• DOI:10.1080/07075332.2013.859166
• Corpus ID: 143665195

Hegel and Clausewitz: Convergence on Method, Divergence on Ethics

@article{Cormier2014HegelAC,
  title={Hegel and Clausewitz: Convergence on Method, Divergence on Ethics},
  author={Youri Cormier},
  journal={The International History Review},
  year={2014},
  volume={36},
  pages={419 - 442}
}

• Y. Cormier
• Published 27 May 2014
• Political Science
• The International History Review

The Hegelian influence in Clausewitz has far more often been stated than it has ever been qualified, quantified, or verified. Perhaps the error was to try to ‘prove’ such a link, rather than focus on what such a convergence consists of and what it means, regardless of how it happened. Using both a historical and a linguistic argument, this essay delineates early writings that are devoid of any Hegelian similarities from those later in Clausewitz's life where a convergence of ideas becomes manifest. A counterpoise to Raymond Aron's overall dismissal of the link between the two authors, this article nonetheless reaches a limit as well: though they agreed in many ways in their methodology, the two fathers of the ‘dialectical war theory’ diverged quite dialectically on ethics. Hegel understands war as an inherently justified ‘right’ of the state, while Clausewitz sees it rather as the neutral ‘instrument’ of a moral agent, the state. The author traces this divergence to a missing link: a foundational aspect of Hegel's method regarding the nature of subjectivity and objectivity is absent from Clausewitz's work, and this appears to generate the impasse. The essay provides grey tones to arguments on either side of the debate about influences, or lack thereof, which have strayed too far into shades of black and white.