Monday Seminar:
David Chan
Honorary Fellow (2008-2009)
Philosophy, UW-Stevens Point
Are religious wars more violent than imperialistic wars, civil wars and wars of liberation? Would the world be more peaceful if people did not fight for religious reasons? Is the conflict between Christianity and Islam unavoidable? The paper suggests that it is a misconception to answer “yes” to such questions. Not only are there myths about what takes place in so-called religious wars, but once we dispel these myths, the whole business of religious war per se is itself placed in question.
David K. Chan is an Honorary Fellow at the IRH and an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. His research interests include moral psychology, virtue ethics, the ethics of war, medical ethics, and Greek philosophy. He studied philosophy at the University of Melbourne in Australia (B.A. Honors) and at Stanford University (Ph.D.). He is the editor of an anthology on Moral Psychology Today: Essays on Values, Rational Choice, and the Will(Springer Books, 2008). At the Institute for Research in the Humanities, he is researching and writing a book entitled Rethinking the Ethics of War and Justice.