Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace

Gregory M. Reichberg is Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He has coedited several volumes, including Religion, War and Ethics: A Sourcebook of Textual Traditions (Cambridge, 2014), and Ethics of War: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2006). His recent publications include 'The Decision to Use Military Force in Classical Just War Thinking' in the Ashgate Research Companion on Military Ethics (2015), 'Historiography of Just War Theory' in the Oxford Handbook of War and Ethics (2016), and 'Jacques Maritain, Christian Just War Theorist' in the Journal of Military Ethics (2016).

'The most comprehensive treatment on this subject to date, Thomas Aquinas on war and peace fills a significant lacuna in research on Thomas and the just war tradition … This volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in him, the history of just war philosophy, or Catholicism. With no comparable volume in English, this book leads one to wonder how we have gone so long without such a work … Essential …' J. M. Meinert, Choice

• Part I. Just War in Aquinas's Typology of the Virtues: 1. Just war among the Quaestiones on charity; 2. War's permissibility; 3. Interpreting the gospel 'Precepts of Patience'; 4. Military prudence; 5. Battlefield courage; Part II. Selected Topics: 6. Legitimate authority; 7. War and punishment; 8. Self-defense; 9. Preventive war; 10. The moral equality of combatants; Epilogue: 11. St Thomas and the doctrine of bellum iustum today.