This symposium will appear in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, guest edited by Benjamin Matherson and Helen (though, it is yet to be assigned issue).

We honour and admire politicians and combatants for their conduct before and during war and conflict. But when is such admiration appropriate? Winston Churchill, for instance, is widely admired for his leadership and actions during World War 2 – an admiration made manifest by various British institutions, who put his face on money and build statues in his honour. And yet Churchill was guilty of atrocities. For example, in 1943 he denied the pleas of British officials in Bengal for direct supplies to the region whilst famine, caused by Britain’s imperialist policies, raged. Millions died as a result. Indeed, many of those who continue to enjoy honours in the form of statues and monuments committed atrocities. Cecil John Rhodes, whose wealth funds the Rhodes Scholarship, continues to have a statue at Oriel College, Oxford, despite the fact that Rhode was an English supremacist who contributed to the deaths of tens of millions people as part of his colonist campaigns and policies in Africa. And many states in the USA continue to have statues of Confederate generals who fought to keep slavery legal. This special issue brings together those working on the ethics of war and peace, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of emotions to investigate honour and admiration after war and conflict.

• Alfred Archer and Benjamin Matheson “Commemoration and Emotional Imperialism” (open access)
• Macalester Bell “Against Simple Removal: A Defence of Defacement as a Response to Racist Monuments“
• Daniel Alexander Abrahams “The Importance of History to the Erasing-history defence“
• Anja Berninger “Commemorating Public Figures – In Favour of a Fictionalist Position” (open access)
• Joanna Burch-Brown “Should Slavery’s Statues Be Preserved? On Transitional Justice and Contested Heritage” (open access)