PHILOSOPHY OF WAR: A BRIEF HISTORY

The article provides a brief historical overview of the understanding of war in European thought. It provides a chronological account of the transformation in the perception of war as a socio-political phenomenon, particularly from the standpoint of ethics and political theory. The author examines the main approaches that ancient philosophy applied to the moral assessment of war. Plato and Aristotle are ambivalent toward war, maintaining that judgment of a war depends on its compatibility with natural justice. In the works of Christian authors, the basis of this uncertainty rests on the idea that God is the source of justice. The paradigm of punitive war became the core of the Christian doctrine of just war. In the modern era, the philosophical perception of war came to be secularized. Theological evaluation of armed conflicts was replaced by a legalistic appraisal. The article considers the influence of Grotius and his followers on the process of replacing the punitive paradigm of just war with a legalistic paradigm. However, by the eighteenth century renunciation of war and yearning for perpetual peace had become a popular line of thinking exemplified in Kant's comments on that matter. The author then invokes the legacy of Clausewitz in order to explain the main features of modern views on war as a function reserved exclusively for the state. The article concludes with a comparative review of approaches to the evaluation of war by political realists and contemporary just war theorists.