Igor Primoratz Challenges Readers to Fully Analyze Terror from a Moral Perspective

     This was another read for school that gave me a much broader understanding of the complexity of political violence as a whole (if you couldn't already tell from my recent posts I took a course on terrorism this past semester). Oftentimes when discussing the topic of terrorism, we tend to assume that it is a clear-cut issue and that terrorists themselves behave immorally under all circumstances. After reading Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation however, I came away with a nuanced understanding of paramilitarism that somewhat contradicts this belief. Although we would like to view terrorism as a black-and-white matter, in reality it is far from that (perhaps that is the irony of the cover image?)                   
     Killing civilians is certainly abhorrent from both a legal and moral perspective, but according to author and philosopher Igor Primoratz it is important to consider the fact that the individuals one group of the population might consider to be "innocent", might not necessarily be viewed as such from the perspective of another. For example, Primoratz points to 9/11, a tragic event in which thousands of civilians lost their lives. While a vast majority of these individuals likely played no direct role in the United States' misguided diplomatic actions in the Middle East, Al-Qaeda still viewed them as culpable, due to their complacency with negative Western interference in the Arab world. It was a somewhat unfair assigning of "guilt-by-association", for lack of a better term.
    Primoratz goes further in his assertions, arguing that even if victims are truly seen as blameless in the sight of their attackers, terror groups often seem to adhere to a more consequentialist school of ethics (meaning that while they acknowledge that killing the innocent is wrong, they believe that their ultimate end goal of creating a better world justifies the means of harming civilians).
     Primoratz makes it clear throughout the book that ethical relativism and consequentialism can make it quite difficult to combat terror, as "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist". In other words, according to Primoratz, many terrorists would not label themselves as "murderers" or "criminals", but rather individuals simply fighting to create a more just world and society. Indeed, it is for this very reason that there has yet to be a universally-accepted definition of the term "terrorism"(which is another topic heavily addressed in the introductory portion of the book). By no means does Primoratz attempt to justify terrorism across the board, but he challenges readers to think critically rather than making overly-simplified assumptions about the morality of terror.
     Primoratz himself seems to only favor the usage of terror under one circumstance: if a population faces the threat of extinction at the hand of another group. Only in this dire instance, he argues, may terror be used as a last-resort option. In light of this, one deduces that Primoratz only seems to favor the use of terror as a grand act of self-defense against a significant menace (to prevent genocide, more-or-less).
     Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation offers a scholarly treatise on terror and political violence from an entirely new perspective. Modern discussions surrounding terrorism are highly pragmatic in nature and rarely come from moral or theoretical viewpoints like that of Primoratz. While his discussion does little to contribute to the actual struggle against terror, it still allows readers to better their understanding of the issue from an ethical perspective, by showing audiences the myriad of considerations and difficult decisions that often go into choosing to commit an act of terror. While terrorists may seem inhumane and nonsensical, this does not make them any less deserving of being understood, and Primoratz makes audiences well aware of this.