Abstract

My thoughts on the relationship between war and politics will follow three distinct steps. First off, in an exposition of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and German political philosopher Carl Schmitt, I will attempt to illustrate that politics, as such, is rooted in war and that the latter can never be understood as a mere instrument of the former. A second step will highlight, using above all Schmitt, traditional manifestations of the religious containment of war, with particular emphasis on the interconnectedness of duels and divine judgment. And finally, this essay will delve into Schmitt's desperate wrangling with how biblical revelation effectuated a dissolution of conventional law, and how...