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Short of a more or less direct relation between perpetrator and victim, the principle of
appropriate and proportionate usage of means is at the core of moral and ethical
consideration when it comes to the legitimization of forceful actions.
The Ethical Illegitimacy of Terrorist Violence
It is not only that the terrorist disregards the inevitable principle of the immediacy of
perpetrator-victim relation, and the issues of inevitability and unavoidability, as well as the
proportionality of means, but he bases his actions upon a pattern of causal rectification that
can never be ethically justified, and thus has to be classified as morally illegitimate. To
finally clarify the conditions of factual or presumed injustice against which forceful means
might be used—and why terrorist violence never meets these criteria and thus embodies
moral wrong in every case—makes it inevitable to analyze the sphere of wrong and injustice
in greater detail.
When it comes to decisions relevant to human actions, man finds himself always in a
dilemma in the sense of conflicting interests, which can be resolved only by a consideration
of interests according to ethical principles. Related to the question of an order of priority
between possible goods and values that have a bearing on a morally relevant decision, it is
Franz Böckle who introduces a helpful differentiation by distinguishing the principle of
―Fundamentality‖ from the principle of ―Dignity.‖[24] The principle of fundamentality, on the
one hand, favors that good which is a necessary precondition for the realization of another
one. The principle of dignity, on the other hand, structures the values according to their
meaningfulness, and brings the fundamental goods in a moral and ethical context of
meaningful priorities. Goods are physical entities existing independently of our individual
intentions and are given to us as indispensable factors for our responsible actions. These
factors include our physical integrity, mental or physical property, in addition, also
institutional dimensions of life, such as matrimony, family, and state. Values, in contrast,
are certain stereotyped attitudes or virtues, which can only be considered real inasmuch as
they are qualities of human volition for example the subjective understanding of justice,
faith, or solidarity. Consequently, whenever a morally relevant deed is demanded, the
acting individual finds himself in a situation of choice. He has to choose between values and
goods that are in a permanent constellation of competition among each other. The human
being, thus, finds himself always in a dilemma as to which option he should choose in the
constantly conflicting set of alternatives. Viewed negatively, an ethical choice inevitably
means to choose the lesser of two evils.
These helpful considerations can now, through the insights of Wolfgang Kersting, be placed
into the context of the philosophy of international relations, within which terrorism is acting.
Kersting introduces a distinction between programmatic and transcendental rights (claims
for freedom). Transcendental rights—following Kant‘s definition of ‗transcendental‘ as being
the condition of experience at all—are immediate human rights such as the right to live and
enjoy physical integrity, which are the conditions necessary for the possibility to experience
other rights and freedoms anyway. Beside these transcendental primary rights, we find then
the programmatic rights. These are, so to say, secondary rights, such as political self-
determination, democratic living conditions, just distribution of goods etc.[25] It is precisely
here, where terrorism does not take these rights into account (or intentionally or
unintentionally disregards these normative principles), that terrorism becomes devoid of
any serious ethics. Terrorism does not hesitate to set secondary rights, such as political
self-determination, or the implementation of a desired political or social order, absolute—at
the cost of ignoring and neglecting primary (transcendental) rights. In doing so terrorism
not only turns the logical principle of the predominance of transcendental rights upside
down, it also negates the predominant fundamental right to live, as this plays no role in
terrorist rationales—neither in the sense of being a physical cause or motive to reflect its
own maxim.

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We have to ascribe, therefore, the utmost moral quality to the statement made by the
General Secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, when he said, in the light of the
September 11, 2001, incident: ―No just cause can be advanced by terrorism.‖ Politically
offensive use of force to achieve national interests, revolutionary fanaticism, or the attempt
to rectify war as a legitimate means to disseminate religious or political ideologies in the
sense of a ―Holy War,‖ can, from a higher normative position of moral philosophy, never be
justified.[26] Attempts to vindicate these strategies inevitably end up in dogmatism, which
can never live up to the scrutiny of an ethics that is based upon an adequate, humanistic
image of man. Terrorist activity violates the essential norms of ethical thinking and acting
and thus must, by all means, be designated as the sheer ideal type of the ―manifestation of
moral injustice‖ in the social and political realms.
Universal Ethics in World Religions and International Law
A significant number of religious leaders, scholars and theologians have arrived at the
conclusion that the ethical doctrines of all great religious systems are in accordance
regarding the major issues of ethics. ―They all forbid, like the Mosaic Decalogue, to kill, to
lie, to steal or to commit adultery, as these stipulations are the prerequisite to any orderly
social life.‖[27] It is a characteristic of the ethics of all high religions that they connect
moral claims with religious doctrines and rituals. Once again it is Kant who considers moral
ingredients to be the most important of these three components to any religion and brings
all religions back to morality as their true foundation.[28]
In the field of humanity—especially in its concrete formations in humanitarian law and the
human rights codes of international law—we find ourselves on common ground, at least
between the three monotheistic religious denominations. With regard to human rights, to
mention but one example, (even it still seems to exist on paper only), there is a surprising
consensus to be found. The Council of the Arab League, on September 15, 1994, passed a
resolution that proclaimed the Arab Charter of Human Rights. This catalogue of norms—
although hitherto not in effect—comprises all of the fundamental and basic rights that are
found in the UN Charter or in the Human Rights Convention of the European Council, such
as the prohibition of discrimination, the right for living, freedom and security, the prohibition
of torture, the right to enjoy freedom of faith, speech and religion, etc. The Arab Charter of
Human Rights thus signals the basic readiness of the Arab world to acknowledge all those
basic values and liberties that emerged especially in the Western world as a result of the
rational movement of enlightenment. Naturally, this formal coherence should not deceive us
about the fact that the Christian-Occidental ethics is based upon a specific image of man
and a specific understanding of human rights that still awaits its realization in the social and
political practice of the Islam world and other regions on this planet.
Prospects and Perspectives
Everything suggests that terrorism and combating terrorism will represent a major
dimension in security affairs of this new century. A specific challenge to the democratic
statutory state arises from the fact that the potentially inhumane will have to be fought
without disclaiming the humane embodied in its own social order.
The guiding image of Western philosophical as well as political thought, the idea of the
human being as an individualized person and the human rights principles resting upon it,
may not be relinquished for a hysteria triggered by diverse ideologies and ideologists of
conspiracy. Nevertheless, the postulate of abiding by humanity must stand on equal terms
with the requirement to wage an efficient and effective war against international terrorism.
In pursuing this course, the international community needs to find some kind of unity in
terms of thinking and acting in the first place. At the center of an effective fight against
terrorism is the following challenge that will have to be met: How can the inter-cultural