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Inclinations Toward War Why do human beings go to war? Th

Why do human beings go to war? The question is potentially as old as history, since the monuments left by the earliest civilizations include carvings of war-chariots and inscriptions celebrating potentates' victories over their enemies. It is perhaps as old as the human race. Yet it is a question that seems to have been asked, in a systematic way, only in rather recent times.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages, framed the question of just as against unjust wars, but he rejected, early in his discussion, and on Scriptural authority, the proposition that all war is inherently immoral (Aquinas, 1990, p. 8). More fundamentally, he did not think to ask why war occurred in the first place. If asked, he might well have said that unjust wars were the inevitable consequence of the sinful nature of human beings, while just wars were the necessary response to this sinfulness. In more recent times, pacifists have denounced war, and Gandhi, at least, offered passive resistance as an alternative to populations that might feel tempted to defend themselves by war (Gandhi, 1990, pp. 49-50). But no more than Aquinas did Gandhi address himself to the question of why wars occur in the first place.

The moral critique of war, such as that offered by Gandhi and other pacifists, has thus always been subject to the counter-argument that it gives no practical advice for avoiding war short of a profound moral transformation of human beings. In one way or another, the pacifists seem to agree with their critics that the possibility of war is inherent in human nature. This gives little guidance to the statesperson who, not knowing how to fundamentally change human beings, nevertheless wants to know how war, or at least particular wars, can be avoided.

It is perhaps no surprise that the study of the causes of war has thrived in the twentieth century, and especially since 1945. World War One was a profound shock to all involved; they had ...

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Inclinations Toward War Why do human beings go to war? Th. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:27, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708670.html