Thinking With Clausewitz

I, Riley Paterson, continue to be fascinated by the work of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. I began reading Clausewitz in the fall of 2007 while studying military history with Jon Sumida at the University of Maryland. My reading of Clausewitz conveniently coincided with the publication of Sumida's book Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War. I was astounded to find that Sumida does indeed offer an approach to On War that significantly break with major threads in the Clausewitz scholarship.

It was many years ago that I first learned of Clausewitz, but I've been captivated by him since. On War has given me tons of fodder for philosophical reflection, and the bulk of my writing has been either directly or indirectly a response to his thinking.

I've decided to start this blog because it is unclear to me if or when I will have an opportunity to engage with Clausewitz in an institutional setting. I therefore intend to pursue my independent thinking about Clausewitz head on. This blog will be a place for me to deposit my quick reflections on Clausewitz, and also a place where I will share my lengthier work on his writing.

In the last five years or so I've built up an exciting network of thinkers that can help me analyze and explicate the implications of Clausewitz's work. Moreover, I am currently turning my effort towards the secondary literature on Clausewitz. I've just read Alan Beyerchan's writing on Clausewitz and nonlinearity, am currently grappling with W.B. Gallie's work on Clausewitz, have Peter Paret's biography in the mail, and have also ordered a number of other books that I will deal with.

My hope is that I can contribute to the scholarship on Clausewitz from a philosophically informed perspective. I agree with Gallie that Clausewitz needs to be treated as a philosopher, and I have found many ways that Clausewitz can contribute to the conversation that was taking place between some major twentieth century philosophers.

In particular, I believe that Clausewitz's thinking can be combined with the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Indeed, the next piece of writing I intend to do will be on the relationship between Clausewitz, Bergson, and R.G. Collingwood. In linking Clausewitz and Collingwood I am following a line followed by Gallie and Sumida. As far as I can tell, however, the link to Bergson has never been pursue. But given the relationship between Bergson and Collingwood, I have little doubt that the three make a nice group.

What unites all three thinkers is the claim that reality can never be accessed through general theories, classifications, or rules. Generalizations are by nature procrustean: they achieve their precision or clarity by ignoring certain elements of reality. As Collingwood said, "If you act according to rules, you are not dealign with the situation in which you stand, you are only dealing with a certain type of situation under which you class it" (Collingwood, An Autobiography, 104). If we rely too heavily on generalizations we run the rusk of distorting our sense of reality. Clausewitz acknowledged that war was such a diverse phenomenon that it could never be adequately captured by general rules or doctrines, it was 'more than a true chameleon'. The only way to handle war, for Clausewitz, is to bypass the generalities that we usually approach things with, and instead find a way to engage more directly with reality.

In other words, we must teach ourselves to have a consciousness of uniqueness and particularity. For the only way to make intelligent judgements is to have a sense of what makes this instance different from other instances. We must engage with all the rough edges of reality.

Bergson, Collingwood, and Clausewitz all saw deeply into these problems of generalization and our blindness to novelty. All three, moreover, knew that there was a way to train our minds to be attuned to the uniqueness of our situations, and that such a training would allow one to exercise judgement with greater care.

Soon, then, I'll be writing on the way that Bergson, Collingwood, and Clausewitz thought that we could open our eyes to the uniqueness of every moment, and thereby gain a greater capacity for making difficult decisions.