Bosnia and Hercegovina emerged in the wake of the Second World War as a melting pot for the cultures that had determined the history of the South Slavs since the middle ages. Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim all shared in and contributed to the political and cultural life of Yugoslavia's most diverse republic.
In 1992, this life was shattered as separatist militias brought war to Bosnia and Hercegovina.What is the religious heritage that drives the warring factions and how does it relate to the nationalist aspirations of many of the participants? From diverse academic and philosophical perspectives, the works of Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Turner Johnson, Michael Sells, John Kelsay, and G. Scott Davis will inform not just scholars of ethics, politics and religion, but everyone concerned with the prospects for justice in the post-Cold War world.

Recent work by Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Robert Bellah has brought considerable attention to bear on the ethics of virtue. Little clarity has, however, emerged from that discussion on what difference such an ethic would make in practical and political deliberations. Warcraft and the Fragility of Virtue presents, for the first time, a well-developed and effective Aristotelian perspective on reasoning about war and warfare.Author G. Scott Davis first sketches the fundamentals of as Aristotelian approach to the ethics of war, arguing that the virtue is a craft, of itself fragile, that must be sustained by a community that makes the highest demands upon itself. Introduced as a criterion for evaluating alliances and international relations, the concept of moral community is also of the highest significance for interpreting those ruptures within the community, including resistance and rebellion, that arise concomitantly with the prospect and onset of war.

How should religion and ethics be studied if we want to understand what people believe and why they act the way they do? In the 1980s and '90s postmodernist worries about led to debates that turned on power, truth, and relativism. Since the turn of the century scholars impressed by 'cognitive science' have introduced concepts drawn from evolutionary biology, neurosciences, and linguistics in the attempt to provide 'naturalist' accounts of religion. Deploying concepts and arguments that have their roots in the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce, Believing and Acting argues that both approaches are misguided and largely unhelpful in answering the questions that matter: What did those people believe then? How does it relate to what these people want to do now? What is our evidence for our interpretations? Pragmatic inquiry into these questions recommends an approach that questions grand theories, advocates a critical pluralism about religion and ethics that defies disciplinary boundaries in the pursuit of the truth. Rationality, on a pragmatic approach, is about solving particular problems in medias res, thus there is no hard and fast line to be drawn between inquiry and advocacy; both are essential to negotiating day to day life. The upshot is an approach to religion and ethics in which inquiry looks much like the art history of Michael Baxandall and advocacy like the art criticism of Arthur Danto.

Bosnia and Hercegovina emerged in the wake of the Second World War as a melting pot for the cultures that had determined the history of the South Slavs since the middle ages. Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim all shared in and contributed to the political and cultural life of Yugoslavia's most diverse republic.
In 1992, this life was shattered as separatist militias brought war to Bosnia and Hercegovina.What is the religious heritage that drives the warring factions and how does it relate to the nationalist aspirations of many of the participants? From diverse academic and philosophical perspectives, the works of Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Turner Johnson, Michael Sells, John Kelsay, and G. Scott Davis will inform not just scholars of ethics, politics and religion, but everyone concerned with the prospects for justice in the post-Cold War world.