What follows the jump is a brief commentary on a pair of essays on the philosophy of war.
Dad29 points us to an essay by James Baresel arguing that Just War Theory rightly is about justice, not interests.
While the Catholic Encyclopedia teaches that securing justice for others through altruistic wars is just, and common sense tells us it is noble, what is neither a necessary precondition nor a justification for war is “national interest”—a material consideration rather than a moral one. Even when fighting injustices detrimental to national interests, it is the injustice alone which makes use of force legitimate. If national interests are threatened only by morally permissible actions of other nations, only peaceful means can be used in opposition—and going to war under such circumstances is among the offenses for which a nation can rightly be punished with vindictive justice.
He is opposed here to realpolitik, which would argue that national interest is at minimum a crucial consideration in whether or not to go to war. Conservatives often argue something like that: that it is wrong to go to war just to 'slay dragons' or 'fight monsters abroad,' but only when the nation's interests absolutely require it. The author chides Pat Buchanan, for example, for suggesting that Britain made an error in going to war against the Nazis to free Poland; or, for that matter, that it is improper to back Ukraine's resistance to Russian invasion just because there is not a clear American interest in doing so.
[An aside: there is an arguable American interest in using Ukraine to wear Russia down to the point that it will not be a threat for a generation or more. However, using Ukrainians to do this by supporting them just enough to keep them from losing is less obviously moral; prolonging a war because the bleeding benefits you, in fact, sounds immoral on its face.]
That said, I take objection to the Jesuit father he quotes, Joseph McKenna, who wrote: “In extreme cases the moral value of national martyrdom may compensate for the material destruction of unsuccessful war.” I do not think that is a valid reading of Just War Theory. One of the crucial considerations in war is victory: all war entails harms, an evil that has to be balanced against some good in order to satisfy Thomas Aquinas' Doctrine of Double Effect. Usually certain defeat is a situation in which starting a war cannot be justified (jus ad bellum); one is certainly valid in resisting the war (jus in bello). Certainties change logical outcomes by eliminating ordinary considerations; of course, in practical reality nothing is usually certain so the point may be of only theoretical application. [As Aristotle would warn us: EN 1.3]
The second of the two on the philosophy of war takes the unexceptional position that the philosopher Heidegger was blameworthy for being a Nazi. Along the way, though, the author makes an error.
Heidegger claims to have mentioned armed service “neither in a militaristic, nor in an aggressive sense. . . I understood defense as self-defense.” The attitude of the address is “oriented towards ’battle’,” he admits, but “’Battle’ is thought in the sense of Heraclitus, fragment 53.”
It is worth dwelling on this suggestion if only to appreciate the full force of Heidegger’s breathtaking evasiveness. A literal translation of the Heraclitus fragment is “War [πόλεμος] is father of all things, king of all things, and reveals some to be gods, others men, makes some slaves, others free.”
Heidegger tells us that “πόλεμος” really means “ἔρις”, a term that can mean “war” but is more usually translated as “conflict” or “strife.” Further, he says, “πόλεμος” is not to be understood in the sense of real conflict, but as “confrontation-that-sets-those- who-confront-one-another-apart, so that in such setting apart the essential being of those who confront one another exposes itself. . . [and] enters into what is unconcealed and true.”
Really? Heidegger’s idiosyncratic translation of Heraclitus may give us insight into the mysteries of pre-Socratic thought; then again it may not. But the point here is that, pace Heidegger, πόλεμος means “war,” as in the Trojan War, the Thirty Years War, the Second World War. It is not a “setting apart” that lets Being appear but an activity in which large numbers of real people systematically kill and maim each other.
To the contrary, consider Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication #1, Warfighting:
War is a violent clash of interests between or among organized groups characterized by the use of military force. These groups have traditionally been established nation-states, but they may also include any nonstate group—such as an international coalition or a faction within or outside of an existing state—with its own political interests and the ability to generate organized violence on a scale sufficient to have significant political consequences.
The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. War is fundamentally an interactive social process. Clausewitz called it a Zweikampf (literally a “two-struggle”) and suggested the image of a pair of wrestlers locked in a hold, each exerting force and counterforce to try to throw the other.
War is thus a process of continuous mutual adaptation, of give and take, move and counter move. It is critical to keep in mind that the enemy is not an inanimate object to be acted upon but an independent and animate force with its own objectives and plans. While we try to impose our will on the enemy, they resist us and seek to impose their own will on us. Appreciating this dynamic interplay between opposing human wills is essential to understanding the fundamental nature of war.\
The object in war is to impose our will on our enemy. The means to this end is the organized application or threat of violence by military force.
This most pragmatic of all philosophical works on warfighting makes clear that the two aspects are inseparable. The philosopher may have erred by having chosen the wrong side, but he did not err in appreciating the essence of the thing as a conflict of opposing wills. That has much greater metaphysical significance than the author of the criticism may appreciate; but even if you want to keep it on the ground, as it were, the Marine Corps recognizes that you can't do without an appreciation of the essence of what war is. They aren't interested in metaphysics, and in philosophy only insofar as it supports the development of practical virtues leading to victory: yet here we are, in their most fundamental publication.
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