Sidonie Roth-Janson

When is War OK?

Our guest artist of the week is Sidonie Roth-Janson. Sidonie is 7 years old and she is a second grader at Mountainview Elementary School . Her teacher is Mrs. Williamson. Sidonie loves to play soccer, dance, play piano, do gymnastics, act, cook, sing, and read. Right now, Sidonie is reading, “The Year of Miss Agnes” by Kirkpatrick Hill. She will play the role of a gingersnap and the role of an angel in the Northen West Virginia Dance Council's upcoming performance of “The Nutcracker.” Sidonie's native language is English, but she can understand and speak some German and Spanish. She spent the summers of 2003 and 2004 in Germany with her parents, learning the language and culture, and making new friends. Sidonie's favorite subject at school is math. She also likes art. After school, she attends Kaleidoscope. She enjoys making popsicles, pudding, peanut butter smiley faces, and lemonade ice-cubes in one of her Kaleidoscope classes. Her absolute favorite teacher at Kaleidoscope is Bryce Glass, a WVU Philosophy major. She likes Bryce because “he's nice, he says a lot of funny things, and he makes jokes.” Bryce does many different kinds of activities with Sidonie's class, but Sidonie especially likes when Bryce reads stories to the class. “He picks really nice stories and he makes great faces when he reads to us.” In her free time, Sidonie likes to ride bikes with her neighborhood pals, Conor, Logan, Adam, and Andrew. She also loves going out for ice cream with her dad and cooking and playing piano with her mom.

Ok, let's move on to THE QUESTION. I asked Sidonie “The Question” before she started to color. Her answer to “When is war ok?” is really interesting. Her answer is so interesting that I want to stir up the discussion by sharing Sidonie's view on war. When I first posed the question, she struggled to think of any time that it was actually permissible to go to war. Her initial answer was that it is “ok when you are just playing.” For example, she noted that she and her friend Conor pretend to be fighting sometimes. That activity seemed perfectly fine to her. When I asked her when it was ok to go to war for real, not just pretend, she listed the following conditions:

•  “When you have a very good reason to think you are going to be killed and you can't get away and going to war is the only way out.”

•  “When you can't make the other person forget that they want to kill you.”

She added that you should only use as much force as is necessary to get yourself out of danger.

Surely the question, “when is war ok” is complex. However, even if you disagree with Sidonie, or think she has missed something, you must admit that her ideas are worthy of very careful consideration. Whoever thought philosophy is not for kids needs to think again!

The WVU Philosophy Department will revisit this question at our public discussion of the questions in the spring. For now, we leave it to you to consider carefully, and discuss with your friends, the question of this week:

“When is war ok?”