Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

328 BRIAN V. JOHNSTONEcommon good.” Such ordering is the work of political reasoning.Such views could find a certain resonance in the papal “naturallaw” doctrine explained above.However, the notion of “justice” which is not clearlyexplained by Weigel, appears to be a kind of contractual justicebetween states by which they agree not to infringe each other’sintegrity and rights. He explains further that it may happen,regrettably, that a certain party violently breaks the accordbetween nations and attacks others. In such a case, the samepolitical reason, governed by justice, requires that such violencebe repelled, where necessary by counter violence, that is by war.What is to be restored, in this retributive notion of justice, is thecontractual order, which had hitherto prevailed.The reason which guides such a war, then, may, and shouldbe an extension of that reason which governs the normal activityof states. War then is an extension of politics by other means,as the German philosopher of war von Clausewitz famously stated.We find this Clausewitzian position explicitly re-affirmed byWeigel:Thus the just war tradition is best understood as a sustainedand disciplined intellectual attempt to relate the morally legitimateuse of proportionate and discriminate military force to morallyworthy political ends. In this sense, the just war tradition sharesClausewitz’s view of the relationship between war and politics:unless war is an extension of politics, it is simply wickedness. 41This means, according to Weigel’s interpretation, that, if waris not governed by a “higher” norm than that of pure tactics orforce, that is by reason, it cannot be regarded as falling withinthe range of morally acceptable activities.However, I would add, it does not follow that a war ruled bypolitical reason is morally right or good. It depends, of course,whether the political reason itself is internally coherent, andwhether it is directed by correct moral principles. We are toldthat political reason ought be governed by “morally, worthy41Ibid.