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Western Political Thought

Notes preserve the self of which it is conscious, and raises that self to the level of freedom
and its own powers.
Again :
War is the state of affairs which deals in earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and
concerns—a vanity at other times a common theme of edifying sermonizing. This is
what makes it the moment in which the ideal of the particular attains its right and is
actualized. War has the higher significance that by its agency ... the ethical health of
peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just
as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the
result of prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be a product of prolonged,
let alone “perpetual peace”.
The above two passages had to be integrated with Hegel’s overall perception of the state, and not
merely as a definite indicator for glorifying war. He was concerned with the actualities of the
state. He accepted the fact that a state might be formed by violence. But violence could not be the
final quest. A founder’s mettle was to be gauged by his ability to create and stabilize political
institutions which replaced violence and force. But what Hegel ignored in this formulation was
the fact that a relatively peaceful transformation, rather than force, was always more conducive to
building stable political institutions. Added to this was also the fact that only those revolutions
were able to institutionalize liberty which kept their ambit limited to the political, and not
encroached the social.
For Hegel, war performed particular and important functions : first, in establishing a state; and
second, when the state was well-established, as a mechanism of preserving the state from the
inevitable conflicts generated by a market within civil society. It was necessary to act to create a
public spirit and go beyond limited private interests. It was in a warlike situation that courage and
honour became important. On this, Hegel wrote :
Courage to be sure is multiform. The mettle of an animal or a brigand, courage for the
sake of honor, the courage of a knight, these are not true forms of courage. The true
courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that
the individual counts as only as one amongst many. The important thing here is not
personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal. In India five hundred men
conquered twenty thousand who were not cowards, but who only lacked this
disposition to work in close cooperation with others.
Hegel was categorical that since modern political institutions were different from ancient ones in
purpose, ambit, scale and mechanism, modern warfare was also totally different from the ancient
one. In the ancient heroic societies, individual bravery in war and conquest was one of the important
indicators of human excellence. It was an individual glorification. But in the modern period,
personal pride was subordinated to a larger impersonal category, the state. Personal honour and
bravery were replaced by a larger cause or ideal. The modern hero mingled with the universal.
Hegel also believed that since modern warfare was impersonal, it was destined to become less
barbaric and more humane than what it was in the past. He also asserted that the invention of the
gun would make wars more rational, rather than based on personal whims and fancies, including
personal enmity. He wrote : “It is for this reason that thought had invented the gun, and the
invention of this weapon which has changed the purely personal form of bravery into a more
abstract one, is no accident”.
Hegel explicitly rejected the Kantian notion of perpetual peace.
Perpetual peace is often advocated as an ideal towards which humanity should strive.
With that end in view, Kant proposed a league of monarchs to adjust differences
between states, and the Holy Alliance was meant to be a league of much the same

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