On the other hand the common people had a different view: see Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus, about the 30 year's war.
Anti-war attitudes go as far back as the always out-of step Euripides, whose The Trojan Women is hard not to read as a great anti-war statement. "Greeks, your strength is in your spears, not your minds," says Hecuba, as she lays the body of her grandson, Hector's son, Astyanax, into his his dead father's shield -- the child had been thrown off the remaining battlements to complete the destruction of Troy.
This was written or performed 415-16 BC, right after the Athenian destruction of Melos in the Peloponnesian War, another 30 years war, an event recounted with shocking cynicism and brutality by Thucydides in his History -- a more ambiguous work, but one that certainly has among its points that war leads to moral degradation of victors as well as destruction of the vanquished.
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Melian.html
in a the stiff Victorian Jowett translation.
The theory of the Just War, developed by the Scholastics, _presumes_ war is an evil. Aquinas, in the Summa II.ii. q. 40, puts forth three conditions: that it be waged by sovereign authority and not privately -- vendettas were a big problem in those days; that it be for a just cause against belligerent at fault (today, and not long after Aquinas, put in the idea that war is supposed to be a last resort), and that it be fought for a good purpose -- not just for glory or booty or as a land-grab.
It's my understanding that in traditional Chinese culture war was considered an evil even by the upper classes. Soldiers were not held in high esteem, unlike in Europe or Japan. After the Warring States era, China was actually remarkably peaceful for a very long time. Sun Tze's The Art of War emphasizes winning without actually fighting, if you can do it, s the mark of the superior military leader. Buddhism in theory repudiares war, but that didn't seem to have a lot of impact, and the Japanese managed to combine Zen with military dictatorship and all-around militarism without a blink.
Andie
--- On Tue, 9/15/09, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] War (was Conservatism)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 6:49 AM
>
> Πολεμοσ πατηρ παντων. (this damn translit
> program can't do diacritical marks or terminal sigmas
> right.)
>
> Well, getting killed BY A GOD is kind of a singular honor.
>
> "War is evil" is in general a pretty modern sentiment,
> likely brought about by secularization of Christian norms
> and (more materially) weapons that are far more destructive
> than even Achilles' shield.
>
> More broadly, why would it its closeness to the dialectic
> be distrurbing to you? The dialectic includes all things,
> one of which is war. More specifically, violence, not just
> war.
>
> --- On Tue, 9/15/09, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >
> > "Those killed by Ares are honoured by gods and men."
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
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