Just War Theory: Ethics, History, and Shakespeare's Henry V
This paper examines just war theory from its ancient and medieval philosophical origins through its application — or conspicuous absence — during the Hundred Years' War. Drawing on Augustine's foundational principles, Saint Thomas Aquinas's formal criteria, and modern ethical frameworks, the paper traces how civilizations have attempted to impose moral boundaries on warfare. It then turns to the medieval European context, explaining why feudal politics made just war concepts largely irrelevant during the reigns of Henry IV, V, and VI. Finally, the paper analyzes Shakespeare's Henry V as an indirect meditation on honorable leadership and the personal character traits that parallel the ethical ideals embedded in just war theory.
- Introduction to Just War Theory: Defines just war and its ethical significance
- Historical and Philosophical Foundations: Augustine, Aquinas, and early just war principles
- Core Criteria of Just War: Seven formal criteria defining a morally justified war
- Challenges to Just War Morality: Consequentialist and intrinsicist objections to war ethics
- Medieval Warfare and the Hundred Years' War: Feudal politics and land disputes driving medieval conflict
- Shakespeare's Henry V and the Ethics of Leadership: Henry V as literary analogue for just war character
- Conclusion: Honor, Justice, and War: Shared values of honor in theory and Shakespeare
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper successfully bridges abstract philosophical theory with concrete historical and literary examples, grounding Aquinas's formal criteria in both medieval military history and Shakespearean drama.
- It maintains a clear argumentative thread — that just war theory is a product of specific cultural and political conditions — and tests that thread against a period (medieval Europe) when those conditions did not exist.
- The use of Shakespeare's Henry V as an indirect lens on just war values is an original analytical move that adds intellectual depth beyond a simple survey of the theory.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative philosophical analysis: it introduces a theoretical framework (just war criteria), then systematically evaluates a historical case against that framework, and finally reads a literary text through the same ethical lens. This layered approach — theory, history, literature — is an effective model for interdisciplinary argument construction.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by defining just war theory and tracing its origins from biblical times through Augustine and Aquinas. It then enumerates the core criteria before addressing opposing positions (consequentialism, intrinsicism). The argument shifts to medieval Europe to show why just war norms were absent during the Hundred Years' War, covering the feudal economy and the political origins of the conflict. The final section reads Shakespeare's Henry V as a character-based analogue to just war ethics, closing with a synthesis of honor, humility, and legitimate cause.
Introduction to Just War Theory
The idea of a "just war" is a genuine conundrum. How can one group of people consider it "right" or "just" to apply military force against another group? When can actions that create devastation, economic hardship, and the deaths of thousands be considered morally acceptable? In a civilized society, the concept of a just war has become the centerpiece of many discussions and has served as a restraint on the hawkish tendencies of nations that pride themselves on freedom and individual liberty. In order for a nation to engage in an activity that causes harm to another group, there must be a justifiable reason.
Just war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. Often the justification is rooted in either theoretical ethical arguments or in long-standing historical hostilities between peoples. The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying the engagement of war as well as the forms warfare takes. The historical aspect — sometimes called the "just war tradition" — addresses the accumulated body of rules and mutual agreements that have governed various wars across the ages. International conventions such as those established at Geneva and The Hague are collections of historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare. The Geneva Convention addressed how prisoners are to be treated and how military campaigns are to be directed toward military assets rather than civilian targets. Ethics play a tempering role in these standards, staking out a middle ground by which nations can wage war while still demonstrating respect for the human rights of others.
Historically, just war norms have typically evolved between similar enemies. When enemies differ greatly in religious beliefs, race, or language, war conventions have rarely been applied because the parties share no common ground on which to base mutual understanding. Nonetheless, modern philosophers have contested the selective application of these boundaries. If just war theory is founded on a universal concern for the well-being of all peoples, then the rules of war should apply equally to all — that is, just war theory should be universal (Mosely, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Historical and Philosophical Foundations
In some respects, the just war concept is as old as warfare itself. Early records of individual warriors include ideas of honor in the way soldiers treated their captives and conquered peoples. Even cultural depictions of gunslingers in the American West invoked codes of honor: a gunfighter would never "shoot someone in the back," demonstrating a code of conduct within the process of personal dispute. While the specifics of what is honorable differ across peoples, times, and places, the persistence of this argument demonstrates that human beings have long been concerned with the justice of their actions when they pick up a weapon or command a force with the purpose of delivering deadly force against another individual or group.
The idea of a just war has been discussed as far back as biblical times. When the children of Israel completed their exodus from Egypt and were about to enter the land they believed was their divine right, they were commanded to war against the existing peoples and take the land for themselves (Holy Bible, Joshua, chapter 1). Moving into the early centuries of the Common Era, Augustine was among the first to confront the conundrum of justifying war when those waging it had declared their allegiance to Christianity. Living in Rome after Constantine's Edict of Milan declared the empire Christian, Augustine faced the pressing problem of justifying Rome's ongoing military conquests. He was among the first to clearly articulate a basis for measuring the justice of a war. The worthy causes he identified include: preservation of the well-being of the state; punishment of neighboring nations that refused to make amends for wrongs committed by their subjects; restoration of what had been taken unjustly; and — given that he lived within the Roman Empire — the expansion of empire when land was being taken from a tyrant (City of God, Book 4, Para. 15).
Augustine saw wars as "stern and lasting necessities" even when they produced misery for human beings. War was simply part of the human condition — even good kings waged wars (Wells, 1996). These ideas continued to evolve and were refined by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was the first to clearly and specifically define the ethical basis for a just war. His work is still considered foundational to just war theory.
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