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How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence. By Virginia Held. Oxford University Press. 224pp, Pounds 23.99. ISBN 9780195329599. Published 15 May 2008.
When nonviolent politics has been exhausted, or shut off by governments in situations of profound injustice, is violence or even terrorism sometimes justified? This is the central issue animating Virginia Held's book. She answers with a qualified yes, while insisting that we must think about these things within the humane philosophical perspective of the "ethics of care" and with an eye constantly open for less costly alternatives.
Held believes that moral arguments about political violence have been compromised by treating terrorism as immoral by definition, making it impossible, she argues, to take the question of justification seriously. It prevents understanding of terrorists' motives and vitiates efforts to engage in dialogue with both the terrorists themselves and those they try to recruit. Since both are essential, Held believes, to more successful and humane practice by Western democracies, an innovative approach to definition is vital. Her most radical innovation is to...