Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T00:10:36.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Historical Roots and Roads Not Taken

An Environmental History of (Part of) the Christian Just War Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

Mark Douglas
Affiliation:
Columbia Theological Seminary
Get access

Summary

Taking up Lynn White, Jr.’s argument that Christianity is largely responsible for contemporary ecological crises, this chapter develops an environmental historical reading of the Christian just war tradition’s transition from its late medieval into its early modern forms. That reading reveals not only the flaws in White’s argument but the many ways that the nonhuman natural world was understood by late medieval just war thinkers, including as resource, brake, enemy, and collection of signs. Attending to the environmental conditions and human interactions with the nonhuman natural world that shaped late medieval Europe and gave rise to early modern projects of colonialization and conquest helps to clarify the range of forces at work in shaping just war thinking and modernity. Among the implications of an environmental historical reading of the history of Christian just war, thinking is not only a recognition of the ways that the natural and the political interact but the need for a richer vocabulary to express those interactions in a time of growing climate-shaped violence.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×