In The Meaning of Terrorism, C. A. J. Coady clarifies competing and confusing definitions of terrorism, and of terrorist acts, that proliferate in specialist publications as well as in popular discourse. Coady aims to construct a concept of a terrorist act that both reflects a central core of these different understandings, which provides for a more coherent and fruitful discussion of terrorism and its moral and political significance. The goal is therefore not only to gain clarity about what the term designates, but also to probe various dimensions of the moral meaning of our understanding of terrorism for complex social and political circumstances. The opening chapters sketch the commonly propounded definitions, and propose what Coady calls a "tactical definition", with a focus on terrorist acts as violent attacks upon non-combatants or innocents. The benefits of such an approach are laid out, and defences against numerous objections that can be and have been made to it are given. The book critically discusses theorists who argue that, independent of its definition, terrorist acts have a special, and profoundly disturbing, moral significance. Coady explores the scope and meaning of non-combatant status and its relation to recent controversies in the philosophy of war, and discusses important attempted philosophical defences of terrorism for certain contexts. The book closes with a discussion of the moral challenges facing attempts at counter-terrorism, and examines the commonly held view that religion is particularly prone to cause terrorism or some of its most extreme manifestations.

About the Author
C.A.J. (Tony) Coady is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor, Australian Catholic University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and Honorary Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford. He is the author of Testimony (OUP, 1992), Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge, 2008), and Messy Morality: the Challenge of Politics (OUP, 2008), and the co-editor of The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate (OUP, 2016), and Morality, Reality and Killing to Save: the Responsibility to Protect Revisited (OUP, 2018).

Reviews
There is much at stake in the thorny task of trying to map out conceptual space for a reasonable consensus on terrorism. C. A. J. Coady has been working on this task for more than forty years, and his latest book does as good a job of defending a philosophical definition of terrorism as one would expect. The Meaning of Terrorism is carefully argued, clearly written, and filled with empirical examples that challenge how we think about terrorism. . . . an excellent and welcome addition to the academic literature on terrorism. * Mark Rigstad, Ethics and International Affairs *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199603961
Author C. A. J. Coady
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 406g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 146mm * 19mm