Best student paper – Noreen van Elk gewinnt auf der Postgraduate Conference der Society for Terrorism Research

„Ter­ro­rism and the good life. Towards a virtue-ethical per­spec­ti­ve for moral­ly asses­sing ter­ro­rism and counter-terrorism” – mit die­sem paper gewann Noreen van Elk, wis­sen­schaft­li­che Mit­ar­bei­te­rin und Dok­to­ran­din am ithf im ‚Best Stu­dent Paper Con­test‘ der Post­gra­dua­te Con­fe­rence der Socie­ty for Ter­ro­rism Reseach in Not­ting­ham. Ihr Paper wird im Sep­tem­ber 2017 im STR Jour­nal Beha­viou­ral Sci­ence of Ter­ro­rism and Poli­ti­cal Aggres­si­on erscheinen.

Das abs­tract des papers „Ter­ro­rism and the good life. Towards a virtue-ethical per­spec­ti­ve for moral­ly asses­sing ter­ro­rism and counter-terrorism“:

„This paper shows that con­tem­po­ra­ry poli­ti­cal reaso­ning and action in the con­text of modern ter­ro­rism deri­ves from moral argu­ments that are serious­ly fla­wed. Tho­se argu­ments are built on a sim­pli­stic under­stan­ding of ter­ro­rism and exclu­si­ve­ly adhe­re to “con­ven­tio­nal” act-based ethi­cal, e.g. deon­to­lo­gi­cal or uti­li­ta­ri­an, frame­works for moral­ly asses­sing the poli­ti­cal rea­li­ty of ter­ro­rism and counter-terrorism. As a result, poli­ti­cal reaso­ning and counter-terrorism action fail to take into account cer­tain indis­pensable moral­ly rele­vant fea­tures of ter­ro­rism. It will be argued in this paper that con­tem­po­ra­ry approa­ches are the­r­e­fo­re unable to grasp the (moral) com­ple­xi­ty of the ter­ro­rist phe­no­me­non what ulti­m­ate­ly leads to poli­ti­cal para­ly­sis in the domain of counter-terrorism action. In order to be able to include a more exten­ded noti­on of moral­ly rele­vant fea­tures of ter­ro­rism in an under­stan­ding of ter­ro­rism and con­se­quent­ly in its moral assess­ment, this paper deve­lo­ps an alter­na­ti­ve ethi­cal frame­work based on vir­tue ethics and on a eude­mo­ni­stic con­cept of the good life. In a last step, this paper shows how such a com­pre­hen­si­ve and inte­gra­ti­ve, virtue-ethical, frame­work over­co­mes the limi­ta­ti­ons of cur­rent domi­nant approa­ches and so con­tri­bu­tes to pro­mo­ting moral­ly legi­ti­ma­te, sus­tainable and effec­ti­ve counter-terrorism action.“