Functions

Historians encourage us to look at war in instrumental terms, in terms largely of politics. But war not only involves states but people and existential factors are equally important in explaining its persistence. For many, war involves a voyage of self – discovery. Others embark on the journey to find glory – a meme which like many memes can be highly contagious. War also attracts what Nietzsche called humanity’s ‘sportive monsters’ – it offers many opportunities to act badly. Every war confronts soldiers with the immediacy of moral choice. And, sanctioned by priests, war has also exploited what the philosopher William James called the ‘religious appetites’ – martyrdom, self-sacrifice, above all the quest for meaning. In the pursuit of the latter many warriors have discovered a vocation akin to a religious calling. Finally war has also exploited our inventiveness, our curiosity to find the limits of our own agency. War and science from the beginning have been joined at the hip