Zu's musings

Back in the saddle

Well, I got significantly sidetracked with an apartment search over the last 2 weeks, but now I'm back in scholar mode. I was reading City Of God, and St. Augustine kept talking about the Aeneid and how it corrupted his youth, so I figured "hey, Augustine read it and turned out alright, I should be fine too!" So I dug it out from my bookcase and started reading it. I've read the book before, but only in a "scan for quotes" mode or just selected passages. It's a good book that stands on its own without the "essential classic" label. My favorite part was when they were burning down Troy and it was all chaotic. Whatshisface kills the Trojan king and prince in grand sacrilegious fashion. I say whatshisface because all those names kind of merge in my mind after I read it for a while and I'm too lazy to go look in the book. I think the king was Piriam though. So many Greek names...

Anywho, I'm going to try and make a habit of updating the ol' academic journal every day or so. Like I said, I've been reading City of God and it's pretty interesting. I could probably just skip to the books that deal with war, but I don't want to miss anything good. Like I read a part about suicide that pretty much justifies anything a soldier does under orders. It went something like, you don't blame the sword for the killing, you blame the guy wielding it, and he says that a soldier carrying out orders is like a sword in the hand of the ruler. I'm not sure I agree, because that's the kind of logic that Nazis and war criminals like, but it's a pretty good quote for my paper.

As for the structure of the paper, I think that I'll start off with biblical sources, but that presents a problem because of the old and new testaments. Jesus was all about reducing the Torah to a few essential rules; "love thy neighbor" and the like, but most of his disciples were Jewish, and curiously, the one who wasn't, Paul, wrote of Christianity in old testament military style prose. "Put on the whole armor of God so that you will be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."

I guess I'll start with Jesus and then go forward into the works of the disciples, referencing back to the Old Testament when needed. That should be easier than trying to explain the Jewish view of war and then explaining the development of the warrior ethos in Christianity. After the Bible, I'll work my way through Christian philosophers and theologians until I hit Augustine, whose Just War theory will provide the terminus. I'm also confused about how to deal with "pagan" philosophies, because they influenced the Christian thinkers; most notably Cicero with Augustine. I guess I'll do the same as with the Old Testament, referencing the older guys when needed. And hey, if I decide to expand my thesis into a bigger work, I can just add extended chapters on the Old Testament and Greco-Roman philosophers for more length.

Also, I think I'll try to explore the Romanization of Christianity, and conversely, the Christianization of Rome. I figure that the Romans had more than enough warrior ethos for any culture, and when it was combined with the pacific qualities of Christianity, some kind of hybrid virtuous warrior society was formed. If you think about it, it's kind of ironic that a society that nailed rioters to crosses was overtaken by the followers of a crucified God.

posted by Zu @ 8:36 PM 5 comments

LOL 

posted by Zu @ 11:33 PM 0 comments

Hmm...

So apparently OSU decided it would be a great idea to give me free webspace in my senior year AFTER I made 2 blogs devoted to academic pursuits. I'm going to play around with an HTML editor for a while and then put a link up. Check you later!

posted by Zu @ 7:08 PM 0 comments

New project!

I guess it's appropriate that I'm starting my new project today, Ash Wednesday. The new project is on the development of a warrior ethos in early Christian society. How did a religion based on loving ones' enemy produce the deadliest warriors the world has ever seen? That's the main question behind my honors thesis. In an attempt to answer this question, I took a trip to the ol' main library and loaded my haversack up with a variety of books.

Professor Grimsley suggested War and Christian ethics. Edited by Arthur F. Holmes and a couple of texts by early church fathers. I managed to get War and Christian Ethics and by chance I wandered past the section on the ethics of war, so I grabbed a few books that looked promising. Then I tried to find books by some of the old church fathers. Man, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to simply do a search for books by St. Paul or St. Augustine. Even an author-only search brings up 30+ entries, from a book written by the St. Augustine city council to a book by the St. Paul Anti-tuberculosis Committee. I eventually decided to just get electronic versions of them from websites that provide translations of the classics. The bible helps too!

From what I've been reading, I think I might have to seek out a primer in ethics to make sure I know what I'm arguing, but it's all interesting and enough to keep my busy for a while. I just wanted to update for the random people that pop in but aren't good enough to leave comments. =)

I'm going to go read some more now. My pious fasting has left me weak and unable to type.




Ashes!

posted by Zu @ 10:38 PM 1 comments

First Post!

This is X-posted on the ol' LJ site, but I figured I'd try both sites and see which one I liked better for this type of blog.

Here's a post from my personal journal that no one really replied to, so it'll be the first post on the "academic" blog:

War is prevalent in our world, but how many of you stop to think about what the word "war" means? I propose an intellectual challengez0r! I want you to comment with your definition of war. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about it.
Is a flight of WW II bombers destroying a factory complex war? Would you consider the Holocaust war? How about a terrorist blowing up a bus full of civilians? What about slave traders shipping africans to the "civilized" world?
So, what is your short(ish) definition of war? Which of the examples given would you consider war? Please comment before looking at my discussion of a proper definition.
Now I will attempt to talk in depth on the subject.


Note: These are just my musings, so if stuff seems disjointed and without a logical flow, it's because I'm prone to rambling. Also, I borrowed heavily from things that were discussed in the 380 class as well as from the excellent book A History of Warfare by John Keegan, but any flaws in the argument are my own.

In my History 380 class "The History of War", Professor Grimsely asked the same question I am asking you today, and he offered the same examples that I do here. The general consensus was that only the bombing raid was an act of war. It was then argued that all of the examples could all be considered as war. Some of us proposed a classification of war. For example, I thought war could be divided up into "civilized war" and "total war". Civilized war follows rules and conventions and at the extreme end of the spectrum (Samurai, ancient Chinese, some medieval knights, etc...) has a strong sense of honor, whereas total war is doing anything, no matter how morally suspect, to win the battle. This includes scorched earth campaigns, nuclear attacks, firebombings of cities, etc... Even this type of classification system couldn't explain some of the examples. Exterminating your own citizens follows the methods of total war, but it weakened the German army by limiting the number of loyal (but Jewish) citizens they could recruit. So we continued on with the discussion of what war is.

When it came time for a solid definition, most of the people in the class (which was a pretty big one - 300 people or so) didn't have an answer. Before long, a few of the more well read students raised their hands and gave the oft-quoted Clausewitz maxim that "War is the continuation of policy by other means." Something is lost in the translation from original German though. Krieg ist des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittlel. Translating it to better convey the subtlety, you get "War is the continuation of political intercourse with the intermixing of other means." Still, this definition doesn't really cut it. Like before, it doesn't cover the Holocaust, terrorists, etc...

Professor Grimsley suggested two alternate definitions. Robert L. O'Connell , in his book The Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 5 says:
“[W]arfare—organized fighting . . . should be understood to encompass most . . . of the following characteristics. There must be an element of premeditation and planning; it is not simply a random emotion-driven act. Nor is it concerned primarily with the individual or those closely related but instead focuses on societal issues, with the intent of resolving them by force, using resources of the group. Similarly, war implies direction by some form of governmental structure, and a military determined at least in part by that structure. It is assumed that combatants are willing . . . and able to conduct a somewhat protracted campaign aimed at palpable economic and/or political goals, though these may be as simple as defense and survival. Participants also are presumed ready to apply lethal violence and risk injury and death in pursuit of those objectives and in accordance with the dictates of the command authority. Finally, some understanding can be attributed to the parties involved that the results of war, for good or ill, will be more lasting than momentary.”

Even this doesn't really sit well. Like Clausewitz's definition, it doesn't explain stone age and other "primitive" warfare. Take for example the Aztecs who fought ritualistic battles for warrior bondsmen that were subsequently sacrificed in religious ceremonies. The Aztecs developed this into such an art that the priests could cut out the victim's heart and show it to him for a moment before he died. This is certainly not covered by O'Connell's definition. And this is by no means an isolated example, many other primitive cultures fight in largely ritual battles to perpetuate societal values.

The third definition we were given was written by another history professor here at OSU. Dr. Guilmartin's working definition of war is as follows: "War is the use of organized, socially-sanctioned, armed violence to achieve a political, social, or economic objective." This is really the best definition that is out there for what war is. The key is that he includes social objectives in the reasons for war.

Before I researched my notebooks for info on the 380 class, I came up with my own definition of war that's somewhere in between Dr. Guilmartin's and Dr. O'Connell's. Here's the rough Zu definition. "War is the application of controlled violence by a source of power, be it a coalition of nations, a state, polity, warlord, cheiftan, or patrician, for the purpose of achieving change in the social, economic, or political realm." It's a bit more wordy than Dr. Guilmartin's, but I wanted to make sure that the vast majority of circumstances were covered. I didn't include the bit about it not being an emotional response because I think that combat is dictated a great deal by emotional responses. Morale is all about emotion and charges and retreats are also driven by rash emotion. If you sat down and thought about it, you are much more safer fighting on in your foxhole than running away from the enemy. Running away just provides him a clear shot at your back without anything to keep him from taking it. But logical thought doesn't keep you in the foxhole, seeing your comrades getting blown to bits provokes irrational emotions that override logic.

Anywhoo, let's go back to the first examples with our new definition of war. The bombing raid is a pretty clear cut example of war, specifically Clauswitzian war. One nation is attacking another to enforce its policy of wanting territory or wanting to defend itself on another country. The Holocaust is also considered war because it is organized violence sanctioned by the state against a group of people for a social goal. Terrorism is warfare as well. A group has declared war on the Western world in order to achieve politcal, economic, and social goals. It's unconventional warfare, but warfare none the less. Slave trading was an essential part of ancient war, and wars were fought between European powers for the rights to enslave certain people up until the 18th century, so it's pretty clearly a form of war.

The reason we don't see most of those actions as war is because our society has been shaped by Clausewitzian ideas. The same flawed ideas that helped to contribute to the mass conscript armies of the First and Second World Wars. And while they are still respected by many western governments, the rest of the world doesn't work inside of the artifical constructs of Clausewitzian theory. That's why it is important to contemplate the nature of war and to provide a universal definition. As Sun Tzu said, "War is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Way to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."

Let the discussion begin!

posted by Zu @ 1:33 AM 0 comments