Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates various dimensions of order wars being waged in the twenty-first century. It focuses on the modern philosophical tradition to identify the two giants—Kant and Hegel—as the logical antipodes, while portraying post-modernity, represented by Lyotard, as a radicalized form of Kant's individualist methodologies. The book observes that the crisis of modernity has been evident since World Wars I and II, especially to those who had experienced the Holocaust as a crime against humanity. It illustrates Clausewitz's "wondrous trinity" and applies this notion to the analysis of the contemporary wars. The book draws on the classical texts of Confucian harmony to analyze its contemporary usage as a paramount idea for national, regional, and global governance. It also introduces the notion of recognition as a way to address the struggles for recognition by featuring the ideas of three philosophers: Hegel, Clausewitz, and Arendt.