War as ´Art´: Aesthetics and Politics in Clausewitz´s Social Thinking

JOSÉ FERNÁNDEZ VEGA

Clausewitz in The Twenty-First Century

Oxford University Press

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2007; p. 122 - 137

The actuality of Clausewitz can be found not only in a number of statements contained in his work, On War but also in his method. What we can understand as his method has very much to do with some of the fundamental approaches of Kant´s Third Critique; though, it is impossible to prove a clear intellectual influence of that book in Clausewitz`s social thinking. As it is explained in this chapter, Clausewitz favours the idea that the strategic thinking is a kind of  art rather than a matter of science. It is in this way that his method is linked to the Kantian philosophy of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and it is from this perspective that he criticizes militarism and the approaches that take no notice of  chance and danger in war.  Nowadays, a political approach as that of Clausewitz becomes essential to ponder over the war. What kind of politics will todays wars follow ? This crucial question for our contemporary world would mean, for Clausewitz himself, a challenge to the imagination. And "imagination" is the concept (and the faculty) that Hannah Arendt labelled as Kant´s great contribution to political philosophy included in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.