"Drawing on the great political philosophers, from Plato to Marx, via Machiavelli and Hobbes, Frederic Gros attempts to answer the age-old questions regarding humanity's propensity to wage war: What is a just war? What moral constraints operate on the combatants? Does the state make war or does war make the state? Finally, after exploring the meaning and the spectre of total war, he tackles the ultimate question: why war?"-- Provided by publisher.
