ABSTRACT
The previous chapter outlined the development of the initial moments of a modern concept of war. Through the natural law theories of Grotius and Hobbes the relation between the concepts of war and right were ordered around an emerging notion of secular, European sovereign authority. ‘War proper’ was framed as a particular form of violence between sovereigns rather than as social violence between humans in general. The juridical ordering of war helped to formalize a trend towards the de-theologization and de-moralization of war. In this process, acts of terror and civil war were de-legitimized and even criminalized through an emphasis upon the sovereign’s monopoly upon the legitimacy of violence. In such a configuration the notions of peace, security and the preservation of life took centre stage. Within the outlines of the Westphalian tradition the question of the rightness
of war came to be understood as a question pertaining to the status and limits of sovereign authority. When thinking about the problem of war in contemporary times this line of inheritance remains significant. The sovereign authority of the state remains a primary organ or persona through which social-political relations and the legitimacy of acts of violence within the world are arranged and understood. Yet, today, within a global system of international law the state sovereign’s right to war is limited by the notions of international peace and cosmopolitan human rights. On the back of these notions, the act of aggressive war is condemned and, to an extent, is criminalized. This chapter examines one line of inheritance of the problem of war in which these contemporary conceptions are seen to emerge theoretically: the moral ordering of war. This chapter focuses upon how the approaches to the problem of war taken
by Grotius and Hobbes are inherited and taken up by Immanuel Kant through his re-framing of the problem of war as a moral problem. While Kant continues to hold onto the importance of the category of peace and the notion of war proper as state war, he attempts to reorder the question of the legitimacy of state violence via the categories of freedom and moral duty. Further, Kant institutes a radical, theoretical account of human reason and moral thinking
that is no longer reliant upon nature to provide a measure for judgments over war. Kant’s fundamental break with the depiction of reason given by his predecessors helps to usher in a modern form of approaching war in which the activity of human thinking – and the human responsibility for its own acts of thinking – begin to come into prominence. In historical terms, Kant’s moral ordering of war anticipates and occurs as a
forerunner to the developments of international law within the twentieth century. These developments involved attempts to legally regulate state violence, the outlawing of aggressive war and the predominant use of a moral language drawn upon to both justify and condemn acts of war. Through focusing upon Kant’s approach we might better come to terms with the Janus face of the contemporary moral ordering of war. On the one hand, the moral ordering of war offers a powerful and radical sense of hope. It posits an idea that may be believed in by millions that war can be overcome and that the world should be re-ordered in a manner that secures not only peace, but also freedom, human dignity and cosmopolitan justice. Further, the moral ordering of war presents a strong critique of the petty justifications for war, aggression and colonialism so often peddled by lawyers, leaders and heroes. Yet, on the other hand, the moral ordering of war opens onto the possibility of its own abuse. The moral ordering of war plunges the problem of war back into the chaos of competing moral claims over the right to violence. Also, the emergence of the moral validation of war develops as a modern form of secular, ‘just war’. By way of introducing a number of concepts that are drawn upon and
developed by Kant, the chapter will begin by briefly discussing aspects of the moral and political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Following this, the chapter will examine Kant’s moral philosophy – underlaid by his epistemology – by looking at the way in which he draws upon a ‘universal’ moral theory to come to terms with the problem of war. While Kant’s cosmopolitan approach to the problem of war has many merits, his approach suffers from a number of severe limitations stemming from the inability of his moral theory to properly account for the role of violence within moral action and the status of violence at the foundation of legal institutions. Such a limitation in Kant’s theory renders problematic the many contemporary ‘cosmopolitan’ approaches that follow in his footsteps.
