1 Derrida, Jacques, ‘No Apocalypse, Not Now,’ Diacritics (1984), 20–31, esp. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Schell, Jonathan, The Abolition (London: Cape 1984), 25,Google Scholar 26, and see Wasserstrom, Richard, ‘War, Nuclear War and Nuclear Deterrence: Some Conceptual and Moral Issues,’ Ethics 95 (1985), 424-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 I have argued for this conception of practical reasoning in more detail in Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty justice and Development (London: George Allen and Unwin 1986), esp. ch. 3.

4 The division between protagonists of individual and of institutional conceptions of the relevant agents in nuclear matters often coincides with divisions drawn between ‘idealist’ and ‘realist’ approaches to world affairs. The coincidence isn't complete: for some ‘realists’ all agents are individuals, some of whom act for states and are obliged to ignore ethical considerations - to be ‘realists’ - when they do so. See section IV below.

5 For more extended discussion of the accessibility of consequentialist reasoning and the agents it addresses see Faces of Hunger chs. 4 and 5.

6 Goodin, R., ‘Disarming Nuclear Apologists,’ Inquiry 28 (1985), 153-76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Nuclear Disarmament as Moral Certainty,’ Ethics 95 (1985), 641-58

7 Why the scare quotes? To dissociate the point from the common identification of ‘our side,’ ‘neutral’ and ‘hostile’ nations when there is no war.

8 Beiner, Ronald, Political Judgement (London: Methuen 1983), 85Google Scholar

9 Jaspers, Karl, The Question of German Guilt (New York: Capricorn Books 1961), 112;Google Scholar whether silence is - vestigially - political is a recurrent theme in mid century writing on politics and responsibility, esp. in the writing of Camus and Arendt.

10 Theories are abstract when they omit (a great deal) that is true of the objects to which they apply, but idealised when they add to the properties of the objects to which they are held to apply properties which those objects lack, or have only in part.

11 This is not to deny that there may be legitimate uses for a purely ‘negative’ conception of freedom as ‘non-interference'; but it is ‘positive’ freedom to do or forebear that constitutes the determinate limits of individuals’ agency.

12 See for example Macintyre, Alasdair, ‘Corporate Modernity and Moral Judgement: are they Mutually Exclusive?’ in Goodpaster, K.E. and Sayre, K., eds., Ethics and Problems of the Twenty-First Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1979), 122-35,Google Scholar and his After Virtue (London: Duckworth 1981), and Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana 1985)Google Scholar, as well as the very different considerations about the partial unity of human agents in Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984).Google Scholar

13 One source of distaste is abhorrence for collective punishment. However, what offends is punishment of individuals for action by collectivities, especially when they have been marginal members. Genuinely collective punishment - e.g. the destruction of institutions which cause harm - does not always offend. Nothing said here depends on views about collective punishment. Non-consequentialist reasoning can separate the topics of responsibility and punishment.

14 Some ‘realists’ about world affairs maintain only less contentious views. Such ‘pragmatic realists’ may merely advocate that foreign affairs be conducted with a clear eye on the likely results of policy, or without attempts to impose contentious ethical standards in other countries. Pragmatic realism is quite compatible with the view that states may attend to ethical reasoning: indeed it is often linked with claims about ‘the morality of states’ such that states ought not to interfere in other states’ affairs. Cf. Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1979),Google Scholar part II.

15 But see Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1970)Google Scholar for discussions of the limitations of realist paradigms in international relations.

16 Political Theory and International Relations, Part I, Ch 4

17 Political Theory and International Relations, Part I, Chs. 3 to 5

18 Political Theory and International Relations, Part I, Ch. 1

19 See Ruben, David-Hillel, The Metaphysics of the Social World (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1985).Google Scholar

20 However, a common language may be more than we need- some quite limited access to others’ modes of discourse may be enough. If solutions to global problems presupposed a complete common language, the ideological and political fragmentation which underlies those problems, and so the problems themselves, would have to fade before progress could be made.

21 Cf. Dunn, John, ‘Unimagined Community: the Deceptions of Socialist Internationalism,’ in Rethinking Modem Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985), 103–118;Google ScholarO'Neill, O., Faces of Hunger, 152.Google Scholar

22 After Virtue, 205

23 Kant, Immanuel, Perpetual Peace, 96,Google Scholar trans. Nisbet, H. B., in Reiss, Hans, ed., Kant's Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1970), 93–130Google Scholar