ABSTRACT
What Kant referred to as the “lawless use of Reason” found expression in the “doctrine that geometrical ‘reason’ is the only criteria of truth, so that there can be no limit to the application of reason operating on the basis of experience, and hence of knowledge.”1 This, in many ways, radical interpretation of the Cartesian project of Reason was – as we have seen – applied to the study and analysis of the conduct of war albeit with not very encouraging signs of success. Simultaneously, however, a more successful project to craft the concept of war was underway in the philosophico-juridico-political context. Unlike its counterpart in the domain of military theory, which failed to satisfactorily bridge the gap between the theory and practice of war, this project of developing and articulating a concept of war, which also took its inspiration from Descartes, particularly in his theorization of the Self (Subject), succeeded in (1) ensuring that the object of war was to bring an enemy to Reason, (2) developing and articulating the juridico-political framework within which war could be “reasonably” discussed, and (3) making war subject to the political and ultimately to a specific notion of the Human. This is most evident in the works of Jomini. As we have seen, though Jomini held that strategy was governed by scientific principles, and that there were fundamental principles upon which all good combinations of war have always rested and existed, he remained cognizant of the political context in which these “scientific principles” of war and strategy operated and of the acute disorienting potential that the occasional encounters with uncertainty, chaos, and the unknown had on the battlefield.
