ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author talks about the Stanley Hoffmann's volume. Hoffmann and the author, along with many social scientists, share a theory of programmed conflict, view with similar disdain moralistic approaches to political problems. With only slender satisfaction, the author can say that the difference between The State of War and The War Came is not only a moral schism, but just as assuredly, a social science chasm. Hoffmann's text is divided into nine chapters. Six and one-half of them are more or less linked to the title, while the other two and one-half are essays in the history of ideas—from Rousseau, Kant and Hobbes to Aron, Schelling, Kahn and Tucker. Hoffmann is at his best as a historian of ideas, but the bulk of the book and the burden of the argument rest upon the chapters directly concerned with the "state of war".
