Foreign thinker
Michael Walzer
Michael WalzerPolitical Philosophy and Just War TheoryAmerican
Life and Thought
Michael Walzer (born 1935) is an American political philosopher and theorist. He is recognized as one of the most important contemporary theorists of just war theory, particularly for his book Just and Unjust Wars, and has also produced influential works in the areas of distributive justice and communitarianism.
Michael Laban Walzer was born on March 3, 1935, in New York. He completed his undergraduate studies at Brandeis University and then continued his education at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in government from Harvard. Walzer taught for many years at Princeton and Harvard Universities before joining the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
His most important work is the book Just and Unjust Wars (1977), which offers a modern, secular reinterpretation of the classical tradition of just war theory. In this book, Walzer distinguishes between "the justice of resorting to war" (jus ad bellum) and "justice in war" (jus in bello) and emphasizes the individual rights of soldiers and civilians. This work is considered one of the most influential contemporary texts in the philosophy of the ethics of war.
In his book Spheres of Justice (1983), Walzer introduced the theory of "complex equality" and defended a communitarian approach against individualistic liberalism. He was also the long-time editor of the political magazine Dissent and has written on other subjects such as toleration, revolution, and Jewish political thought.
