Book Reviews

If studies of conflict and terror involve understanding their causes and if the notion of “causes” is ultimately a philosophical concept (from Aristotle to Kant), then philosophy can make a unique contribution to studies of global ethnic conflict. Without delving deeply into philosophical ideas underlying the conflict, this article nevertheless examines how it largely stems from a cold war ideology of the Left. Moreover, a New Left is not only distinguished from politics and political philosophy but, dismayingly, traced to cold war western democracies, in which it continues, paradoxically, to flourish and be used to extinguish what it inflames.