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Copyright Notice Staff and students of Birkbeck College are reminded that copyright subsists in this extract and the work from which it is taken. This Digital Copy has been made under the terms of a CLA licence which allows you to: access and download a copy; print out a copy. This Digital Copy and any digital or printed copy supplied to or made by you under the terms of this Licence are for use in connection with this Course of Study. You may retain such copies after the end of the course, but strictly for your own personal use. All copies (including electronic copies) shall include this Copyright Notice and shall be destroyed and/or deleted if and when required by Birkbeck College. Except as provided for by copyright law, no further copying, storage or distribution (including by e-mail) is permitted without the consent of the copyright holder. The author (which term includes artists and other visual creators) has moral rights in the work and neither staff nor students may cause, or permit, the distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work, or any other derogatory treatment of it, which would be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author. Course of study: POSO004U Name of designated person authorising scanning: Philip Payne (Librarian) Title: The Paradox of War Name of author(s): Gelven, M. Name of publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press Full citation: Gelven, M. (1994) The Paradox of War. In: War and Existence: A Philosophical Inquiry. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press ISBN: 0271027312 pp 3-18.

The Paradox of War

Some are only seventeen; many are even less than that. Their khaki uniforms and steel helmets and high-laced boots appear as mockeries to their innocence. In their young and skilled hands they hold terrible weapons designed to send awesome destruction over great distances against targets that are known as the enemy, often boys as young as they, boys whose names they do not know. They kill and they die; and when they do, no one assigns them felonious or capital charges, no one brings them before tribunals of judgment, and few would even try to call them criminals. Their counterparts, the enemy, are no less vulnerable, no less innocent, no less loved by their mothers and sweethearts than they. The enemy, too, want to live and expect to live, to grow and discover things and further the advance of humanity at least by propagating their own kind, if nothing else. They are always the young, possessing youthful virtues like valor and bravery and great adaptability, but their curious vocation is death, taking and receiving it, dying and killing. For the gathered host only one thing matters: victory. That is how they see things: victory or defeat. No other value seems to

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immoral. Then, if one decides to judge a particular war immoral, it cannot be sufficient to give as reason simply that it is a war. ~ o speople today, I t believe, would argue that the Allies in World War 11were morally correct in defending themselves against the Nazi tyranny. If this is so, then there must be some sense of what constitutes a morally justifiable war. But if that is so, then the idea that war per se is evil must be false. Fascinating as such considerations are, they do not constitute the present undertaking, which is concerned solely with the problem that war is a paradox: to be able to think about the meaning of war, one must somehow bring together the essentially negative instincts that one has against it with those principles, whatever they are, that explain why we do indeed fight regardless of war's grim and terrible costs. War is a paradox. We go to war even as we hate it. Why? Is it because there is some dreadful mistake? Do we go to war because of ignorance? This is a view that some people suggest, of course, but even on the most cursory of analyses such an explanation will not stand. One of the more curious truths about war is that very often the men engaged in a war do not believe that the men they are fighting are in any way particularly wicked. Indeed, it is possible to refine this notion so as to bring out the true paradoxical character of men at war. One can imagine the following situation. A young man who lives on the western side of a river that divides two countries may, during a time of peace, visit and befriend a family on the eastern side. It is even possible that the young man could fall in love with the daughter of a family on the eastern shores. He visits them frequently; he grows to love them and appreciates their native goodness and their humanity. Then war is declared between the two countries, the young man is drafted into the army of his nation, and he is trained as a soldier. Perhaps it is with great reluctance, but the young man may find himself actually firing on the very village that is the home of his friends. He certainly does not believe his nominal enemy is wicked, nor is he ignorant of their own claims to a good and peaceful life. But one can imagine such a person actually fighting against those whom he loves. At the very least, this shows us that war is not dependent on simplistic notions of good and evil or that we go to war because of hate. Indeed, such stories need not be imagined; they are all too real in the history of warfare. Men have actually endured such agony; such human dramas have occurred on almost every border separating nations throughout the globe. There must be something compelling in a man's nature that will prompt him to destroy the very people he loves. However one describes this inspiration, it is paradoxical. It is a paradox

because one does not forfeit the love one has for those of alien nations merely in going to war against them. In some way a person may feel an obligation and a reverence for both conflicting instincts; so to understand the phenomenon properly requires an understanding of how those values can conflict. Like some sinister and dreaded fever in the blood that lies dormant for long periods, war seems an ever-looming possibility that generates anguish and strange excitement. The term "war fever" depicts this curious ambivalence toward the fearsome event. As a nation draws near to the hour of war, a quickening takes place in the pulse; the body politic trembles with cold and sweats with fever; a greater urgency to all things seems to take place. Life seems sweeter and yet more burdensome, an ache of huge longing grabs the sinews, and love is heightened. Few other experiences within a national life can be equated with this, and this too speaks of the profound paradoxical nature of the way we think of war. There is something so huge about its threat that it is almost sublime in proportion. It is almost as if the very realization that so much suffering is possible made us aware of unexpected dimensions of ourselves. Thus war, which seems to concern itself with death, becomes a curious quickener of life. This is a paradox. How are we to understand the conflicting values that produce this paradoxical concept, war? What reasons are there that stimulate a heightened sense of life in the threat of awesome death? Why does the young man who loves the daughter of his enemy nevertheless find persuasion, if not justification, for donning the uniforms of his country and inflicting violent harm on his beloved? If the paradox is to make sense, the nature of these appeals must be made clear. Should we ask the youth why he is willing to war against the family he loves beyond the border, he might respond by pointing out the importance of his country. And should we reflect on our own excitement that seems to distort our moral sense like some strong and heavy wine, we might pinpoint the culprit as the value we place on our own nation. For the first time, perhaps, as the clouds of war eclipse the peace, we begin to think in terms of them and us. Victory we hope will be ours; defeat will be theirs. Victory, in fact, becomes intelligible as something profoundly ours, just as the threat of defeat undermines our entire sense of identity. War seems to underscore the difference between them and us almost to the point of equating war with the principle of we-they. Why does the boy accept the burden of fighting against his beloved? Because she is of them, because the appeal made is to his people. The possessive pronoun becomes a principle of thought. All of the normal and ethical values that

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support tranquillity are challenged by this curious authority of the we over the they. Whatever the worth of peace, it is contrasted with the worth one places in preferring the we over the they. The paradox of war can thus be characterized in this way: the benefits of peace attract us, but so does the significance of what is ours. Value is placed on both ways of thinking. On the one hand, we treasure life and the respect for it: this is our instinct for peace. On the other, we esteem whatever is meant by the we as opposed to the they: this is our instinct for war. Only if there is genuine support for both sides can there be a true paradox. Whether such values are correct and whether such belligerence is justified, this is, at least, the fact. This is the way war is thought about. The paradoxical nature of war is profoundly ingrained into our consciousness; we think the paradox often as a metaphor for other problems. It occurs almost naturally in our language, in our arts, and in our self-analysis. Perhaps war is an essential part of our own natures, and as it externalizes into actual feats of belligerence, the one becomes a source of understanding for the other. When we grasp the nature of war, we grasp ourselves. This is evidenced in the most sublime of our literature. In the fourth act of Hamlet the young prince comes across a huge army preparing to go to war. From the size and disposition of the troops, Hamlet assumes they are about to invade all of Poland, but a captain assures him that they fight "to gain a little patch of ground / That hath in it no profit but the name." The prince digests this curious information and compares it to his own anguish at not being able to act decisively. The sight of the army about to engage in bloody war provokes him to reflect: Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd, Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor's at the stake. War may gain mere eggshells or straw, but to fight for them greatly seems to Hamlet to redeem what is otherwise supremely foolish. Terms like "honor"

and "divine ambition" spring readily to our consciousness when we confront the paradox of war, for those are the kinds of terms that seem to constitute the value that mirrors the grief and lamentation of so much death. Surely it must be obvious to anyone that if we are to understand what war is, we must isolate and identify those values that prompt such costly quarrels. In calling these notions values, I do not intend to make a determinate, moral judgment for the rightness or wrongness of the act. Calling them values is merely a necessity if we are to see how we think about the meaning of war. The quotation from Hamlet shows that such thinking is a frequent and perhaps even necessary part of who we are. And from this quotation we also learn what seems to lie at the center of our willingness to cancel peace: Is that all we are? Surely there is more to me than what can be found in the behavior of animals- things, for example, like honor. To argue that war is a paradox is to give philosophical significance to almost every artistic and critical attempt to depict war's nature. Even the most ambitious of pictorial endeavors finds both blood and triumph; even the most critical of artworks leaves a remnant of the nobility of sacrifice. It is perhaps a curiosity that those who would seek to deter us from war by depicting war's miseries rarely succeed in accomplishing a universal pacificism, for it is impossible to reveal suffering without likewise revealing sacrifice. Countless visions of twisted corpses make us weep, but they also leave us in awe of the sacrifice. Just as we are aghast at the loss of something supremely precious, like life, so are we impressed that such high and lofty price is paid for something that must be of enormous worth. Part of the paradox of war is that the more vivid and ghastly the depiction of its misery, the more it is treasured. And the paradox works the other way as well: the more triumphantly and gloriously war is depicted, the more grim and pitiful it becomes. This is not to decry such efforts but simply to show that war almost inevitably presents itself to us as paradoxical. Like love, it is a phenomenon that is at once dreadful and inspiring, and anyone who attempts to plunge its mysteries without realizing this dialectical tension is doomed to misrepresent and misunderstand. Of course, not all warriors are self-sacrificing; some are grudging and reluctant combatants; some are forced through terror or conscription to engage in unwarranted slaughter for the aggrandizement of a despotic conqueror. War, like any other endeavor, can be debased by ignoble men and unworthy goals. So can love. That some men rape women does not indict carnality; that some women abuse their marriage does not indict the sacrament of matrimony. That powerful and ruthless leaders often terrorize

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or mislead their warriors into national pillage is an abuse of the meaning of war, just as rape is an abuse of sexual union, and infidelity an abuse of marriage. The present study is an inquiry into the meaning of a coherent, thinkable phenomenon known as war; it is not intended as a justification of all warlike behavior, nor need it account apologetically for these deviations. The benefits of peace, however, seem far more obvious than the reasons for war. There does not seem to be any need to defend peace; the mere existence of tranquillity lends itself to our approval. War, on the other hand, appears to us as at least needing serious justification. If the nature of war is paradoxical, it is essential for us to isolate just what kind of reasoning justifies the disturbance of our serenity. Shakespeare, of course, points out the immediate justification, honor. He asks why we are created with such remarkable powers of thought if we are merely going to live as if our animal existence were our only concern. Instincts are far better instruments to guarantee our happiness; reason must have some other purpose. (It is of interest to note that Shakespeare seems to think that reason alone can justify honor; a similar argument is found in the ethical works of Immanuel Kant.) As noted above, there seems to be a kind of authority to the distinction between us and them. For even Fortinbras's warriors do not fight for honor by themselves; they are fighting for Norway. Honor comes to them because of who they are, Norwegians. At the beginning of this chapter there is a description of the young warrior. If we ask, How do we understand this man? the answer must be that he is fighting for what is ours; he understands his own sacrifice and belligerence in terms of what is our own. The reason he may even go so far as to attack the village where his friends live is that the endeavor is his and ours. It is possible then to describe as a principle the kind of thought that makes sense of this conduct. A principle is a way of thinking that makes something intelligible. The acts of the wamors are rendered intelligible because of the principle that what belongs to them matters. And so it is possible to designate this kind of thinking the we-they principle. By this is meant that one acts in accordance with the worth that comes from the shared meaningfulness of existence, not because of egoistic principles, such as would be designated by the I, but because of mutual and shared meaning, which can only be designated by the we. Enmity, in this sense, is not determined by what is immoral or unjust but simply by the threat of something other-the they. War is made intelligible-meaning that we can think about it -by means of the we-they principle. History itself provides ample demonstration of this principle. In the

funeral oration of Pericles, the Greek leader points out that what makes the Athenian soldier so remarkable is his highly motivated sense that what he is fighting for is his own country. The Athenians had a more highly developed sense of this "ownness" because of their peculiar (to the ancients) notion of citizenship; they were free men, and their land and property were quite literally "theirs"; that is, it belonged to them and not merely to the sovereign. The early American patriots were likewise famous for their statements of a similar kind of loyalty. The naval officer Steven Decatur is known, if for no other reason, for his famous toast: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." But it is not the patriotic toasts and orations of speakers but the remarkable courage on the battlefield that attests to the meaning of the we-they principle. It can be seen in the various kinds of wars that are fought. In national wars, like the world wars in this century, to fight for what is ours against the hegemony of what is theirs is a paradigm of the principle. The United States and its Allies, especially England, saw the we as representing all the values and culture as they knew it. To them, the Allies were defending such noble sentiments as democracy in the First World War and western civilization itself in the Second World War. The British fought against the Germans for the simple reason that what was their own (Britain) mattered more than safety. To lose the war was to lose the importance of what this ownness meant. In the Second World War, when Britain was actually threatened with annihilation, the sense of the we over against the they was all-powerful. Nothing could be thought more dreadful than defeat by Nazi tyranny. But even if the moral support had not been so absolute, the British would have fought for what was her own. This is simply what is meant by a national war. But the we-they principle is not always determined by nations. In the American Civil War, the South created a new sense of the we over against a new they, the union. This was more than mere geography; the South began to think of itself as representing a different sense of what is important, a new reference point to the primordial notion of "we." When a Southerner used the term "we" in 1800, he probably meant, "we, the United States"; but when he used the term "we" in 1861, he probably meant not the United but the Confederate States. How this shift of the we took place is the business of history to determine, but it is the essential and necessary principle that explains why we go to war. The same can be said for violent social disorders that alter history. Before 1776, good, honest V i a gentlemen could not have understood by "we" anything other than "the British nation";

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15

meaning of victory without any reference to a specific war; we do not know for whom the fallen soldier has fought, or even if his side won or lost. All we know is that in his death the meaning of victory is somehow more poignant than could ever be appreciated by those who lived to enjoy it. It is very often thus: we grasp the worth of something only when we have lost it, as when we have lost the trust of a friend. But the poet reveals even more: we know what victory means in part by how much it costs, and what is being paid in this poem is a life. But if the cost of victory is something so precious as a life, we must reflect on what victory means. The dying warrior tells us what victory means in part by showing us how much it means to him. The victory is precious not only because it is right but also because its price has been paid without regret, just as it is impossible to understand his sacrifice without appreciation. It is a paradox in which what is precious contrasts with what is valuable. The we-they principle is not reserved exclusively for the understanding of war. It is present in our understanding of many things, including the satisfaction we take in reading history, the joy in poetry that depends on our language, the care we take in fostering our rituals and cultural celebrations. All the ills and joys that surround the value of hearth and home, from the anguish of homesickness to the instincts for visitation and return, depend on this distinction. The we-they principle is thus an essential way in which we think about the meaning of our own existence. We are therefore not speaking of a mere psychological fact that needs to be explained or justified. We are discussing a principle far more fundamental; it is a principle that illuminates the very meaning of the worth we place on what is our own. Because this principle is so fundamental, and because it articulates the very meaning of an existence that can be our own, it can properly be identified as an existential principle. Because the we-they principle is the basis of war, then, war must be understood existentially. The analysis, however, does not depend on the moral superiority of the we over the they. Indeed, such an argument would sabotage the true significance of the present inquiry. If one were to argue that war is based on the we-they distinction, but then insisted that the we always be morally superior, the need for the we-they would simply vanish, and one would have reduced the meaning of war to the meaning of justice. But such an account in no way considers the paradox. The basis of war is the werthey distinction, but such a distinction is not itself based on moral superiority. What this means, then, is that it is enough for a community to be mine, and not necessarily better, to explain my fighting for it.

The point of this discussion is that the we-they distinction has autonomous significance; it establishes worth and meaning independently though not in disregard of moral distinctions. It is a mom1 point when 1consider the worth of an action as either good or wicked, but it is an existential point when I consider the worth of something because it is mine or not mine. The term "existential" may perhaps be unfortunate. It is sometimes associated with the works of Continental thinkers who in the last and present century espoused doctrines that are more accurately defined as nihilistic. The term, obviously, concerns itself with existence, so that if one were to be precise, an "existentialist" thinker would be one who reflects and thinks about the meaning of existence. Anyone who denies that this can be done-that is, anyone who claims that questions about the meaning of existence are wholly random and arbitrary-is strictly speaking a nihilist. Nihilism is the doctrine that existence as such has no meaning. The technique of the nihilist is to show that all seeming judgments of what it means to exist turn out to be either self-contradictory or simply without any meaning. But one cannot battle against the popular usage of terms. Today we use the term "epicurean" in a sense completely opposite to its original meaning: Epicurus is about as far from epicureanism as can be imagined. The term "Platonic love" today means sexless love, but anyone reading Plato's dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus knows that these works are deeply carnal and manifestly and overtly sexual. But no amount of scholarly protest is going to change popular usage, and so the term "existentialism" will probably forever convey to the mind the works of Continental thinkers. Thus, I avoid the academic term "existentialism," but retain the right to use the word "existential." I use this term because it says exactly what is meant: something about existence. To be absolutely strict, the term as 1 use it in this work refers to something about the meaning of existence. It is, then, exactly the opposite of the term "nihilistic." What is one talking about when one makes an "existential judgment"? Perhaps the best way to focus on the proper meaning of this all-important term is to begin with an example. Suppose a father buys his young son a toy: If I were to ask the father why he had bought the toy for his son, 1 could imagine two meaningful and acceptable kinds of answers: he bought the toy because his son did well in school, or he bought the toy for his son simply because he is his son. We immediately recognize the distinction between these two responses. In the first case, the toy is a reward for what the boy has done; in the second, the toy is a gift, based not on what the boy has done

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but simply on who the boy is, the man's son. Rewards are earned; gifts are gracious. In my usage of the term, the gift is existential because it concerns who the boy is. The term "existential" often, though not always, is used in a sense that contrasts with the moral, as in the present case. It is morally right to give a boy a reward he has earned, but it is existentially significant to give a boy a gift. The gift celebrates the boy's existence; the reward celebrates the boy's good conduct. What is important about this example is that most of us readily accept both responses as coherent and understandable, yet everyone also immediately knows the difference. Another example from ordinary language and experience may help. We are all acquainted with the phenomenon of forgiveness,but that to forgive is to rank the existential worth over the moral worth is obvious only after reflection and analysis. Suppose the son mentioned above commits a fault. The father realizes the boy deserves punishment. Indeed, let us allow that in this case the boy himself would readily admit that he deserves punishment. Now, suppose we say that the father, rather than punish the boy (which is what he ought to do), instead forgives him. This is not be confused with excusing, since to excuse is to argue for mitigating circumstances. To forgive the is possible only if (1) perpetrator is guilty of wrongdoing, (2) punishment ought to be meted out, and (3)there are no mitigating circumstances that might lessen either the guilt or the punishment. With this term clearly spelled out, it is obvious that forgiveness literally violates the moral' law. Strictly speaking, it is a contradiction ever to say, ."I ought to forgive," because the word "ought" establishes a moral imperative, whereas forgiveness cancels the grim necessity of the moral law. On what basis, then, can the father forgive the son? One cannot argue that the basis of forgiveness is moml, since morality demands punishment. But one cannot simply forgive wantonly. There must be some ground, some basis, that outranks the authority of what is deserved. Again, the appeal is made to the existential worth. We say the father forgives the boy because the boy is his son. When we hear such a thing, it is completely intelligible. We understand it completely, because that is simply the way we think about fathers and sons. The worth of the boy's existence as son outranks the moral authority of the boy's deserving punishment. In both cases the existential is contrasted with what is earned. The boy earns the toy because he excels in his schoolwork; the boy earns the ~unishment because of his wrongdoing. The boy does not earn the gift; that is given merely because of who he is. Nor does the boy earn forgiveness; that too is given merely because of who he is-it is part of what it means to

be a son. We understand morality as the result of action; we understand existentiality as the result of who one is, not what one does. These two examples may help in isolating the precise meaning of the notion "existential." In no way are these judgments to be reduced to em@ tions or feelings. To say, "I give a gift to this boy because he is my son," is not a statement about my feelings but a b u t very real, objective relations. I may have emotional feelings when I say or think such things, but I may also have such feelings when I assert a fact: my friend is dead. The truth of the judgment is in no way altered because there is an emotional response to the realization of that truth. The claim that the gift is given because the boy is my son is also more than a mere assertion of biological fact. What it means to be a father is not exhausted by the biological accounts of fathering. This seeming subtlety about the uses of language must be emphasized. The judgment is not "I give the boy a gift because of how I feel about his being my son"; it is simply "because he is my son." Certain emotivists argue that the latter meaning is completely exhausted by the former. Such an argument is profoundly metaphysical and can be believed only if the entire metaphysical reductionist account is true. If one were to argue that what we are identifying as "existential claims" really are nothing else but dressed-up emotional utterances, the burden of proof would be on the emotivist. It is certainly not what most people mean when they say such things, and it is definitely not what is meant by this analysis. So there are uniquely existential judgments that cannot be reduced either to factual assertions about the world or to emotive attitudes about the subject. One of these existential judgments is the principle that our meaning as a people (the we) is more fundamental than our ordinary concerns for peace. On the other hand, our sentiments for peace are well grounded. This is an intellectual paradox because we seem to have two differing and conflicting sets of principles that guide our thinking about war, but it is also an emotional paradox because we seem to feel in two totally different ways about our own warlikeness. Conflicts of this sort are either mistabs (one of our instincts is simply misguided or erroneous), or they are contradictory (the conflicting instincts simply cannot coexist, so that one must be sacrificed on behalf of rational coherence), or they are genuinely paradoxical, which means the conflicting sentiments are both valid, their coexistence does not produce a contradiction, and the task of inquiry is to ascertain exactly why and how the two conflicting instincts can coexist. War reveals itself as a genuine paradox in this philosophical sense; so, if we are to understand war, we must isolate those principles that make us go to war,

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analyze them in terms of their unique presuppositions and values, and test their validity. The paradox of war is not only conceptual, it is also deeply existential. It is not merely an abstract problem for those who like to speculate about principles, it is a felt and endured agony of the soul that can be ignored only at the peril of selfdefeat. The inquiry into war, initiated with a profound realization of its paradoxical nature, thus becomes an essential task for all honest self-knowledge. If we are to know ourselves, the supreme commandment for the philosopher, we must know how to think through this paradox. To understand war is thus to understand ourselves.