War, The Philosophy of ? What is the relationship between human nature and war? Can war ever be morally justifiable? Defining what war is requires determining the entities that are allowed to begin and engage in war. What is War? The first issue to be considered is what is war and what is its definition. The student of war needs to be careful in examining definitions of war, for like any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance paraded by the author. This is as true of dictionary definitions as well as of articles on military or political history. Cicero defines war broadly as . 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. Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption (often abbreviated as FoC) is an expansion and sequel to Star Wars: Empire at War. The expansion adds many new maps and units, as well as an additional storyline revolving around the new faction, the Zann.
This captures a particularly political- rationalistic account of war and warfare, i. We find Rousseau arguing this position: . It is assumed to be an orderly affair in which states are involved, in which there are declared beginnings and expected ends, easily identifiable combatants, and high levels of obedience by subordinates. The form of rational war is narrowly defined, as distinguished by the expectation of sieges, pitched battles, skirmishes, raids, reconnaissance, patrol and outpost duties, with each possessing their own conventions. As such, Keegan notes the rationalist theory does not deal well with pre- state or non- state peoples and their warfare. There are other schools of thought on war's nature other than the political- rationalist account, and the student of war must be careful, as noted above, not to incorporate a too narrow or normative account of war. If war is defined as something that occurs only between states, then wars between nomadic groups should not be mentioned, nor would hostilities on the part of a displaced, non- state group against a state be considered war. An alternative definition of war is that it is an all- pervasive phenomenon of the universe. Accordingly, battles are mere symptoms of the underlying belligerent nature of the universe; such a description corresponds with a Heraclitean or Hegelian philosophy in which change (physical, social, political, economical, etc) can only arise out of war or violent conflict. Heraclitus decries that . Interestingly, even Voltaire, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, followed this line: . This perhaps indicates a too broad definition, for trade is certainly a different kind of activity than war, although trade occurs in war, and trade often motivates wars. The OED definition also seems to echo a Heraclitean metaphysics, in which opposing forces act on each other to generate change and in which war is the product of such a metaphysics. So from two popular and influential dictionaries, we have definitions that connote particular philosophical positions. The plasticity and history of the English language also mean that commonly used definitions of war may incorporate and subsume meanings borrowed and derived from other, older languages: the relevant root systems being Germanic, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Such descriptions may linger in oral and literary depictions of war, for we read of war in poems, stories, anecdotes and histories that may encompass older conceptions of war. Nonetheless, war's descriptions residing in the literature left by various writers and orators often possess similarities to modern conceptions. The differences arise from the writer's, poet's, or orator's judgement of war, which would suggest that an Ancient Greek conception of war is not so different from our own. Both could recognize the presence or absence of war. Star Wars: Empire at War, (sometimes abbreviated to simply EaW), is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that takes place in the Star Wars universe. Promising to end the perceived mediocrity of past Star Wars RTS games (like Star Wars: Force Commander and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.However, etymologically war's definition does refer to conceptions of war that have either been discarded or been imputed to the present definition, and a cursory review of the roots of the word war provides the philosopher with a glimpse into its conceptual status within communities and over time. For example, the root of the English word 'war', werra, is Frankish- German, meaning confusion, discord, or strife, and the verb werran meaning to confuse or perplex. War certainly generates confusion, as Clausewitz noted calling it the . The Latin root of bellum gives us the word belligerent, and duel, an archaic form of bellum; the Greek root of war is polemos, which gives us polemical, implying an aggressive controversy. The Frankish- Germanic definition hints at a vague enterprise, a confusion or strife, which could equally apply to many social problems besetting a group; arguably it is of a lower order sociological concept than the Greek, which draws the mind's attention to suggestions of violence and conflict, or the Latin, which captures the possibility of two sides doing the fighting. The present employment of 'war' may imply the clash and confusion embedded in early definitions and roots, but it may also, as we have noted, unwittingly incorporate conceptions derived from particular political schools. An alternative definition that the author has worked on is that war is a state of organized, open- ended collective conflict or hostility. This is derived from contextual common denominators, that is elements that are common to all wars, and which provide a useful and robust definition of the concept. This working definition has the benefit of permitting more flexibility than the OED version, a flexibility that is crucial if we are to examine war not just as a conflict between states (that is, the rationalist position), but also a conflict between non- state peoples, non- declared actions, and highly organized, politically controlled wars as well as culturally evolved, ritualistic wars and guerrilla uprisings, that appear to have no centrally controlling body and may perhaps be described as emerging spontaneously. The political issue of defining war poses the first philosophical problem, but once that is acknowledged, a definition that captures the clash of arms, the state of mutual tension and threat of violence between groups, the authorized declaration by a sovereign body, and so on can be drawn upon to distinguish wars from riots and rebellions, collective violence from personal violence, metaphorical clashes of values from actual or threatened clashes of arms. What causes war? Various sub- disciplines have grappled with war's etiology, but each in turn, as with definitions of war, often reflects a tacit or explicit acceptance of broader philosophical issues on the nature of determinism and freedom. For example, if it is claimed that man is not free to choose his actions (strong determinism) then war becomes a fated fact of the universe, one that humanity has no power to challenge. Again, the range of opinions under this banner is broad, from those who claim war to be a necessary and ineluctable event, one that man can never shirk from, to those who, while accepting war's inevitability, claim that man has the power to minimize its ravages, just as prescriptive medicines may minimize the risk of disease or lightning rods the risk of storm damage. The implication is that man is not responsible for his actions and hence not responsible for war. Wherein lies its cause then becomes the intellectual quest: in the medieval understanding of the universe, the stars, planets and combinations of the four substances (earth, air, water, fire) were understood as providing the key to examining human acts and dispositions. While the modern mind has increased the complexity of the nature of the university, many still refer to the universe's material nature or its laws for examining why war arises. Some seek more complicated versions of the astrological vision of the medieval mind (e. Kondratieff cycle theories), whereas others delve into the newer sciences of molecular and genetic biology for explanations. In a weaker form of determinism, theorists claim that man is a product of his environment- however that is defined- but he also possesses the power to change that environment. Arguments from this perspective become quite intricate, for they often presume that 'mankind' as a whole is subject to inexorable forces that prompt him to wage war, but that some people's acts- those of the observers, philosophers, scientists- are not as determined, for they possess the intellectual ability to perceive what changes are required to alter man's martial predispositions. Again, the paradoxes and intricacies of opinions here are curiously intriguing, for it may be asked what permits some to stand outside the laws that everybody else is subject to? Others, who emphasize man's freedom to choose, claim that war is a product of his choice and hence is completely his responsibility. But thinkers here spread out into various schools of thought on the nature of choice and responsibility. By its very collective nature, considerations of war's causation must encroach into political philosophy and into discussions on a citizen's and a government's responsibility for a war. Such concerns obviously trip into moral issues (to what extent is the citizen morally responsible for war?), but with regards war's causation, if man is responsible for the actual initiation of war it must be asked on whose authority is war enacted? Descriptive and normative problems arise here, for one may inquire who is the legal authority to declare war, then move to issues of whether that authority has or should have legitimacy. For example, one may consider whether that authority reflects what 'the people' want (or should want), or whether the authority informs them of what they want (or should want). Are the masses easily swayed by the ideas of the ? Here, some blame aristocracies for war (e.
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