Heritage and War Ethical Issues

The world responded with horror to ISIS's campaign of destruction of cultural heritage across the Middle East, including with calls for an international response to prevent such damage. At the same time, newspapers and screens were filled with images of human destruction, devastated cities, and thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict. This juxtaposition caused a backlash against those voicing their concerns about the destruction of ancient ruins, popularly framed as dispute about 'stone versus lives'. In the face of so much human suffering, it can seem inappropriate to worry about anything but the urgent, basic needs of people.

Heritage and War addresses this issue within the context of a wider debate, amidst a range of moral questions. Eleven original essays investigate a variety of philosophical and moral questions arising from the phenomenon of heritage destruction in war, such how we ought to respond to heritage that is damaged in war, the nature of the harm caused by such damage, and the morally appropriate treatment of sites of war and conflict that have themselves become heritage sites. Such issues are philosophically rich, and yet they have been largely neglected by academic philosophers. This book makes a substantial contribution to developing this new philosophical territory and identifying the role that philosophers have to play in developing our understanding of and responses to these important issues.

William Bülow, Senior Researcher, Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, Uppsala University,Helen Frowe, Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar, Stockholm University,Derek Matravers, Professor of Philosophy, The Open University,Joshua Lewis Thomas, Associate Lecturer, The Open University

Helen Frowe is Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar at Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. Her books include Defensive Killing (2014) and The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction (2011). Her work has also appeared in Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophical Quarterly. She was the recipient of the 2019 Marc Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy. Between 2017 and 2021, she co-directed (with Derek Matravers) a project on Heritage in War funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has written Art and Emotion (1998), Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (2013); Fiction and Narrative (2014); and Empathy (2017). He is the author of numerous articles in aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He edits The British Journal of Aesthetics alongside Paloma Atencia-Linares.

William Bülow is a senior researcher at the Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics at Uppsala University. He works primarily in Legal Philosophy and Applied Ethics. He was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace where he worked within the AHCR-funded Heritage in War Project.


Joshua Lewis Thomas is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. He worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the AHCR-funded Heritage in War Project. Arising from this project, he wrote and published several papers on the value and meaning of cultural heritage, the ethics of its reconstruction, and the ethical significance of its role in peacebuilding.

List of Contributors
1. Heritage and War: An Introduction, Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers
2. Seeking Sanctuary: The Pre-History of Cultural Heritage in the Ethics of War, Tuukka Kaikkonen and Cian O'Driscoll
3. Conflicts in Heritage Protection, Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers
4. Killing for Culture, Bashshar Haydar
5. Cultural Icons and Reasons of Culture, Dale Dorsey
6. Cultural Heritage Protection and the Reconciliation Thesis, William Bülow and Joshua Lewis Thomas
7. Responding to Cultural Wrongs in Palestine and Israel, Victor Tadros
8. When Damage Becomes Memorial, Carolyn Korsmeyer
9. Architecture and Cultural Memory, Robert Hopkins
10. Heritage Tourism after Conflict: Starting Philosophical Thoughts, Penelope Bernard and Simon Kirchin
11. Stoic Consolations on the Destruction of Cultural Heritage in War, Nancy Sherman
Index