The question has to be taken apart into two, because the usual answer runs them together. Did Hegel ascribe an ethical significance to war? Yes. Did he declare war to be good? No \u2013 and at the same time he drew limits around war which today\u2019s wars fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since there is no judge above sovereign states \u2013 a league of nations would for him be a contract and not a state \u2013 war remains the last form of decision. Beyond that, in the note to \u00a7 324<\/a>, he ascribes to it an ethical function: in war what is otherwise merely edifying talk becomes serious, namely the transience of possessions and life. For this he quotes an image from his own Jena essay: war preserves \u201ethe ethical health of nations in their indifference to the permanence of finite determinacies, just as the movement of the winds preserves the sea from the putrefaction into which a lasting calm would plunge it\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the sentence at which the indignation catches fire, and it should not be talked down. But two things stand immediately beside it. First, Hegel says war is \u201enot to be regarded as an absolute evil<\/em>\u201c \u2013 not: that it is a good. Second, he himself adds that this is \u201emerely a philosophical Idea\u201c, and that \u201eactual wars still require a different justification\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Immediately afterwards, in \u00a7 338<\/a>, Hegel draws the boundary beyond which, for him, there is no war at all any more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the fact that states mutually recognize one another as such, there remains, even in war<\/em> \u2013 that condition of rightlessness, violence, and contingency \u2013 a bond<\/em> \u2026 It thus contains the determination, in accordance with international law, that the possibility of peace be preserved within it \u2013 so that, for example, envoys are respected \u2013 and, in general, that it not be waged against internal institutions and peaceful family and private life, nor against private persons<\/em>.<\/p>\nGroundlines, \u00a7 338<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In the lectures he becomes concrete. According to Griesheim\u2019s transcript, whatever carries the common life remains untouched \u2013 \u201ethe administration of justice, churches, poor-houses, hospitals, all this is left to go its way, and likewise private life and the trades\u201c; in the disarmed enemy \u201ethe human being is always recognised\u201c. And in the course of 1822\/23 stands the sentence that settles the matter: \u201eA war of extermination can be waged only by fanaticism.\u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With that a standard is set. A war that takes the civilian population, the hospitals and the supply of necessities as its target is by this standard not a war in Hegel\u2019s sense, but what he attributes to fanaticism. Whoever invokes Hegel for such a war invokes a text that excludes it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hegel rejects Kant\u2019s proposal, but not because peace is indifferent to him. His objection in the note to \u00a7 333<\/a> is a fault of construction: a league of states presupposes \u201ean agreement<\/em> between states which \u2013 resting on moral, religious, or other grounds and considerations \u2026 \u2013 would remain afflicted with contingency\u201c. In the Heidelberg course of 1817\/18 he expressly concedes that the thought is \u201ea well-meaning one \u2026 which is also morally good\u201c \u2013 and rejects it nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What actually limits war is, in Hegel, something other than morality and something other than contract. It is the customs<\/em> of nations (\u00a7 339<\/a>). Why there is nothing stronger he says in the course of 1822\/23 in a single sentence: \u201eThere is no law above it, for a law requires a power that actualises it.\u201c This limit is therefore not enforceable \u2013 only losable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources.<\/strong> \u00a7 324<\/a>, \u00a7 333<\/a>, \u00a7 338<\/a>, \u00a7 339<\/a> \u00b7 transcripts Wannenmann 1817\/18, Hotho 1822\/23, Griesheim 1824\/25 (Gesammelte Werke 26,1\u201326,3) \u00b7 Walter Kaufmann, \u201eThe Hegel Myth and Its Method\u201c, 1959 \u00b7 Jon Stewart (ed.), The Hegel Myths and Legends<\/em>, 1996, there \u201eThe Myth that Hegel Glorified War\u201c. \u2013 See also in the glossary: War<\/a>, External Sovereignty<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe limit that nobody quotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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And perpetual peace?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n