Jus Ad Bellum: Kant, Hegel, and other war spelaeologists
“The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service. “ --Albert Einstein
1. Introduction
Jus ad bellum - the philosophical justification for war.
It has always seemed to me that the primary purpose of Western philosophical tradition has been as apologist for human activity. Eastern philosophical tradition has been generally more oriented toward mysticism. Whilst there are of course well known exceptions in both streams of thought, modern western philosophy seems to me to be anthropomorphic and anthropocentric. The tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Strauss exemplify this, particularly in their role as advocates for state supremacy and the supremacy of power.
2. War as evolutionary catalyst
I remember reading Kant’s ’Critique of Pure Reason’ for the first time. I was very keen on Alfred North Whithead’s mathematical work with Russell, and hoped that Kant might be along the same lines. Ouch - what a disappointment! His rejection of Hume was interesting, but IMHO filled with logical flaws. I could not for the life of me see why he was held up as some sort of paragon. Especially when I first got more deeply into his ethical analyses. Oh my...
Kant expressed the view that war was nature’s will for humanity. He held that war catalysed evolution – that it was the foundation for the development of civilisation. This because war caused dispersion. The subsequent diversification of cultures through the mixing of those fleeing the theatre of war Kant believed, allowed for an “unknown natural end”. Hence war became as potent an evolutionary imperative as species mutation or natural selection.
Kant’s viewpoint was teleological – he believed in an end which was fated and toward which ’nature’ demanded a complete and conformist drive to achieve. Nature to Kant was a logocentrism, representing anthropocentric absolute value. That is, a small humonculus high on a hill somewhere decreeing ’thou shalts’. Without this conformist drive he felt that life became simplistic, random and chaotic. Without the drive dictated through nature, life lacked reason. This to most western philosophers in the Greek tradition, including Kant, was horrific. Life without ’reason’ was no life at all. Perhaps a knowledge of other cultural systems, such as Mahayana, and of even of science would have altered this view?
At any rate for Kant, true rationality was the peak of attainment. For the truly rational being, any action was morally permissible. With the sole proviso that such action was in accord with the categorical imperative. In other words, in accord with the universal laws of nature. War between individuals therefore was completely acceptable. And although not stated one can but assume too that the atrocities of war were also acceptable, provided the parties involved were behaving rationally.
Kant’s embracing of the deontological view where moral action existed independent of consequence and duty was of prime importance. Reason has nothing to say about the world other than the mere description of appearance – duty was everything. War consisted of duty, which was an action of prime moral worth. The fact of collateral damage from war, was an immaterial and largely irrelevent moral consequence.
Kant’s teaching was that ’duty’ emanating from nature’s imparatives meant that individuals must sacrifice or be sacrificed for the greater good. Nazis could kill Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, and other beings with moral impunity. For so long as they truly followed the imperative of duty, their moral state was independent of the consequences of their actions.
In Kant’s view social antagonism was little more than a force of nature. A force which drove and dictated human activity. Should humans act in accord with this force, it was quite natural to seek to express rationality through conflict. Peace was therefore an act against rationality.
”The state of peace among men living in close proximity is not the natural state; instead the natural state is a one of war, which does not just consist in open hostilities, but also in the constant and enduring threat of war...” --Immanual Kant.
Kant believed that without social antagonism, a state of peace and mutual love would arise. This he felt, was a bad thing. For inherent talents would atrophy and die leaving humanity bereft of goals or attainment. It was therefore, the goal of the state to enforce a “rational world order” which imposed the rationality he discussed. It was the duty of leaders to impose, rather than nurture or allow independent development. Kant’s teachings were highly esteemed in by many world leaders, particularly in Washington and Berlin.
3. War as perpetuator of the state
Hegel agreed with Kant regarding war as a catalyst for human development.
However war for Hegel was not a product of Kant views of ’nature’. Rather it was and always would be a product of the state, and of experience from within the state. In this Hegel may be described as phemonologist (ie. experiential rationalist). For Hegel the primary function of the experience of war for individuals was the overall revitalization of the state. In the absence of war therefore, the state would become in his words, “rigid and ossified”. For Hegel such an eventuality would be anathema, because the state was the highest construction of rationality. It resulted from the application of right and ethics operating in harmony.
So for him, in a manner similar to Kant, war to be essential to the health nations. Patriotism was to be encouraged at all levels, because in it lay the seeds for a vigorous nation ready for war. Perpetual peace, in the Kantian sense of a league of nations following the rule of nature, was for Hegel neither possible or desirable. Where Kant justified war because without it came individual stangmentation, Hegel justified war because it revitalized the entire state. (The deaths of innocents? Collateral damage.)
Hegel went much further than Kant. He argued that the without the state an individual lacked meaning:
“...it is only through being a member of the state that the individual himself has objectivity, truth, and ethical life”.
This discounting and lack of reference to Buddha, Zhangji, Tzu Hsi, and other who had long ago rather clearly shown meaning to be independent of the state was rather ... amazing. Or perhaps not, for it has been the tradition of most western philosophers to pay no attention of other systems of thought. Hegel argued instead for something which almost two centuries later Hitler and Goebbels found very useful. He contended that individual integration with the universal (i.e. the state), was vital in translating the individual to a ’higher form’. To do this required
“... total obedience and renunciation of personal opinion and reason”
in order to merge with the totality represented by the state. Should this totality be threatened from without, it was thus not merely an individual’s duty but a moral necessity to fight to preserve the ’higher form’ that was the state. Ethical considerations were entirely within the political totality under which an individual laboured. Hence the ultimate effect of war was the reconciliation of ethical conflict between individual and state. Easy to see why Hitler and others were such fans.
Kant’s idea of peace as atrophying agent necessitated in Hegelian thought, that the state act to purposefully create war. And delightfully, in so doing the state was not morally culpable. This because for Hegel an act of war was an act against stagnation. It was morally positive for it drove the progression of historical moment.
Of course Heiegger, Jaspers, and many in the French School (obliquely including Bourdieu and Foucault) rebelled against these views. Yet as you may well imagine, political butchers from Hitler through through Johnson, Mao, and those happy-go-lucky
Straussians of our own time were pleased to find such apparent philosophical justification for their carnage, blood lust, and individual psychopathologies. Particularly those who eschewed any argument of individual freedom – such the political elite who followed Strauss.
4. War noology
On to more modern approaches: In a manner similar to
Bourdieu, Deleuze and Guattar believed that individual thought was for any adult, completely aligned with a model or narrative which derives from the overall narrative of the state.
Hence individual goals and acts might deviate from one another but were essentially simply derivative from the goals of the state. Individual ideation served to strengthen the State. Why? Because already acculturated to the underlying norm any ideation could only strengthen acceptance of a form of thought in harmony with what the state required to continue and grow. Deleuze and Guattar therefore believed that Hegel was correct. In that individual roles were to strengthen the state’s rational order.
They defined a new term ’noology’ to indicate the study of ’images of thought’. That is, the study of how an individual visualizes. This they said, was a new and distinct form ideology. The example they used was this: The use of straight and parallel lines in Greek architecture and art caused a linearity in thought – a linear form of reasoning. To Deleuze and Guattar, a fluid architecture with rounded corners would therefore have caused a threat to the Greek state. This echoed somewhat Goldman’s genetic structuralism – so-called ’homologies’ where literature, for example, expressed group consciousness in much that same manner that architecture was a reflection of group ’images of thought’.
At this point you will perhaps be aghast that such ideas could be propounded sans reference to research into edge detection in retinal ganglia or to cognitive science in general. Linearity due to organization at layers 3 and 4 of the neocortex for example, may have far more to do with how an individual visualizes – with how image formation and consequent thought occurs - than anything Deleuze and Guattar propose. Similarly cortical organization post Worf-Sapir influences may have a much greater influence on the type and form of literature produced than social influence.
But let us be thankful that facts never obfuscate the magic house of cards which delight philosophers of this ilk or those who believe they are philosophers, and move on:
Philosophy say Deleuze and Guattar, has adopted the role of ground. This ground establishes justification for state power. And therefore of the use of the war machine. Yet they say, groups within the state can use war for good. Where ’good’ is defined by the noology of the moment. Or in general to contest nomadic influence (i.e. exterior to the state; exterior to the territoriality which defines the state). The justification of war for them becomes the maintenance of status quo (rather than the natural imperative of Kant), territoriality, hierarchical structure, and ultimately an imposed or acculturated noology. It is a means of ensuring not rational thought in the Hegelian sense, but rather a particular narrative. Without war nomads (externalities) would threaten the state and the Weltanschauung (world view) it symbolizes. Yet again as with Kant and Hegel, war is viewed an inevitabile of human society.
5. War pseudo-psychology
Freud took a different approach. To him conflict, and conflict’s ultimate expression in war, was due to (i.e. justifiable as) an innate tendency toward violence. Something inherent in the nature of humans. Sort of a psychological imperative due to the interplay of id, ego, and superego, and the interplay of Thanatos and Eros – death and life force. Freud, much as Nietzsche had done, pointed out that conflict can be both internalized and emerge from internal domains. Whilst Nietzsche saw the external expression as opportunity for growth however, Freud believed the superego (externalities and society internalized) could be corrected within one’s self for the resolution of external conflict. From the outside in so to speak. Having said that though, the resolution for Freud was ultimately the realm of Thantatos. Humans he believed, were at their base driven to embrace death more than life. For Nietzsche the fight against deal lead to external nobility; for Freud the fight was not so much against a destructive urge as it was an urge to die.
It is my own opinion that Freud’s work to understand conflict and war is subject to so many obvious criticisms that little more need to be said. Except perhaps to point out that his writing is so far removed from science, scientific method, and logic as to be in the realm of magic pixies. I would not be so daring as to say that his inquiry into conflict is little more than the nihilistic diatribe of an unhappy and incurious man. That would be indelicate. However I see little difference between many of Freud’s remarks and those of any foaming evangelical seeking to mask fanaticism with pseudo-scientific raillery. To claim that culture results from conflict (viz. Kant, with caveat) via repression in a ’psyche’ of passion is a wondrous piece of invention. That legions should believe in such and indeed use it as justification and explanation for conflict, particularly in the total absence of any proof, is simply ... amazing. As the Korean Zen Master Soen Sa Nim said when a student asked what to do about mental problems, “Show me your mind”. Freud nor his legions of followers, would not have understood.
While Freud had been moving albeit in a confused fashion from the nature toward nurture justification for conflict and war, it took Lenin to complete the trend. For Lenin nurture was paramount, as it was for Marx. They believed conditioning led to social conditions, which in turn led to more conditioning, and so on in a self-perpetuating cycle. The result was I feel, little more than an ameliorating zeitgeist rather than explaination of behavior.
Another avenue common which jus ad bellum philosophers take is this: Some wars are simply justified on ethical and humanitarian grounds. A good example of this is Frantz Fanon’s writing on anti-colonialism His work was much admired by Satre and his circle, and was something of a milestone in shifting the view of just war theorists from the oppressor to the oppressed. Looking at the same Algerian horror that drew Bourdieu, Fanon advocated for war and violence as being fully justified when it was concerned with overthrowing forces of colonization. A psychiatrist by training, Fanon was so convinced that violence was appropriate at these times, that he became an active member of the Algerian Liberation Front. If he had lived during our own time, he presumably would probably have joined the Mujahideen. Fanon’s writing influenced many, particularly Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and other post-structuralists who dealt with what they termed the justice of forceful opposition to colonization.
6. The reality of war
From Cicero to the postmodernists, the many and various means of philosophically justifying war have been legion. The topic could fill volumes. War has been called a good thing for humanity; a natural selection/evolutionary tool; a part of basic nature; a psychological imperative; a necessary part of collective action (the state) when humans live in cultural proximity; and more.
The bottom line for these and other similar thinkers has been either that war is good or at the very least, necessary.
How presumptuously arrogant that those who have actually suffered in war, had their limbs blown off, their family members slaughtered, their lives destroyed, might disagree with these supposedly great thinkers.
was teleological – he believed in an end which was fated and toward which ’nature’ demanded a complete and conformist drive to achieve. Nature to Kant was a logocentrism, representing anthropocentric absolute value. That is, a small humonculus high on a hill somewhere decreeing ’thou shalts’. Without this conformist drive he felt that life became simplistic, random and chaotic. Without the drive dictated through nature, life lacked reason. This to most western philosophers in the Greek tradition, including Kant, was horrific. Life without ’reason’ was no life at all. Perhaps a knowledge of other cultural systems, such as Mahayana, and of even of science would have altered this view?