I expect YouTube will have some good sources for us about terrorism and philosophy. Here’s my first bit unearthed, a 4min lecture from Dena Hurst that appears to be part of a longer ethics class.
The video gives a definition that, like Corlett’s, tries not to decide the moral issue beforehand: “Using violent acts with the intention to intimidate or coerce through fear.” On this definition, even Robin Hood could be considered a terrorist. Hurst then runs through several standard ethical theories to apply them to the issue, but unfortunately the length is so short that she pretty much just throws the positions out there without actually diving into how one might analyze them.
I hereby invite our bloggers to write posts on other videos with some more substantial discussion so we can work through this over the next week or two via comments on this blog. (And if you haven’t blogged for us but have some philosophy chops and might want to take a stab at it, go ahead and write the post and send it to us.)
-Mark Linsenmayer
someone might want to give this a spin: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/torture-and-human-dignity-audio