WAR, Mathew Kodappanamkunnel

Cicero defines war broadly as "a contention by force"; Hugo Grotius adds that "war is the state of contending parties, considered as such"; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: "By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued;" Denis Diderot comments that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;" for Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other means", and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer's broader philosophical positions.

For example, the notion that wars only involve states-as Clausewitz implies-belies a strong political theory that assumes politics can only involve states and that war is in some manner or form a reflection of political activity. 'War' defined by Webster's Dictionary is a state of open and declared, hostile armed conflict between states or nations, or a period of such conflict. This captures a particularly political-rationalistic account of war and warfare, i.e., that war needs to be explicitly declared and to be between states to be a war. We find Rousseau arguing this position: "War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons…War then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State…" the Oxford Dictionary expands the definition to include "any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces or principles."  Heraclitus decries that "war is the father of all things," and Hegel echoes his sentiments. Interestingly, even Voltaire, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, followed this line: "Famine, plague, and war are the three most famous ingredients of this wretched world…All animals are perpetually at war with each other…Air, earth and water are arenas of destruction."  What is the meaning of war? This may seem a peculiar question, for war is always terrible: It always mean the death of young people at the order of their elders in the name of one ideal or another. But therein lies all the difference: The ideals that push one society to war would be dismissed by another. What constitutes self-defense by one group would be seen as blatant aggression by another. These differences in what constitutes what the early Christian church called a just war are important to remember even as our own country is at war, for the rhetoric of leaders during wartime is always that the war is just and inevitable. But by putting that rhetoric within the context of what other societies and other historical eras have considered to be the appropriate response to danger and aggression we can better judge whether the responses of our own nation are appropriate against the backdrop of history.