Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
5 - ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
Violence, being instrumental by nature, is rational to the extent that it is effective in reaching the end that must justify it.
(Hannah Arendt 1970, p. 79)Introduction
Attempts to morally justify the IRA's armed struggle in terms of Just War Theory encounter a number of serious problems. It does not follow, of course, that the IRA's armed struggle was morally unjustified, because it might be morally justified according to the standards of other moral theories. Some scholars have concluded that if terrorist campaigns such as the IRA's can be morally justified at all, it will be in terms of their overall beneficial consequences. It is therefore worthwhile to examine the morality of terrorism in general and of the IRA's armed struggle in particular, in relation to consequentialist moral considerations. An adequate exposition and evaluation of consequentialism itself is beyond the scope of this chapter. My aim is more modest, namely, to understand how consequentialist considerations could be used to morally justify at least some terrorist acts, and then to determine whether any of the IRA's acts of terrorism should be judged as among those so justified. The prospects for such a defence, I will argue, are slim.
Consequentialism
Consequentialism is the moral theory that maintains that the moral status of any action is solely a function of the net positive and negative consequences of that action.
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- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008