ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general background to the intellectual environment in which Clausewitz worked and from which he drew many of his methodological devices. It assesses the influences of the Enlightenment spirit of rational and scientific enquiry, the German Movement and the historicist school. The chapter examines Clausewitz's approach to theory in greater detail. It considers Clausewitz's views on the purpose and limits of theory and the various methods he employed. The chapter explores in some detail a number of the central theoretical problems he attempted to resolve in his work. The use of the dialectical method was a strong feature of German Idealist philosophy of the time and is most strongly associated with Hegel. It appears to have been a method that Clausewitz only seriously appropriated later in his life as he attempted to deal with issues that involved tensions between various concepts.
