The Post-Contemporaneity of War

The article summarizes material from the thematic issue of Logos on the study of war. The author notes that, contrary to Hannah Arendt’s prediction, it is wars rather than revolutions that accompany human social activity in the twenty-first century. And because war is such a ubiquitous phenomenon, philosophers have tried to gain an understanding of it. Despite the great variety of arguments about war, we can distinguish three theoretical discourses each focused on its own separate topic. The first discourse is an attempt to rehabilitate the military thought of Carl von Clausewitz, the first theorist of “modern” war; the second is the just war theory, which concentrates on issues of applied ethics (whether it is legitimate to start war, how to conduct warfare, what to do after the conflict, etc.); the third is the discussion on “new wars.” The author maintains that the second discourse is too instrumental and that the just war theoretical apparatus often lags behind the empirical realities. The first approach can at best be an abstract and theoretical one, but it is not by any means useful as an applied theory. Hence, the most important of these discourses for practical philosophy is the third one, that is, the debate about “new wars.” That is why developing and elucidating the theory and ¾ most important of all — the practice of new wars demands attention. The conclusion is that the social theory of (post)modernity would enrich the new wars discourse, and further areas for study are therefore mapped out.