Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engles and Tolstoy (The Wiles lectures) (Hardcover)

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Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood ; chiefly because, as with all intellectual efforts in unexplored fields, they were often imperfectly expressed, and were also overshadowed by their author's more striking achievements. Professor Gallic has sorted out, compared and contrasted, criticised and re-phrased the teachings of his chosen authors on peace and war.

Book Description

ntellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (February 28, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521217792
• ISBN-13: 978-0521217798
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,021,625 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A Critique of Gallie's Critique, June 28, 2007

By	E.P. Shirley (Taji Iraq) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engles and Tolstoy (Paperback)

In Philosophers of Peace and War author W.B. Gallie pursues the ambitious task of analyzing and critiquing the philosophical writings of Immanuel Kant, Carl von Clusewitz, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Leo Tolstoy as they relate to the human phenomena of peace and war. Published by the Cambridge Press in 1978, the book recounts a series of Wiles lectures Gallie delivered at the Queen's University of Belfast. Gallie claims to have chosen these influential thinkers not necessarily as representatives of a particular school of thought, or even as a progression of thinking on peace and war. Gallie states that these men represent a constellation of thinkers that can help illuminate our reflections and spur debate on the subject topic. He proceeds to examine from a philosophical perspective the seminal texts of each of these writers and pronounces all of them flawed in some way. Gallie holds up a yardstick - interestingly not the same for everyone - to the thinking of each of his authors and finds them wanting. Readers may find it somewhat ironic that Gallie also is fundamentally flawed in his methodology in the main and in particular instances as he seeks to twist the thinking of these authors for his own purpose.
Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace receives both the highest praise and deepest criticism from Gallie. Perpetual Peace is a novelty among Kant's writings in that it is the first attempt amongst his prolific writings at political persuasion. The enduring quality of the work is that it proposes a law-governed relationship between states as a result of sovereign choice. Kant is credited with providing a notion that served as a philosophical precursor for the League of Nations. Despite this, Gallie pronounces Perpetual Peace, "a fantastic literary farrago". Kant is also criticized for writing about peace and war from strictly an 18th century European perspective. Gallie describes Kant's thinking as betraying important hesitations, inconsistencies, confusion, and ambiguities. Gallie goes on to portray Kant as a cloistered Prussian political voyeur, who passed on naive and priggishly obtuse political judgments. Despite these seemingly petty aspersions, Gallie freely admits Kant's examination of state relations vis-à-vis other states instead of internal dealings with citizens is entirely novel in the course of international relations. Although Gallie glosses over it, Kant's first principle deserves repeating: The recognition of the aim of perpetual peace between nations is a necessary first step in any assured progress toward a lawful international order.
Carl von Clausewitz's On War receives an off-base assessment from Gallie. Although On War can rightly be termed a meditation on the dual nature of war, Gallie proceeds to address the work wholly as a philosophical exercise. Like many other expositors on "the Mahdi of Mass", Gallie presumes that in his reflections on Absolute war, Clausewitz is presenting not only a philosophical Ideal but the ideal way for states to pursue war, and hence policy. He asserts that Clausewitz believed war's inner logic could only be found in Absolute war. It is understandable that a commentator would jump to this conclusion as the Cold War entered the beginning of its' third trimester, but for a philosopher to fall into this trap is startling especially since much of Gallie's critique of Clausewitz revolved around perceived philosophical errors of mechanics and semantics. Gallie's focus on Clausewitz's "grave philosophical confusion" over transitions between Absolute and Real war are overplayed and consumes far to much of the article's content. He completely ignores Clausewitz's description of the trinity of war, which is interesting since a philosopher should recognize this as a direct descendant of Plato's tripartite division of the soul and human society. Given this glaring omission, he then goes on to present his "reconstruction" of Clausewitz's conceptual system. Fortunately, the modern student can turn to the excellent writings of Sir Michael Howard, Peter Paret, and Azar Gat to gain more texture and insight to the thinking of Clausewitz, his philosophical forebears and political progeny.
Gallie's treatment of Marx and Engels is somewhat more balanced than his treatment of either of the previous authors. He rightly cautions against viewing the "Great Marxists" as he calls them through the distorting prism of the political men of action who used their writings on scientific socialism as a means of mass mobilization for oppression. Armed with their comprehensive theory of world development, he credits Marx and more so Engels with the ability to analyze beneath the surface of international relations and gain deep insights into every major period of diplomatic-military tension in their day. Indeed, his main criticism of Marxist military theory is that it was not developed far enough. In this regard he credits Engels with being a much more prolific and insightful military theorist than history has given him credit for. He of course naturally finds a cause for criticizing these thinkers. He points out that they are silent on the proper role, if any, that war plays in scientific socialism. Gallie claims that this silence in doctrine hid an opportunism intended to exploit any international fault line and conflict as the period in which to launch the workers' revolution.
Gallie examines the literary work of Leo Tolstoy from his early masterpiece War and Peace through his later post-conversion essays Christianity and Pacifism and The Kingdom of God is Within You with an eye toward establishing their worth as important anti-militarist writings. He credits Tolstoy with a tremendous capacity for explanatory narrative. In a left-handed compliment he says that Tolstoy's, "finest passages read like self-verifying excerpts from a total record of war such as only God could know." Tolstoy's primary truth in war seems to be that the most intelligent units of action are small coherent groups of men that act independently. This dovetails nicely with Tolstoy's complete antipathy toward the Great Captains of warfare. This leads to Gallie's inevitable critique. Although Tolstoy is expert at illuminating the revealed truth of war, he misses the important question about war. Specifically, Gallie challenges the fact that although Tolstoy is completely given to recognizing truth and falsity in war, he never raises the philosophical question about the justice in or justification for war.
Although Gallie presents some very insightful linkages between influences these authors had on one another and their impact on the modern world's struggles to maintain peace, he seems to suffer from one of the very criticisms he made against Kant. Specifically, the narrowness and provincialism in time and place of his philosophical examination in regards to the selection of his authors. It is incontrovertible that each of these men had a hand in shaping the Western world's views on peace and war. And that is just the point. Gallie's constellation of thinkers is suspiciously homogenous and may even be provocatively termed a constellation of white dwarfs. It seems peculiar that a philosophical constellation on the topic of war would be derived from four Prussians and a Russian that all lived within 150 years and a few hundred miles of each other. There are at least three other major thinkers on war and peace that quickly come to mind that might rightly be included in such a constellation: Mao, Thucydides, and Sun-Tzu. Perhaps Mao's thinking and actions stood too close in time to Gallie's lectures to merit considered inclusion, but the same certainly can not be claimed for the latter two authors who are conspicuous by their absence in Gallie's book. Finally, Gallie's book is what it is, five extremely influential thinkers (only two of which were proper philosophers) reviewed and mechanically critiqued in a 143-page book from the perspective of a moral philosopher.