The Politics of War: a Meditation

Abstract

We may begin by meditating on Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking and the distinction he draws between a calculating and a meditative way of thinking. What would these positions imply for thinking on war as an object of knowledge or as a sign of the politics of knowledge, as is so well illustrated by Carl von Clausewitz’s (1976) classical text? In the manner of von Clausewitz’s analysis, a ‘calculating thinking’ would suggest a reflection on what paths of action nations might choose in order to solve crises between them: whether to negotiate or attempt to exterminate each other. A ‘meditative thinking’, seemingly more modest, is, in fact, more demanding: how can we suspend judgement and just wait? As Heidegger shows, this waiting goes well beyond the simply subjective experience of being alive and reflecting upon it. Waiting is an absolute meditation. The waiting that I have chosen is an openness to the witness given by scholarly studies on violence and wars in Africa; at the same time, it is an opening of ourselves which involves a fundamental question: how can one dare to define of what is going on without an illumination from the ‘undisclosed’?

I am grateful to my colleagues, Gjermund Sæther (Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and Morten Bøås (University of Oslo), and to my assistants Sabine Engel (Duke University) and Patricia M. Reefe (Stanford University) for their contributions in establishing this definitive version.