The best-selling author of The Philosophy of Walking returns to tackle the subject of eternal human conflict
Russia's invasion of Ukraine seems to many like a throwback to another era, shaking Europe with memories of past horrors. But since the end of World War II, not a single day has passed without an armed conflict somewhere in the world.Drawing on major political philosophers, from Plato to Marx, through Machiavelli and Hobbes, Frederick Gross attempts to answer age-old questions about humanity's propensity for war: What is a just war? What are the moral constraints on belligerents? Is it the state that wages war, or is it war that creates the state? Finally, after exploring the meaning of total war and its specter, he addresses the most important question: Why war?
