This is made

philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warberton.

Philosophy bites is available at

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philosophy bites dot com.

Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

In 1994, most of the world stood by as up to a million tutsis were massacred in Rwanda. A decade later there was a highly contentious

intervention elsewhere, the US-led invasion of Iraq. Historically most theories

about the just war have been rooted in the idea of the nation state.

For example, it's generally considered fair to go to war in self-defense if your nation is itself unjustifiably attacked.

But Cecile Tharb of Oxford University

believes we should develop a theory of war which is based not on the nation,

but on the rights of individuals. She calls this a cosmopolitan theory of the

just war.

Cessil Fabb, welcome to Plossei Bites. Good morning it's very nice to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on today is cosmopolitanism and

war. They're not obviously connected but let's take cosmopolitanism first. What is

cosmopolitanism? Well there are various kinds of cosmopolitanism but if we focus

on moral cosmopolitanism which is what interests me. Broadly speaking it is the views that

individuals are what matters and that all individuals wherever they are in the

world have rights to fundamental freedoms and the basic necessities of lives and also those rights impose duties on their state primarily but also on foreign actors

when their states are unable or unwilling to fulfill those duties.

...