Introduction: Ethics, Experience, and War

What would it mean to put the ethics of war in dialogue with the experience of war? The special section that follows explores this question. Featuring contributions from scholars across a range of disciplinary and academic backgrounds, it asks what we, as scholars of ethics and international affairs, stand to learn about the ethics of war by engaging with the experience of war. What can those who have direct personal experience of armed conflict—combatants and noncombatants alike—teach ethics of war scholars about the moral issues raised by war that we might otherwise miss or fail to appreciate? And to what degree does what they have to teach us comport with, depart from, or perhaps even challenge the standard just war framework scholars employ to talk about the ethics of war? This short introductory essay frames this special section by introducing the questions it tackles and the essays that comprise it.