Enlightened War

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS NOT only the Age of Enlightenment, it was also an epoch marked by extreme violence and numerous wars. Above all, the violent upheaval in the wake of the French Revolution, especially after the execution of the king, raised doubts among contemporaries about whether the Enlightenment and its advocacy of freedom, equality, and human rights were capable of promoting the moral and social refinement of humankind, or rather heralded a new barbarism. The debate over the proper relation between enlightenment and revolution thus formed an integral part of a comprehensive political and philosophical discourse about the proper relation between theory and praxis. The question of violence in particular proved divisive. Does a nation have the right to rebel against a tyrannical government? Which types of violence are acceptable? Under what circumstances is war justifiable? How should one draw the line between defensive warfare and wars of conquest? Who emerges victorious, and who is a victim of war? Is it even possible to avoid war or is war an inescapable fact of human life? Certainly the eighteenth century was not the first to ask these questions, but the violent course of the French Revolution and the ensuing revolutionary wars endowed them with renewed urgency and poignancy.