Citation

Lankford A. Crit. Rev. Int. Soc. Polit. Philos. 2013; 16(5): 634-654.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.)

DOI

10.1080/13698230.2012.691209

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

For thousands of years people have saved their loudest praise for individuals who made 'the ultimate sacrifice.' Recently, however, many people have begun to equate suicide terrorism with sacrificial heroism. These assertions benefit from a general lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of sacrificial heroism itself. Therefore, this paper aims to explore, describe, and define sacrificial heroism, arguing that it requires two primary things: the risk of something highly valued; and the attempt to achieve a directly morally positive result. The paper then reviews four representative scenarios, including two types of suicide terrorism and two types of sacrificial heroism, in order to highlight several critical differences between those actions that deserve to be praised as supremely heroic and those which clearly do not.