You're listening to the partially examined life, episode 373, part two.

We've been talking about Michael Walzer's just and unjust wars.

And we had pretty thoroughly talked about chapter four.

Let's go to chapter five, anticipations.

We'll start us off with the idea which is already there in the legalist paradigm, which is that states can

defend themselves against imminent violence. And then he's going to say, well, what do you mean by

imminent?

Right?

So we got into this a little bit already, but is it just about responding at the last minute?

In real life, that's not actually very useful because war can seem unavoidable for protracted periods of time.

So the word imminent is too restrictive,

and then he's going to say,

let's look at this whole spectrum of,

from imminent responding at the last minute,

to the farthest point on the spectrum from, you know,

in anticipation of war.

And let's see where we ought to draw the line.

Yeah, he does not believe in this, again, 18th, 19th century idea.

Well, he thinks it's still very important today. The balance of power, which seems to be, like,

if you want to give a reason why Russia attacked Ukraine, which I've heard, Walls are talking just

two years ago on a podcast and saying it's just so easy to condemn

Russia based on this book.

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