and the ‘trees’ at the same time and
not missing one for the other. Such a view, defies Hume’s contention that ‘relations
of ideas’ and ‘matter of facts’ are mutually exclusive. However, it makes sense if we
consider both natural and social sciences as a relation-tracing activity of concepts.
Naturally, then one should be able to view natural sciences as the application of
‘ought’ – the realisation of value and not as a quest for facts. Viewed this way, the
fact/value dichotomy collapses and both natural science and social science can be
conceived as tracing the conceptual relations.
4. The ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’ Concepts
Another prominent challenge to the fact/value dichotomy — particularly in the context of social science, is invoked by the oft-cited ‘thick’ ethical concepts — i.e., the concepts that combine both descriptive and evaluative aspects.20 ‘Thick’ concepts (such as courage, frugality, promise, brutality etc.) are ‘world guided’ and their application is determined by what the world is like; in contrast, the ‘thin’ concepts (such as good, right, etc.) have more of a purely action-guiding role.21 Indeed, as Hume contends, the ‘matter of fact’ of any action resides within one’s own feelings and not in the act or its reasons. The self-reflection of the passions, motives, violations and thoughts generated by the act ‘stains and gilds’ the thick ethical concepts. As Hume explains it in his Treatise, Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reasons22:
“Take any action allowed to be vicious willful murder for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, violations and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in that case. The vice
19 Leonard Piekoff, op. cit. p. 24. 20 Bernard Williams is often credited for distinguishing the ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ ethical concepts. See B. Williams,
op. cit, pp.140-42 and 150-52. However, others find that there isn’t much distinction to be drawn except that some ethical concept could be ‘maximally-thin’ while the other’ not-maximally-thin’. See Michael Smith, “On the Nature and Significance of the Distinction between Thick and Thin Ethical Concepts” In Simon Kirchin (ed.), Thick Concepts, Oxford Scholarship Online, 2013, chapter 6. Also see S. Hope, C. Johnston, A. Millar, D. Parfit, B. Saunders, D. Smith and A. Thomas, ‘‘There are no thin concepts’’, available at https://www.open. ac.uk/Arts/philosophy/docs/thin%20concepts7-10.pdf/, accessed on 15 April 2016. 21Other examples of ‘thick’ ethical concepts include discretion, caution, industry, assiduity, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment, treachery, promise, coward, lie, gratitude, lewd, perverted, rude, glorious, graceful, and many more while the ‘thin’ ethical concepts include good, right, ought etc. 22 David Hume, ‘‘The Philosophical Work by David Hume,’’ Edinburgh, Adam Blake and William Tait, 1826, p. 235 (bold added)
entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is the matter of fact; but it is the object of your feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object.”
The intuitive contrast between the two types of concepts lies in the suggestion that ‘thick’ concepts somehow hold together both evaluative and non-evaluative description while the ‘thin’ concepts are more purely evaluative. Table 1 attempts to dissect three such thick concepts into their respective evaluative and descriptive parts. In the descriptive part, one tends to record the observable features/acts/indicators say X, Y, and Z that may define the concept and the second part (evaluative) calls for a judgment of the moral status attached to the X, Y, and Z.
Putnam demonstrates that the descriptive and evaluative aspects of “courage” (or any other similar normative concepts) are inseparable.23 For example, calling someone ‘courageous’ does not only mean that s/he is ‘unusually willing to face danger’ but also involves part of the concept of courage that the impending danger s/he is willing to undertake is worth the cause. How we define what is ‘worth’ taking a risk and perform a courageous act is attached to the moral judgment. For example, if someone rushes into a burning building to rescue one’s own much treasured iPhone as opposed to rescuing a child who is trapped inside, s/he may ‘descriptively’ qualify as a person ‘unusually willing to face danger’ but fails to meet the ‘evaluative’ dimension of being called as ‘courageous’. It implies that there is no value-neutral way to identify what all courageous acts or persons have in common. The degree of ‘thickness’ depends on the extent of evaluative part defining the concept. But crucially all ‘thick’ concepts need to hold together both evaluative and non-evaluative description. This is particularly relevant in social science.
23 See Hilary Putnam , op. cit., pp.37-39.
7. Concept of Terrorism: Philosophical, Evaluative and Descriptive Aspects
The 9/11 attacks and its aftermath has put terrorism firmly on the philosophical agenda like many other fields of social science. However, the concept remains highly contested and there is no universally agreed definition of terrorism. Swedish Philosopher Per Roald Bauhn provides one of the earliest book-length philosophical study on terrorism. He defines terrorism as the performance of ‘‘violent acts, directed against one or more persons, intended by the performing agent to intimidate one or more persons and thereby to bring about one or more of the agent’s political goals.’’34 Two other oft-cited philosophers on this issue are C.A.J. Coady and Igor Primoratz. Coady views terrorism as a ‘tactic’ and defines it as “intentional targeting of non-combatants with lethal or severe violence … meant to produce political results via the creation of fear.”35 Primoratz's definition, in addition, distinguishes between the immediate victim of terrorist act and the ultimate objective, as he defines terrorism as: “the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating some other people into a course of action they otherwise would not take.”36 In a study of 109 definitions of terrorism, Schmid and Jongman identify 22 common elements, of which the most frequently presented were ‘violence’, ‘force’, ‘political’, ‘fear’, and ‘threat’.37 Notwithstanding its numerous definitions, the central concordant chord of defining terrorism seems to be its actor (i.e., state and non-state actors), targets (i.e., non
34 Per Bauhn, Ethical Aspects of Political Terrorism: The Sacrificing of the Innocent, Lund: Lund University Press,
1989, p. 89. 35 See C. A. J. Coady, “Terrorism”, in Becker, Lawrence C., and Becker, Charlotte B., (eds)., Encyclopaedia of Ethics, 2nd edn., New York and London: Routledge, Volume. 3, 2001. Also see C. A. J. Coady, ‘‘The Morality of Terrorism’’, Philosophy, Vol. 60, No. 231 January, 1985, pp. 47-69 36 See Primoratz Igor, Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013, p.24. Primoratz’s work on terrorism also includes “The Morality of Terrorism”, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 1997, 14, pp.221– 33. (ed.), Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. “Terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Case Study in Applied Ethics”, Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 2006, 55, pp.27–48 and, “Can the Bombing Be Morally Justified?” in Igor Primoratz (ed.), Terror from the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II, New York: Berghahn Books, 2010, pp.113–33. 37 The frequency of these terms appearing in observed definitions were between 47 – 84 percent. See A. P Schmid and A. Jongman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature, London: Transaction Publishers, 1988, pp.5-8.
combatants/innocent people), and focus on using violence to intimidate some other people to achieve a political objective. Insofar as the terrorism is understood in such terms, both the evaluative and descriptive aspects of the concept become relevant and need to hold together to shape its meaning as eluded before.
The evaluative and descriptive meanings of terrorism have shifted considerably, particularly after the 9/11 attack leading to an insurmountable challenge to arrive at a globally accepted definition. The first fundamental shift is the description of who should be regarded as terrorists. While the philosophers are silent on this, many working definitions of terrorism limit it as an act carried out only by non-state actors. For example, Title 22 of the United States (US) Code, Section 2656f (d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” Such a claim that non-state actors are the only perpetrators invoke the idea that terrorism is “limited to acts of the powerless” and that our purpose of such limited and narrow framing of terrorism is to “justify our own response.”38 The fact that state actors can also be guilty of waging in all sorts of intimidations and violence, such as war, torture, invasion, deliberate civilian casualties, political killing and abduction of people who do not deserve to be killed, abducted, mimed or tortured runs counterintuitive to such framing and restricts our ability to create a shared meaning and reasoning of terrorism.
Highlighting the blurring distinctions between ‘modern wars’ and any act of terrorism, Trotsky argues that ‘‘we must either accept terrorism as a legitimate method of struggle in certain circumstances or reject as morally impermissible all wars, all revolutions and indeed every form of violence.’’39 Drawing parallel with the concept of ‘all-out war’ by state-actors, Simon Keller, suggests that it would be disingenuous to accept the argument that only terrorism deserves condemnations and not war. Keller, goes further in questioning that: ‘‘is there any good reason to think that all-out war is something justified and terrorism is not?’’40 Outlining the ‘Morality of Terrorism’, Coady argues that, insofar terrorism is seen as a tactic for the pursuit of political ends, its moral assessment should also be in light of that. Analysing the justificatory endeavour by the state and non-state actors on the morality of violence, Coady reports that many condemnations of terrorism are inconsistent, hypocritical as they ‘‘insist on applying one kind of morality to the state’s use of violence in war (either international or civil or anti-insurgency) and another kind altogether to the use of violence by the nonstate actors.’’ According to Coady, the Allied area bombing in German cities during the WWII and the US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki directed against the non-combatant to subdue the moral of the enemy could only be ‘‘justified’’ in
38 Inquiring whether terrorism is moral or not, Theodore makes a wider point by asking a mirror question
‘‘is our response to terrorism moral?’’ See Theodore P. Seto, The Morality of Terrorism, available at: http:// digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol35/iss4/4/, accessed on 14 June 2016. 39 See Igor Primoratz, ‘‘The Mortality of Terrorism’’, p.226. 40Simon Keller, ‘‘On what is War on Terror’’; in Timothy Shanahan (ed.), Philosophy 9/11 Thinking About the War on Terrorism, USA: Carus, 2005, pp. 53-69.
utilitarian term but remains plainly immoral from an internal perspective of morality of violence.41 It thus appears that having two different moral standard is one of the main barriers to frame ‘‘one man’s terrorist as everyman’s terrorist.’’ Such double standard contributes to the consequentialists’ justifications for terrorist acts.
The evaluative aspects of the concept of terrorism are also tainted by coupling it with war parading and religion corrupting the sensitivity and understanding of the society strengthening the consequentialist’s arguments for terrorism. I illustrate this claim of how the sensitivity of arriving at a shared meaning of terrorism has been corrupted through three examples:
First, by aligning a heinous act of transnational violence in the form of 9/11 attacks with ‘war’ and its perpetrators with the religion of Islam, the US opted to respond to it within a war paradigm and attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, the US Attorney General John Ashcroft stated: ‘‘Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die.’’42 This presents a clear example of defining the evaluative aspect and corrupting the sensitivity attached to the act by providing a framework to define the society in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ through the prism of religion. Such characterisation is not only immoral, but also counterproductive as most of the Muslims while condemn September 11 terrorists’ actions, also resent demonisation of their religion — a position that is in between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ narrative.43 More so, it has also influenced the people or societies who have the power to define the terms.
The second example is from Paul Rogers’s recent book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins. In the very first page of the book, Rogers gives a graphic illustration of the consequence of responding to terrorism through ‘war paradigm’, citing the reporting of an embedded American journalist with the US 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers were responding to an ambush near the river Tigris in Samarra that resulted death of several Iraqi rebels. What followed next with the dead insurgents was most dreadful, as the embedded American journalist reports:44
‘‘….five other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division scrambled down, pulled two of the insurgents’ bodies from the reed and dragged them through the mud.
41 According to Coady, the ‘utilitarian’ logic is enshrined in justifying and assessing the use of violence solely
in terms of its efficiency in contributing to the achievement of the ends’ while the ‘internal’ perspective
encompasses the justification and assessment of the use of violence in terms of morally appropriate
targets, proportionality and the means used for the act of violence, op. cit, p.56. 42 See Shannon Jones, ‘‘US attorney general invokes God in “war on terrorism”’’, available at, http://www.
wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/ashc-m15.html/, accessed on 15 September 2016. One needs to take into
account that Ashcroft was talking at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), representing 1,400 Christian
broadcasters in Nashville, Tennessee. However, associating terrorism with Islam has been in rife in the US
culminating in several declarations by the Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.
43 Theodore, op. cit. p.1261. 44 Paul Rogers, Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins, London: IB Tauris, 2016, pp.1-2. ‘Strap those motherf----s to the hood like a deer,’ said Staff Sgt. James Robinson, 25, of Hughes,Ark.
The soldiers heaved the two bodies onto the hood of a Humvee and tied them down with a cord. The dead insurgents’ leg and arms flapped in the air as the Humvee rumpled along.
Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers.’’
Such is the consequence of framing and responding to terrorism through the war paradigm. It can stain even the best trained soldiers contributing in re-generating hate, fear and violence corrupting the sensitivity of the society making the ‘winning of hearts and minds’ impossible. The snowball effect of such acts unleashes the worst of human nature reaching an irreconcilable position not just for those Iraqi families who ‘‘watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers’’ but also in many societies that are exposed to similar acts of killing, intimidation and torture in the name of war on terror.
The third example relates to the transcending effects of such corrupted sensitivity by examining the moral dimension of torture that re-emerged as "lifesaving instrument” in the fight against terrorism45 and has been increasingly practiced by the law-enforcing agencies of many state actors following the 9/11. Citing national security interests, many states and intergovernmental institutions have suggested an override of human rights protections, including the prohibition against torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and punishment may be warranted. Mathias Thaler outlines that incorporating torture as a necessary tool to gather intelligence shares familiar logics such as: (1) the lives of a large number of innocent civilians are in danger; (2) the catastrophe is imminent, therefore time is of the essence and (3) a terrorist has been captured who holds information that could prevent the catastrophe to happen. The “ticking time bomb” exception is put forward as a justification for the use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in the interrogation of terrorist suspects. Thaler argues that if we accept that the reasoning of ‘world-guided concepts’ is a social activity at the global scale, whose limits are bounded up with the customs and practices of the community of states practicing liberal democracy, then torture as a tool to fight against terrorism ‘‘leads to the disintegration of the very culture that forms the basis of liberal democracy.’’46
In sum, these examples amplify how the descriptive and evaluative aspects of terrorism are tainted, arming the consequentialists’ argument to find justifications.
45 See Mathias Thaler, ‘‘A pragmatists defence of the ban on torture: From moral absolutes to constitutive
rules of reasoning’’, Political Studies, Vol 64, Issue 3, October 2016, pp. 765-781. Also see ‘Terrorism, counterterrorism and torture, international law in the fight against terrorism’’ available at http://redress. org/downloads/publications/TerrorismReport.pdf/, accessed on 22 June 2016. 46 Ibid, p. 780.
Indeed, if our preferred normative ethical theory is consequentialism – i.e., the goal
is morally important enough, as such any method of achieving it is acceptable, we
can always find some utilitarian justification of terrorism. Indeed, one can only find
the justification of John Ashcroft’s statement at the NRB conventions, Staff Sgt.
James Robinson’s act in Iraq, and the increasing practice of torture in recent time
as illustrated in the three examples above in utilitarian terms, claiming to achieve a
higher ‘moral goal’ of safeguarding the world in general and the US in particular. Yet,
the commission of all these three acts taints evaluative aspects of terrorism, corrupts
our value system and limits our attempts to create a shared meaning and reasoning
against terrorism. Such a departure from the liberal values contributes towards the
view of seeing terrorism as a necessary evil for some, being used as a tool to fulfil
hegemonic desire, regime change/ security, revenge, etc. This raises the fundamental
question as to what ethical premise should guide us in framing the concept of
terrorism and how can we refrain from corrupting our sensitivity? How can we create
and shape the ‘meanings’ of terrorism from a ground that is ethically sound and has
a global appeal? In other words, how do we frame one man’s terrorist as everyman’s
terrorist?
8. Concluding Remarks
The consequentialist’s position on terrorism is often contrasted with deontological ethical theories —the normative position where the judgement of morality, of an action is based on the action’s adherence to rules. Such an approach entails two mutually inclusive philosophical underpinning relating to the ‘act’ of terrorism and the ‘nature of rules’ to govern that act. First, it recognises the centrality of the ‘action’ and not the actors and his/her identity. Rejecting the consequentialist’s argument, this approach holds the view that some actions are right because they are ‘intrinsically good’ while others are wrong, some are obligatory while the others are prohibited.47 It requires us to consider that the ‘highest good’ must be both ‘good in itself’ and ‘good without qualification’ because ‘good’ consequences could arise by accident from an action that was motivated by a desire to cause harm, while bad consequences could arise from an action that was well-motivated. Different United Nations (UN) documents reflects a deontological approach in framing the concept of terrorism as it rejects terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations by all means” committed by “whomever, wherever and for whatever reasons”.48 Contrasting the consequentialists’ arguments, these documents condemn all acts of terrorism and incitement to commit a terrorist act “irrespective of their motivation, whenever and by whomsoever committed” and
47 Deontology refers to those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required,
forbidden, or permitted. Immanuel Kant’s moral theory is regarded central to the deontological ethics. See for details, ‘‘Deontological Ethics’’, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethicsdeontological/#DeoTheMet, accessed on 21 June 2016. 48 See ‘‘Global Counter Terrorism Strategy’’ available at, https://www.un.org/counterterrorism/ctitf/en/unglobal-counter-terrorism-strategy/, accessed 15 June 2016. Also see ‘‘UN Resolution 1624’’ available at, http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/1624/, accessed on 15 June 2016.
set out several conventions, resolutions and strategies to counter terrorism.49 These instruments provide important guidelines for states to set up national legislations criminalising terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
The second philosophical underpinning relates to the nature of rules to govern the act of terrorism. The episteme of social rules is categorised under ‘regulative’ and ‘constitutive’ – the latter being more pronounced in the context of thick ethical concepts like terrorism.50 Regulative rules regulate antecedently or independently from the existing forms of behavior. It tells us “Do X” or “If Y do X”. Constitutive rules, on the other hand constitute and also regulate an activity, the existence of which is logically dependent on the pre-existent rules. In other words, constitutive rules do not merely regulate, but also define and /or create (the possibility of ) new institutional forms of behaviour. For example, the rules of football do not merely regulate playing football, but also create the very possibility of playing such games. Thus, the rules for ‘goal’, ‘offside’, ‘corner’ can only be explained in terms of the game of football. In short, constitutive rules take the form of ‘X counts as Y under circumstances C’. The existence of constitutive rules is logically dependent on the circumstances that is conditioned by pre-existent rules. Thus, if a state is indifferent to the issues of human rights and lacks having or enforcing such rules, it will be difficult for such state to constitute and enforce counter terrorism rules effectively. Just as the rules for an ‘offside’, ‘goal’, ‘corner kick’ exist and can be enforced only in the context of the game of football, criminalising terrorism requires a similar overarching ‘rules of the game’ that not only criminalise terrorism but also respect human rights and ensure human security to achieve legitimacy for its implementations. It short, for terrorism to be considered as morally unacceptable requires us (i) to consider terrorism as wrong in itself, because of what it is, rather than only because (and insofar as) its consequences are bad, and (ii) relying more on constitutive rules that emerges from the existing laws and societal norms rather than borrowing regulative rules imposed from the above. Such a lofty approach can be achieved through a process as depicted in Table 2. It starts with our efforts in creating a shared meaning of terrorism by decoupling as well as associating the act of terrorism with certain paradigms as discussed below.
49 There are twelve main counter terrorism conventions, and several Security council resolutions. For details
of UN counter terrorism efforts, see, https://www.un.org/counterterrorism/ctitf/en/uncct/, accessed on 21 June 2016. 50 The philosophical distinction between ‘regulative’ and ‘constitutive’ rules first gained popularity through the work of John R. Searle. However, several others such as Jaap Hage and Christopher Cherry challenges such distinctions. The aim in this paper is not to delve into the debate of their differences but to point out what value premises should guide the construction of rules in the context of terrorism. See Christopher Cherry, ‘‘Regulative Rules and Constitutive Rules’’, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 93 Oct., 1973, pp. 301-315. Jaap Hage, ‘‘Why regulating rules are constitutive rules’’, available at, https://www.academia. edu/4797454/WHY_REGULATIVE_RULES_ARE_CONSTITUTIVE_RULES/, accessed on 26 June 2016.
Decoupling terrorism from war paradigm. The obvious starting point is to decouple the concept of terrorism from the war paradigm and view it through the prism of ‘crime’. Such realignment implies that governments are to focus more on the administrative, police, psychological resources and the use of judicial systems as a whole to bring terrorists to justice instead of attempting to kill/ eliminate/destroy them through ‘all-out war’, 'drone attacks', ‘cross- fire’, ‘encounter’, etc. It is important that the process of criminalising terrorism should be through a mix of regulative and constitutive rules– the latter being more appropriate in the context of terrorism as discussed above. Such measures and strategies can be both deterrent and punitive serving several objectives. First, it amends our vision to separate the terrorist acts from acts of war and restricts our response remaining within the crime paradigm instead of war/fear paradigm. German response to the terrorist attacks amplifies this line of approach. Responding to the terrorist incidences in July 2016, the German Chancellor rejected the fear paradigm calling: “fear cannot be a counsel for political action”. 51 Second, it allows us to view terrorism as a problem arising out of interaction
51 Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the Cristian Social Union (the Bavarian sister party of Germany’s governing
Christian Democrats) denied any links between terrorism and immigration policies and calling it an issue of restoring law and order. See ‘‘Europe’s response to the Paris attacks is different this time’’, The Economists, 14 November 2016, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21678514-je-suis-charlie-wasabout-free-speech-time-issue-migrants-europe-sees-paris-attacks/, accessed on 24 April 2016. Also See Connolly Kate, ‘‘Angela Merkel defends Germany’s refugee policy after attacks’’, The Guardian , 28 July 2016, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/merkel-rejects-calls-to-change-germanysrefugee-policy-after-attacks/ , accessed on 29 July 2016.
between and amongst state(s) and societies. This calls for a greater reflection of how the societies of states interact with each other and how the state agency treats and regards the sub-national social agencies. Such reflections allow us to see it as an issue of distributing justice, both between and within the states restricting its use as a political tool to remain in power, or as a geopolitical instrument aimed at shifting from the strategy of deterrence to preemption. Third, the shift from war paradigm to crime paradigm and the corresponding anchoring on liberal democratic values also enables us to move away from morally controversial strategies and practices both at home and abroad. Externally, it saves us from turning the entire world into a potential battlefield, subverting notions of territorial sovereignty of other states through drone strikes, surgical strikes, etc., and eliminating legal options of neutrality in situations of armed conflict. Domestically, it drains out justifications for controversial practices like torture, abduction, political assassination, cross fire, etc., that undermine the core values of liberal democracy. All these in turn create the space for building a shared meaning of terrorism that is distinctly different from the violence generated in war.
Decoupling terrorism from religion. Historically, religion has been regarded as a catalyst behind extreme fundamentalism in general and the current practice of terrorism in particular. Yet religion is, at best, one element of the brew of politics, culture, economic alienation, strategic warfare and psychology that is exploited in the production of violence through terrorist acts. Aerial Gluckich a theologian at the Georgetown University, contends that the belief in the quarter that “certain religion teaches hatred” is a myth; instead “(terrorism) violence comes from a kind of love or desire for love, for one’s own group and a willingness to do whatever it takes to obtain it.” 52 Thus, decoupling of religion from terrorism is essential to drain out any value based justifications that can act as an accelerant to terrorism. This would require treating and criminalising violence generated with religious justification in line with all sorts of other violence. Second, the ‘speech act’ by the leaders, opinion holders as well as the ‘sensitisation act’ by the media outlets need to consciously reinforce the fact that terrorism has no religion. Instead, the act (and not the actor’s identity or religion) may be contrasted against the shared values and belief of the society as a whole. This allows us to frame and reason the meaning of terrorism based on mutually shared values and practices of the society and society of states that in turn feeds the evaluative aspects of the concept. The fact that an act of terrorism (carried out either by state or non-state actor) kills, maims or destroys the lives or properties of innocent people violates the fundamental human rights and makes us to consider terrorism as wrong in itself — irrespective of any religious explanation. Creating a ‘global meaning’ of terrorism requires knowledge production through social inquiries and researches that are essentially ‘value-free’— particularly distancing it from religious misinterpretations and associating it as a violation of liberal values. Such pragmatic practice can generate appropriate constitutive rules that emerge from, and are sustained by a web of social practices making, one man’s terrorist as everyman’s terrorist.
52 See Aerial Gluckich, Dying for Heaven: Holy Pleasure and Suicide Bombers—Why the Best Qualities of Religion
Are Also Its Most Dangerous, U.S.A.: Harper Collins, 2009, pp. 11-41. Moral upgrade of war. War as an organised violence provides most justificatory reasoning for the consequentialist’s argument for terrorism as eluded before. Apart from decoupling terrorism from war paradigm, there is also a need for a moral upgrade of war and its process of producing violence to distance it from shrouding the meaning of terrorism. Justification of war in international law is derived from two distinct moral prisms: Jus ad bellum defines the legitimate reasons to engage in war and Jus in bello defines the conduct in war. The moral upgrade of war needs to happen at both levels. Indeed the process of decision making on when to wage war has been corrupted in many ways in recent times. We need to put in place stringent process establishing that the war (in any form or manner) is only waged as the last resort. When the production of violence in war is associated to ‘ensuring energy security’, ‘hegemonic desire’, ‘regime change’, 'occupation', etc.,53 it loses the higher moral ground and legitimacy that can subsequently corrupt our sensitivity towards terrorism. Thus, a morally upgraded decision to wage war need to pass not only the test of ‘maximising good and minimising evil’, but also the critical thresholds of being the ‘last resort’ – having demonstratively tried all other means. Second, the conduct in war (i.e., Jus in bello) in general and the targeting in particular also needs a moral upgrade. A morally decisive discontinuity between war and terrorism lies in the fact that war is about attacking legitimate targets (such as enemy’s armed forces, equipment, leadership) while terrorism involves illegitimate targets and innocent people. Maintaining such distinctions, including non-transgression of absolute prohibitions (often articulated as war crimes) in the conduct of war can be an absolute necessity in reaffirming the moral discontinuity between the two. Such a distinction in the conduct of war can help us to frame the meaning of terrorism independent of war. Indeed, the provisions of precision attack, banning the use of anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions, etc., to avert civilian casualties are important regulative tools that strengthens Jus in bello and provide opportunities for the moral upgrading of war. However, many states have not become parties to such international efforts for the moral upgrading of warfare feeding to the consequentialist arguments of terrorism.54
Accountability of state and non-state actors with equal spirit and force. The most fundamental premise of any moral theory is that the moral principles should be neutrally applied. Achieving a global meaning of terrorism, thus require viewing the act of terrorism performed by the state and non-state actors through a similar prism. It requires establishing a cosmopolitan justice system that can effectively hold both state and non-state actors accountable irrespective of their power status in the international system. Indeed, such a provision of cosmopolitan justice can only be seen moral if it does not discriminate between the powerful and powerless actors and dispense justice based
53 For an analysis of US influence on EU and ASEAN in securing their participation in the global war on
terrorism see Anna Cornelia Beyer, ‘‘Hegemony and Power in the Global War on Terrorism’’, in E. Fels et al. (eds.), Power in the 21st Century, Global Power Shift, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag 2012, pp.27- 41. 54 For example the Convention on Cluster Munitions that entered into force on August 2010 has 119 states signatories, but 78 states including the US, Israel, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia have not yet signed the convention. See for details, http://www.clusterconvention.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/100-StatesParties-and-19-Signatories-3.pdf/ , accessed on 26 April 2016.
on the ‘act’. Conceptually, it requires us to move away from a world view that is anchored in Hobbesian pessimism that considers power is crucial, to the Grotian pragmatism of cooperation amongst the societies of states and finally reaching to the Kantian optimism that regards ideas and legal principles as vital in the international system.55 Our ability to conceive rules and establish institutions such as the Rome Statute, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity reflects our desire to move towards a Kantian world to achieve ‘perpetual peace’. Such efforts provide an opportunity to desigrate terrorism as a crime irrespective of actors, context and its normative roots. These efforts are viewed as the global movement towards greater accountability for atrocity and crimes and the establishment of a ruledbased international order. However, we find many powerful states, including the US and most recently Russian Federation that are opting out of a cosmopolitan legal framework such as ICC, making the project of delivering cosmopolitan justice daunting. 56
In sum, if meaning is peculiar to life and to the historical world, our focus
should be on the interpretive examination of the meaning to make sense of the social
world. To create a world guided meaning of a concept like terrorism, we need to strive
towards creating a condition where it is considered as wrong in itself — without any
qualifications or consequentialist justification. Our ability to strip terrorism from the
notion of war, fear, religion and instead viewing and treating it as ‘crime’, committed
not just by a non-state actor, but also state actors operating within or beyond their
territory is crucial to the creation of a universal meaning of terrorism. Establishing
such common ethos of reciprocity to the act of terrorism, regulated by the constitutive
rules would go a long way towards achieving a meaning of terrorism that is truly
‘world guided’, resulting one man’s terrorist to be regarded as everyman’s terrorist.