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ABSTRACT
War is both violent and significantly ordered. As an intrinsically social phenomenon, war is deeply affected by all manner of socio-cultural norms and ‘ethics’ that shape the conceptualisation and experience of war, from justifying it to condemning it, from formulating grand strategy to engaging in individual hand-to-hand combat, and from understanding what it means to achieve victory or suffer defeat. How, then, should scholars approach the study of war and ethics, particularly from the perspective of intellectual history? When we still lack a consensus definition of what war is, much less a consensus about how war has shaped and been shaped by ethical thought, this is far from a simple question. This essay reflects on how a comparative and multi-disciplinary approach to the study of pre-modern war and ethics may encourage historians to ask new questions of the subject. I consider the methodology and theoretical foundations of four disciplines – comparative history, anthropology, sociology, and psychology – in order to highlight how a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach can enhance our understanding of the complex historical relationship between war and ethics.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Chateau de la Brêtesche, Brittany, part of a workshop organised by the Caltech-Huntington Humanities Collaboration programmme and sponsored by the Borchard Foundation. I wish to thank all the participants for their feedback, especially Prof Warren Brown for his insightful and generous response.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The literature on violence is too vast to list here, but some attempts to trace a history of violence include: Walker, “A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence”; Brown, Violence in Medieval Europe; Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature; Muchembled, A History of Violence. For a sociological and normative IR theory approach, see Linklater, Violence and Civilization in the Western States Systems.
2 See also Lane, “Conclusion,” 523.
3 See indicative essays: Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History; Simiand, “Méthode historique et science sociale,” 154–57; idem, “Causal Interpretation and Historical Research,” 469–93.
4 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars; Coates, The Ethics of War.
5 Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages; Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts 1200–1740; idem, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War; idem, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions; idem, Ethics and the Use of Force: Just War in Historical Perspective; Johnson and Kelsay, eds., Cross, Crescent, and Sword; Kelsay, Islam and War; idem, “Islamic Tradition and the Justice of War”; 2006, 81–110; idem, Arguing the Just War in Islam; idem, “Just War, Jihad, and the Study of Comparative Ethics”; Kelsay and Johnson, eds., Just War and Jihad.
6 An indicative list includes: Bellamy, Just Wars; Brekke, ed., The Ethics of War in Asian Civilizations; Reichberg et al., eds., The Ethics of War; Syse and Reichberg, eds., Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History; Lang, “The Just War Tradition and the Question of Authority”; Morkevicius, “Ethics of War in Protestant Christianity”; Hensel, ed., The Prism of Just War; Syse, “The Platonic Roots of Just War Doctrine: A Reading of Plato’s Republic”; Reichberg and Syse, eds., Religion, War, and Ethics; Lo, ed., Chinese Just War Ethics; O’Driscoll, “Rewriting the Just War Tradition: Just War in Classical Greek Political Thought and Practice”; Cox, “Expanding the History of the Just War: The Ethics of War in Ancient Egypt”; idem, “The Ethics of War up to Thomas Aquinas”; O’Driscoll and Brunstetter, eds., Just War Thinkers.
7 Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” 496.
8 Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” 494–6.
9 Stewart, Pickett’s Charge; Pfanz, Gettysburg: The Second Day.
10 Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” 496.
11 Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” 496–8.
12 Sewelll, “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History,” 215.
13 Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV (1914–1916), 299.
14 Bloch, “Comparative History,” 507.
15 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 43. Compare Durkheim’s statement that: ‘Comparative sociology is not a particular branch of sociology; it is sociology itself, in so far as it ceases to be purely descriptive and aspires to account for facts.’ Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 139. Also cited in Smelser, Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences, 2.
16 Wickham, “Problems in Doing Comparative History,” 6–7.
17 Smelser, Comparative Methods, 1.
18 Bloch, “Comparative History,” 497–8.
19 Even Bloch was ready to admit that: ‘A general phenomenon must have equally general causes.’ Bloch, “Comparative History,” 505.
20 Sorabji and Rodin. “Introduction,” 2.
21 Bloch, “Comparative History,” 501–2.
22 On inter-regional continuity and supra-national societies, see Hodgson, “The Interrelations of Societies in History,” 227–50.
23 This question hinges on providing a historical context for ethical reflection or legal developments. As Bederman observes: ‘It is not enough … that States may have said that they observed a particular rule of international law. It is quite another matter to see whether they, in fact, did so.’ Bederman, International Law in Antiquity, 5.
24 Williams, “In the Beginning was the Deed”.
25 Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 292–4; see also Simpson, “Freud on the State, Violence, and War,” 86.
26 Good, “Capital Punishment and Its Alternatives in Ancient Near Eastern Law,” 947–77; Grossman, On Killing.
27 Haas, ed., The Anthropology of War, p. xiii; Fried, “Warfare, Military Organization, and the Evolution of Society,” 134–5.
28 Pitt, Using Historical Sources in Anthropology and Sociology, 7; Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 29. For an attempted synthesis of a functionalist and historically-sympathetic approach, see Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, 281ff.
29 Andreski, Military Organization and Society, 7.
30 For examples of this materialist argument, see: Vayda, “Expansion and Warfare among Swidden Agriculturalists,” 202–20; Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, 10; Andreski, Military Organization and Society, 10; Fried, “Military Organization,” 139. For a more nuanced view, see Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 29–32.
31 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Bk. V, 400–8.
32 The beginning of such work, as well as numerous examples of warriors having to fulfil taboo obligations and purification rituals, can be found in Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 4, 157–90.
33 See Crawford, “The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships,” 116–56; idem, “Emotions and International Security: Cave! Hic Libido,” 121–3; idem, “Institutionalizing Passion in World Politics: Fear and Empathy,” 535–57; Lebow, “Fear, Interest and Honour: Outlines of a Theory of International Relations,” 431–48.
34 Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 33–4.
35 Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 43.
36 The most dedicated advocates of diffusionist theory included Perry, Children of the Sun; idem, The Growth of Civilization; Smith, The Diffusion of Culture, esp. 208–32.
37 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 5.
38 ‘The fact is that to commit oneself to a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach to the study of it is to commit oneself to a view of ethnographic assertion as, to borrow W. B. Gallie’s by now famous phrase, “essentially contestable.” Anthropology, or at least interpretive anthropology, is a science whose progress is marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other.’ Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 29.
39 Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” 11.
40 For the classical statement of this approach, see Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”.
41 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 15.
42 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 17–18.
43 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 44.
44 Speier, “Class Structure and ‘Total War’,” 370.
45 Wright, A Study of War, vol. 1, 434; vol. 2, 705.
46 Clausewitz, On War, Bk. I.1.2, 75.
47 Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, 35, 43, 59.
48 Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, 39–40.
49 Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, 40, 45.
50 Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, 46.
51 Smelser, Comparative Methods, 48.
52 Smelser, Comparative Methods, 44, 51; Durkheim, Sociological Method, 62–3.
53 Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science,” 54.
54 Nardin, “Introduction,” 9.
55 Weber’s definition of an ideal type: ‘The ideal typical concept will help to develop our skill in imputation in research: it is no “hypothesis” but it offers guidance to the construction of hypotheses. It is not a description of reality but it aims to give unambiguous means of expression to such a description … An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Gedankenbild). In its conceptual purity, this mental construct (Gedankenbild) cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia. Historical research faces the task of determining in each individual case, the extent to which this ideal-construct approximates to or diverges from reality’. Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science,” 90.
56 See above, note 5. See also Cox, “Gratian”.
57 Cox, “Expanding the History of the Just War Tradition,” 372.
58 Wright, Study of War, vol. 2, 683.
59 For examples and discussion, see Wright, Study of War, vol. 1, 425ff.
60 Weil, Simone Weil’s The “Iliad” or The Poem of Force.
61 Most anthropologists have abandoned ‘instinct’ theories, and stress that violence is a learned, cultural behaviour and culture cannot be genetically transmitted: LeShan, The Psychology of War, 15.
62 See Fornari, The Psychoanalysis of War, xxiii.
63 Fornari, Psychoanalysis of War, xv–xvi.
64 Fornari, Psychoanalysis of War, xvi.
65 Fornari, Psychoanalysis of War, xvii–xviii.
66 LeShan, Psychology of War, 5, 22.
67 LeShan, The Psychology of War, 27–8.
68 LeShan, The Psychology of War, 117.
69 LeShan, The Psychology of War, 124.
70 Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fifth, Act 4, scene 1, 585.
71 In a speech given in 1918, just a few years after Freud’s essay on the First World War, Weber also famously defined the state according to its monopolization of violence. See Weber, From Max Weber, 78.
72 Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 279.
73 Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 280.
74 Laing, The Divided Self, 39–45. Giddens adapts the concept of ontological security into a structural sociological thesis: Giddens, The Constitution of Society; idem. Modernity and Self-Identity. Giddens’ work has had a marked and growing influence within the field of security and IR studies, for example see: Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma”; Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations. There has also been a spate of journal special issues dedicated to ontological (in)security: Special Issue of Cooperation and Conflict 52, no. 1 (2017); European Security 27, no. 3 (2018); Journal of International Relations and Development (2018) [issue currently unassigned].
75 Fornari, Psychoanalysis of War, 22–3.
76 Fornari, Psychoanalysis of War, 32–4.
77 Freud argues that powerful prohibitions are only laid on powerful impulses: ‘What no human soul desires stands in no need of prohibition; it is excluded automatically. The very emphasis laid on the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” makes it certain that we spring from an endless series of generations of murderers, who had the lust for killing in their blood, as, perhaps, we ourselves have to-day.’ Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 296.
78 Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 283–6, 299. See also Simpson, “Freud on the State,” 83.
79 ‘Thus the transformation of instinct, on which our susceptibility to culture is based, may also be permanently or temporarily undone by the impacts of life. The influences of war are undoubtedly among the forces that can bring about such involution’. Freud, Complete Works, vol. 14, 286.
80 Davis, “Introduction: Comparative Ethics and the Crucible of War,” 1.
81 Davis, “Introduction: Comparative Ethics and the Crucible of War,” 15.
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Rory Cox
Rory Cox is Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. His interdisciplinary research examines violence, the ethics of war, and comparative international history, from the ancient world to the present day.