Origins of the just war: military culture in the ancient world

"As two of the fundamental social forces that shape human life - war posing the greatest existential threat to communities, and justice being the principle that makes complex communal life possible in the first place - the relationship between war and justice is crucial to understanding the development of Western civilization.

The central argument of this book is that theories of justified violence were not created ex nihilo as exercises in abstract ethical reasoning, but rather emerged as a result of communities responding to the reality of war.

Communities developed concepts of normative warfare from a desire to legitimate and to control armed conflicts in which they consistently engaged.

Scholars have repeatedly overlooked the very simple fact that war predates just war doctrine, and that early archaeological and textual evidence indicates that ancient societies were more inclined to glorify warfare than to condemn it.

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