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The idea of distributive justice has as much to do with being and doing as with having, as much to do with production as with consumption, as much to do with identity and status as with land, capital, or personal possessions. Different political arrangements enforce, and different ideologies justify, different distributions of membership, power, honor, ritual eminence, divine grace, kinship and love, knowledge, wealdi, physical security, work and leisure, rewards and punishments, and a host of goods more narrowly and materially conceived – food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, commodities of every sort, and all the, old things (paintings, rare books, postage stamps) that human beings collect, And this multiplicity of goods is matched by a multiplicity of distributive procedures, agents, and criteria.

In the absence of popular support, terrorism may indeed be the one available strategy, but it is hard to see how its evils can then be excused. The refusal to make ordinary people into targets, whatever their nationality or even their politics, is the only way to say no to terrorism. If terrorists are drawing attention to genuine oppression, their enemies must work to end the oppression, thus undermining the rationale for the terrorism. Where terrorism is a possible strategy for the oppositional movement, other strategies are also possible if the movement has some significant degree of popular support. Repression and retaliation are legitimate responses to terrorism only when they are constrained by the same moral principles that rule out terrorism itself. The claim is that the campaign against terrorism has priority over every other political activity.

Jewish ideas about politics are embedded in the traditional genres of Judaic discourse, more often legal or homiletic than systematically philosophical. A defining feature of this tradition is its historical setting, as for most of their history the Jews lacked a state. Still, central issues of political thought were addressed primarily in the context of Judaism’s characteristic political entity, the medieval kahal – the by and large autonomous urban Jewish community. Discussions of issues such as authority, justice, or membership were informed by the Talmudic legal tradition, by biblical memories of Israel’s monarchic period and by dreams of restoration, inspired by ancient prophecies regarding the messianic era. The central form defining political authority and allegiance is the covenant, enacted at Sinai between God and the Israelite people, whom He had elected and liberated from Egypt. The people recognized God’s supreme authority, consenting to live by His teachings, the Torah. The significance and demands of this divine election, and the parameters and requirements of membership of the covenantal community, are much-debated issues in the Jewish political tradition. Of equal concern are the concrete implications of divine sovereignty. On one view, this precludes any institutionalized form of human authority. On other views, divine authority is invested in one or more of various human agents, from kings and priests to prophets and rabbis; strikingly, the latter used their own reason to interpret God’s words, and in their assemblies would take a vote to decide among interpretations. In uneasy co-existence with these, the tradition includes prominent justifications for human political agency, the legitimacy of which derives not from divine authorization but from popular consent. Living as a (sometimes) tolerated minority under non-Jewish rulers, the Jews dreamed of redemption, imagining the messianic king as leading them to triumph. Yet the foundational tale in Genesis is of humankind as one family, and the biblical prophets envisage world peace. Since 1948 the state of Israel has become the locus for re-examination of the Jewish political tradition. A crucial question has been to what extent this tradition, which includes proto-democratic as well as theocratic elements, can inform political discourse in a modern democracy whose citizens are mostly Jewish but include also significant non-Jewish minorities.

This chapter considers the hierarchical position of a middle-level officer in time of war, a field commander responsible for making tactical decisions. He has a twofold responsibility that can be described in simple directional terms. He is responsible upward—to his military commanders and then through the highest of them, the commander-in-chief, to the sovereign people, whose “officer” he properly is and to whose collective safety and protection he is pledged. But there are other people likely to suffer for his failures and, often enough, for his successes too—namely, the soldiers that he commands. And so he is also responsible downward—to each and every one of them. Professor Michael Walzer received his B.A. at Brandeis in 1956 and the Ph.D. from Harvard in 1961. After teaching political theory at Princeton for four years, he joined the Department of Government at Harvard, remaining there until 1980.

Some political theories die and go to heaven; some, I hope, die and go to hell. But some have a long life in this world, a history most often of service to the powers-that-be, but also, sometimes, an oppositionist history. The theory of just war began in the service of the powers. At least, that is how I interpret Augustine’s achievement: he replaced the radical refusal of Christian pacifists with the active ministry of the Christian soldier. Now pious Christians could fight on behalf of the worldly city, for the sake of imperial peace (in this case, literally, pax Romana); but they had to fight justly, only for the sake of peace, and always, Augustine insisted, with a downcast demeanor, without anger or lust.1 Seen from the perspective of primitive Christianity, this account of just war was simply an excuse, a way of making war morally and religiously possible. And that was indeed the function of the theory. But its defenders would have said, and I am inclined to agree, that it made war possible in a world where war was, sometimes, necessary.