Editorial
By
Thomas Gilly
Each of the three articles we
have collected in the second issue of our 3rd Volume engages in a debate about
issues that are currently discussed in the criminological and criminal justice
literature.
Violent crime in rural life,
prostitution and terrorism – these are the issues that are central to the
papers we have collected in this issue. At first glance, the issues’ banality
holds for the lack of innovating approaches. On this account, the articles we
have collected might be suspected to copy that what has been already studied in
depth and to offer old things veiled in new colors.
Such a suspicion – however
legitimate it may be at first glance, is contradicted by the particular nature
of the cultural context against the background of which each of the issues is
discussed and by the intellectually highly exciting enterprise that consists of
either testing the empirical relevance of theory within a particular cultural
context or engaging a philosophical debate about politically relevant crime and
criminal justice issues.
Crime in rural areas is an
issue that has received little attention. Even if social disorganization theory
has become increasingly relevant for the explanation of and the structural
approach to crime, it has long since been assumed that this theory applies to
urban areas.
By shifting social
disorganization theory’s focal centre from the urban to the rural area of
“Prostitution in
Given the circumstance that
prostitution has become the object of an intense international mainstreaming
campaign that is working for the social and political acceptance of the
profitable sex industries, there is hardly need to point at the criminological
and ethical relevance of the issue.
By analyzing the magnitude,
the economic causes and the cultural roots of prostitution by women and
children of both sexes in
It has been assumed that the
US Administration and the British Government, to justify the military
intervention in Iraq, have tricked their citizens’ trust in them and sloped
past the UNO by producing frail pieces of conviction and false allegations, the
circumstance that the decision to go into war against Iraq came rapidly to the
fore of the legal debate being put beside.
Obviously the military
intervention has been and still is a highly controversial issue both with
regards to its legitimacy and its legality.
Traditionally there has been
very little attention given to the ethics of political decision-making and the
ethically just or unjust nature of political decision making that culminates
into war is an issue which has never been central to the public debate. Given
that – however controversial, the fight against terrorism has become central to
the politics of war, and considering – however controversial, the relevance of
ethical considerations for the public terrorism debate, ethics’ extrapolation
from the focus of the debate is somehow paradoxical.
Did you have ever heard about
the project that consists of the establishment of an objective and universally
valid moral norm that is rooted in reason? Even if Kant is not its inventor,
the philosopher is traditionally considered as the project’s most important
builder and representative. The same project is central to the ethics of Jürgen Hagerman that, in more than one regards, differ from
the original.
Why the decision to go into
war against
The whole debate about Kant’
relevance for terrorism and related issues is outlined in these two cardinal
questions.
My essay “What has Kant to do
with terrorism” discusses the relevance of Kant’s moral philosophy and of
Kant’s Science of Law for issues that are central to the actual debate about
terrorism. The issue is discussed against the background of Habermas’
discourse ethics. Kant’s critical comments on the legality of revolution and
Kant’s deconstruction of the right of resistance are the issues which are
central to the discussion.