Marc LiVecche is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence. He is also a non-resident research fellow at the US Naval War College, in the College of Leadership and Ethics.
Marc completed doctoral studies, earning distinction, at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain, until her death in August, 2013. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. Another project, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition, co-edited with Eric Patterson, was published by Stone Tower Press in the fall of 2020. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to working at a Christian study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which rendered him entirely ill-suited for pacifism.
Marc lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and children–and a marmota monax whistlepigging under the shed. He can be followed, or stalked, on twitter @mlivecche. Additional publications can be found at his Amazon author page.
This is a great story. A necessary story. It should be told to our children over supper. And every time we retell it we must, ourselves, attend to it closely for this story is also a greatly clarifying story. It helps to brush aside much of the twaddle that passes for contemporary moral wisdom, including within the Christian culture. But precisely what has it clarified? Three things, primarily…
Marc LiVeccheAugust 29, 2015
It was a terrible anniversary. Seventy years ago this past week, at zero eight fifteen hours, August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay, a U.S. Army Air Force B-29, dropped an 8,900-pound bomb, dubbed “Little Boy”, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb, Fat Man, fell upon Nagasaki.
Marc LiVeccheAugust 14, 2015
God can be loved and worshipped on the battlefield, and pacifism as opposed to soldiering stands as an exception to the Christian norm.
Marc LiVeccheJune 18, 2015
The recent surge in interest in moral injury has been largely motivated by psychiatric battle casualties suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but of course combat veterans throughout history have staggered home suffering not necessarily from physical injuries as classically perceived but injured all the same.
Marc LiVeccheJune 12, 2015
In the just war tradition, war (and therefore torture) are not only sometimes morally permissible but obligatory in order to restrain the enemy from sin.
Marc LiVeccheJune 5, 2015
A look at the Giro d’Italia and how exceptionless rules are also essential to bicycle races – as like perhaps to moral reasoning.
Marc LiVeccheJune 3, 2015
The headlines are exasperating, if a bit hyperbolic: Reuters writes, “Pope Says Weapons Manufacturers Can’t Call Themselves Christians” while the Daily Beast puts it, “Pope: Gun Makers Are Not Christians.”
Marc LiVeccheJune 2, 2015
Reflections on how people choose to spend Memorial Day and how this relates to Christian pacifism.
Marc LiVeccheMay 29, 2015