Political Philosophy Between Peace and War

Chapter 5 revisits the classical Greeks. I argue that while Thucydides and Plato appear to take different positions on whether peace or war should be the controlling frame of reference for political theory, their texts frustrate attempts to see either perspective as dominant. Thucydides’s description of his book a possession forever does not establish his text as a conclusive last word, but marks it as a resource to be continually consulted. In parallel, Plato’s Republic represents a kind of conversation able to take Thucydides’s book seriously. These thematic convergences suggest neither war nor peace can be identified as the dominant frame of reference for political theory. The need to take both prospects seriously makes a dialogic approach to Western political philosophy attractive. I recommend reading the philosophical statements considered throughout the book not as systematic arguments to be proven or refuted, but as diverse voices to be critically interpreted.

War Is History

Chapter 4 examines two different treatments of war, understood historically, those offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche. Initially, they seem to understand human activity through nearly opposite lenses. Hegel traces how the creation of modernity’s social order has actualized free rationality, overcoming primitive impulses to war-making. Nietzsche reasserts the value of aggression, not merely as the sign of robust politics but as the core of a psychic energy continually expended in self-overcoming. As a result, both thinkers eventually diminish the pragmatic importance of political conflict for philosophy. Instead, such conflicts are institutionalized within the practices of the ethical state (Hegel) or transformed into active self-disruption and re-creation (Nietzsche). Yet both narratives leave spaces for the continuation or re-emergence of wars that their philosophical perspectives cannot critically engage. I contend that similar questions beset treatments of politics offered by Hegel’s modern and Nietzsche’s postmodern descendants.

Enmity or Friendship?

Chapter 1 interprets statements offered by two twentieth-century philosophers, Carl Schmitt, principally in The Concept of the Political, and Jacques Derrida, in his critique of Schmitt in The Politics of Friendship. Both works make the importance of political philosophy’s frame of reference explicit, though they offer opposed characterizations of its content. I argue that the substantive positions taken in the two works share more characteristics than initially apparent. Schmitt’s characterization of enmity as the essence of politics must accommodate a kind of mutuality. And Derrida’s political friendship eventually constructs its own distinctive enemy. Those complicating parallels diminish confidence in either author’s ability to settle the question of how political thought should be framed and prompt a reconsideration of how allegedly overarching imperatives of war and peace have been treated within the history of Western political philosophy.

Political Philosophy in War and Peace

This book interprets how ideas of war and peace have functioned as frames of reference within the history of Western political philosophy. Its purposes are both theoretical and practical. These seeming alternatives inform a broad spectrum of political thought, contextualizing the questions we ask about politics, the descriptions of the pragmatic and moral choices we face, and the concepts and metaphors we employ. Beyond theory, this inquiry responds to practical challenges confronting democratic citizens in the twenty-first century. The book’s central claim is that the persistence of both war and peace must be acknowledged as framing conditions for a political philosophy capable of informing the critical judgments that citizens need to exercise, particularly in times of intense regime stress or disturbing human precarity. The author presents five thematic chapters that examine how these alternative perspectives have functioned within some of Western political theory’s most significant works.

Perpetual Peace

Chapter 3 considers Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant, two authors aiming to establish stable political peace. While their statements differ significantly in both practical focus (domestic versus international politics) and metaethical form (prudential versus moral rationality), both see peace as achievable under institutional conditions that are discovered and justified by philosophy. Yet Hobbes’s institutional ambitions are frustrated by aspects of politics that he recognizes as less susceptible to institutional control. And though Kant aspires to provide rational guidance for “moral politicians,” his rigid divide between heroic morality and the all too human flaws of politics frustrates prospects for moral influence. We are left wondering whether political conflict can be either controlled by Hobbes’s political science or regulated by Kant’s rational morality. Similar challenges afflict their different intellectual descendants, for both rational choice theory and global democratic theory find their projected reforms continually challenged by politics itself.

War and Order

Chapter 2 examines how Thomas Aquinas and Niccolo Machiavelli relate war to political order. Both offer different substantive judgments and divergent methodological commitments. Aquinas’s political order is set within a comprehensive natural order that human beings should recognize and respect. Machiavelli’s is constructed by an aggressive praxis that seeks to harness human passions, always unsuccessfully. Philosophically, Aquinas depends on a theological teleology that Machiavelli rejects. If we read these texts comparatively we find that each author identifies dimensions of politics that the other overlooks. Further, their individual political narratives show the limitations of their theoretical frameworks. Comparing Aquinas with Machiavelli helps not only to reveal tensions between political philosophy’s two partners, but also to show why such tensions cannot be addressed by giving either one of these pre-eminence. These readings underscore questions about the relationship between political order and war that are muted in more contemporary analyses.