Episode
Can Wars Be Just?
- Podcast
- Practical Stoicism
- Published
- Mar 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 894
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://stoicism.captivate.fm/episode/can-wars-be-just
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Summary
Join Prokoptôn, a private community of dedicated practicing Stoics working together to improve. Learn more at https://skool.com/prokopton -- Support my work for as little as $1 a month: https://stoicismpod.com/members -- Subscribe to my Stoic Brekkie newsletter: https://stoicbrekkie.com -- I pull heavily from Leonidas Konstantakos' "Stoicism and Just War Theory" doctoral dissertation in this episode. I encourage you to download it and read it yourself: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/record/13724 -- In this episode, I take up a difficult question: can war ever be just in Stoicism? Not justified. Not strategically useful. Not legal. But truly just — meaning virtuous and right. I begin by setting aside the two dominant modern frameworks for thinking about war: utilitarianism and deontology. Utilitarianism evaluates war based on consequences. If enough good results from it, the war can be defended. Deontology evaluates war based on rules. Some actions are always wrong, regardless of outcomes. Stoicism does neither. Using the firebombing of Dresden and the ticking time bomb scenario, I explain how the Stoic approach shifts the focus away from body counts and legal rules and onto character. For the Stoic, external outcomes — even death and destruction — are morally indifferent. What matters is the internal condition of the agents making decisions. Are they acting from justice, courage, and wisdom? Or from fear, ambition, pride, or the desire to dominate? Drawing on Cicero’s On Duties and later Stoic interpretation, I outline the core criteria: right intention, proper authority, discrimination, and war as a last resort aimed at peace. A war undertaken from a corrupted value structure — where victory is treated as a good in itself — reflects vice. A war undertaken from ratio…