ABSTRACT
The future casts a shadow, though its shape is not easily discernible. One silhouette is that of apocalypse. As if human life has not been bloody enough already, a shadow of apocalypse hanging over our heads, a grand suicidal act of our own making, plays the present with a melody of dread. Perhaps we are already there and we simply do not know it. We cannot step outside our own world to catch a view of our terrible historical process as a complete whole, as one brutal instant within which moments of quiet and peace are perhaps merely slices of respite from, and preparation for, greater brutality. Yet, the shadow cast by the future is also our own shadow, one fired by our own light behind our backs, our burning spirit, our beautiful idea. We cast our own future shadow before our selves, and are drawn to it; it seems, like a moth, but towards its own flame. Standing under the shadow of apocalypse we are offered a glimpse of a past and a future of our own making. Catching this glimpse we might realize that it is still too early to talk about inevitability and that, even from the point of view of what is the worst in ourselves, the worst aspects of our species, we might still be allowed to hope. This concluding chapter looks at the problem of judgment on war and the
manner in which continued efforts to reach an objective standpoint of judgment fail and contribute instead to a war of competing judgments. The chapter focuses upon how each tradition of war’s ordering contributes to a wider war of ideas in which judgments are posited together with acts of violence. Such positing and counter-positing involve something of a reciprocal violence within judgment itself, driving differing actors further into the darker moments of a war of some against some and all against all. Residing within a war of ideas there remains, however, a little bit of hope that can still be held onto. This hope might be grasped if a radical attitude towards judgment is taken, an attitude guided by a praxis of recognition. Such an attitude involves suspending the constant demand to condemn the other’s violence and instead engage in the effort of recognizing the ethics of the other’s war. By taking up such an attitude a small sphere of objectivity within judgment on war might be possible.
