Max Scheler and Joseph Maria Bocheński on the Nature and Ethics of War

This paper examines the contrasting yet complementary perspectives of Max Scheler and Joseph Maria Bochénski on the nature and ethics of war. Scheler, drawing from his phenomenological and value-ethical framework, explores war as a metaphysical force that reveals moral truths and societal decay, while Bochénski, a Thomist and war veteran, provides a systematic military ethics rooted in virtue theory and natural law. The paper contextualizes their reflections in light of contemporary conflicts, especially the war in Ukraine. By comparing Scheler’s metaphysical idealism with Bochénski’s practical virtue ethics, the study offers insights into enduring ethical questions surrounding war, moral responsibility, and the cultivation of military virtue.

Introduction

In the following article, I would like to give room to two Christian voices of the twentieth century who, although fundamentally different in their philosophical approaches, have provided thought-provoking insights into the phenomenology and ethics of war. These reflections are pertinent to today’s discussion, which is unfortunately overshadowed by numerous real war events. After discussing the different philosophical personalities of Max Scheler and J. M. Bochénski, their intellectual origins and intersections, I will first introduce Scheler’s phenomenology and metaphysics of war. Then I will deal with Bochénski’s military ethics. Finally, I intend to draw a comparison between Scheler’s and Bochénski’s understanding of war and try to place both positions in the context of current discussions on the ethics of war.

1. Max Scheler (1874–1928)
   and Joseph Maria Bochénski (1902–1995)

Although the two philosophers were devout Catholics, the differences in biography, outward appearance, and philosophical approach could not be greater. On the one hand, we have J.M. Bochénski, a Dominican priest, Thomistic logician, and active participant in World War II; on the other hand, there is Max Scheler, the well-known phenomenologist and creator of the material ethics of values, who felt the confusion and horror of the First World War some time before Bochénski.

However, despite these obvious differences in biography and intellectual background, Bochénski knew Scheler’s writings and, to a certain extent, also appreciated some of them. Whether Scheler, to whom Thomism was rather distant, would have returned Bochénski’s appreciation can be doubted—at least in the philosophical field. Bochénski, by contrast, considered Scheler’s phenomenology of value to be very original and he believed at times that its content could even be translated into the (i.e., his) language of analytical philosophy.^[1] Both philosophers, of course, also commented on ethical questions, although their approaches do not fit into the nomenclature of moral theories that are common today. In Scheler’s case, his material ethics of values is relatively at odds with consequentialist virtue ethics and deontological theories.^[2] For Bochénski, ethics was not at the centre of his philosophical interest. In his memoirs he remarks laconically: ‘Ethics: I have proposed a treatise (probably the only existing one) on military ethics. I have proposed a sharp distinction between morals, ethics, and various kinds of religious morality (piety). I have analysed the controversy concerning animal experimentation’.^[3] This statement shows that Bochénski saw his greatest contribution to ethics in the development of a specific military ethics. Scheler was not concerned in his remarks with illuminating practical and political aspects of war, but with postulating a certain metaphysics of war that should shape our moral understanding as such.^[4] In the next section, we start right away with Scheler’s reflections on the nature of war and try to draw some parallels to current events in the Ukraine and Israel.

2. ‘Spider web, driven in the storm’ – Scheler’s Phenomenology of War

Max Scheler wrote in depth about the nature of war in several places in his work, not only against the background of his experiences in World War 1 but guided by a deep philosophical-psychological interest in pursuing the question of what actually lies behind the physical violence of warlike actions.

Vitalism of the war

In his essay ‘The Genius of War’^[5], he tries to show that war is not about the goal of the self-preservation of man and his species, but about the ‘struggle for something higher than existence’ (16). In view of the current Ukraine war and Putin’s attitude, it can indeed be assumed with Scheler that ‘the movement of the warlike spirit is rather an original, spontaneous agent. Sense and desire to try out its power on the environment, and to shape and form it in it, at the surging peril, even at the risk of failure’. (18) In this way, of course, the warlike spirit does not act without calculation; rather, it seems to be characterised by a predatory pleasure in the play of forces between itself and the enemy powers, which it believes it can determine. This gesture, incidentally, is alien to what Scheler calls the utilitarian conception of war, according to which ‘warlike virtues are to be regarded as derivatives of the specifically mercantile virtues’ (30).

War is the end of any solidarity of interests

From today’s perspective, it seems striking how much our current situation, in which Europe is surrounded by wars, resembles the constellation and situation before and during the First World War. Back then, according to Scheler, people also ‘believed in the growing solidarity of the interests of international trade and transport and in the common interests of social classes’ (23). So, as is often emphasised today out of a forgetting of history, this is not just the idea of a German post-war party SPD which, with an eye on Eastern Europe, committed itself to the foreign policy credo of ‘change through trade’. The fact that this belief must repeatedly turn out to be a delusion is commented on by Scheler—without knowing the EU—with the following drastic words: ‘But how wretched and how weak these interest groups and the organisations and international mechanisms serving them have proved to be! Spider webs, driven in the storm!’ (23). Scheler sees a cause for this development above all in a ‘philosophy of peace which biologically sees in war only a complicated variety of animal food fights and which at the same time wants to derive the historical phenomena of war from economic and internal political factors, which continues to see in increasing economic solidarity of interests of the peoples the guarantor of an ever-approaching “eternal peace”’ (23). Apart from the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and a few other incorrigibles, however, the West has hopefully come to the realistic conclusion that any solidarity of interests can quickly be counteracted by authoritarian regimes, such as Russia or China. Quickly forgetting this naivety, a hasty change of attitude is currently taking place in the West, which can also be attributed to the ‘war as the strongest force of human unification’ (68). For the time being, however, no new economic solidarity of interests is emerging here, but nations and peoples are moving closer together because they are under attack and want to work together to ward off war and the suffering it causes. Incidentally, this new solidarity of Europe (which also includes Russia) was for Scheler a genuinely Christian one as an expression of ‘true friendship’ as opposed to mere ‘politeness towards clients and international courtoisie’ (262). According to Scheler, in order to be able to accept this form of solidarity, one must cast off the foolish attitudes of pacifism and militarism. This includes the ‘erratic attitude militarism (Gesinnungsmilitarismus)’ (187f.) towards Russia that is currently spreading in the media, which is psychologically the other side of the coin of that self-satisfied pacifism that we encountered almost everywhere in Germany and Europe before 24 February 2022. Then as now, ‘a profound psychological error of many pacifists is to be seen in the assumption that the appalling manifestations of hatred in this war were only brought about by the war’.^[6] Like no other before him, Scheler studied the psychological structures of individual hatred and resentment.

War and collective morality

In the sense of Scheler’s phenomenological attitude, we should therefore rather look at war as it shows itself from itself; i.e., it is first of all not so important to ask about the causes and possibly catastrophic consequences of war, but to try to explain what all shows itself through the current war. Scheler writes: ‘War clarifies, examines, criticises; from a cultural and moral point of view, it creates nothing at all that was not already there in the germ; in the same respect, it destroys nothing at all that was not already inwardly dead or pretending to be something it was not in fact. It only classifies things and people according to their real value’. (GW IV, 262f.) War thus paradoxically follows a certain principle of order and in doing so it has an unmasking character. War not only shows us the true face of the enemy, who is not infrequently ignored by us but also reveals a great moral deficit of our own. Just as we did about 100 years ago, we can say again: ‘This war has revealed the moral status of Europe’ (203). For Scheler, the recognition of our own moral deficit was at the same time the starting point for a cultural rebirth: ‘There will have to come in the coming peace a time of tremendous repentance and penitence, and out of this state of mind a richer and more serious striving for moral construction, these new forms of consciousness created by the war shall lead to the act of regaining European dignity’ (282). As we all know, this rebirth did not take place afterwards because the world was plunged into the next catastrophe of the Second World War, which J.M. Bochénski personally experienced and which also gave him the occasion to develop a certain military ethics.

3. J.M. Bocheński on military virtues

Joseph Maria Bocheński (1902–1995) is known to most not as an ethicist, but as a logician, Thomist, and theoretician of the Soviet system. What is less well known is that Bochénski, who was himself a participant in the war, was one of the first to write a survey work on military ethics,^[7] which of course clearly bears a Thomistic signature, theoretically processes personal experiences with war, and, in doing so, assigns the foundation of an ethics of war and peace a prominent role.

Before I go into the individual thoughts of the work, it is necessary to emphasise that this work is to be read and understood against the background of contemporary history. At the time of writing, Europe was in a situation of all-round threat, in which the question of how to achieve peace took a back seat to the question of how to repel Hitler’s attack. This allows a connection to be drawn between the presence and the Russian war of aggression on the Ukraine. As a Christian, Bochénski is well aware of the fact that war should be the last resort and that peace should be sought with all one’s might. However, his personal experiences and a rational analysis show him that pacifism is a fiction and war must be permissible under certain circumstances.

Bochénski’s critique of pacifism

According to Bochénski, pacifism is a fiction because it is based on three false assumptions (17ff.):

The human individual, his weal and woe, is the only reality, while society is a fiction.

Pacifism invokes humanitarian sentiments and their normative validity for the purpose of its foundation.

Pacifism assumes that human life is the highest good.

Contrary to the first assumption, Bochénski emphasises that society is a complete reality: ‘Although society is not a thing like, say, Mount Everest or a human being, it nevertheless represents something real. It is a collection of people connected by real relations’ (17). From this, Bochénski deduces that individual interests can be subordinated to the common good and its laws. If the preservation of the common good requires warlike actions, then the particular interests of pacifists must be subordinated to this requirement. With regard to the second assumption, Bochénski counters that humanitarian sentiments can indeed induce us not to assert our right to defense by force of arms, but no general rule can be derived from this. Bochénski refers to the example of the father whose child is fatally threatened by a criminal. It would be morally highly reprehensible if the father were to forego the protection of his child. Bochénski refutes the third argument by showing that there are higher values than human life. If, for example, Russia succeeded in taking away the higher values (culture, religion, history, etc.) of the Ukrainian people, this would have a direct impact on the determination of the value of human life, because the Ukrainians would then possibly live a worse and shorter life. To ensure that this does not happen, Ukrainians fight with their lives first and foremost against the destruction of these higher values.

The ethical teleology of war

After these critical remarks on pacifism, Bochénski goes back to some considerations that are familiar to us from just war theory, which has reached up to the present day. However, Bochénski’s contribution only becomes truly innovative when it comes to justifying an ‘ethical teleology of war’ (25). This teleology involves formulating requirements that must be met for the means to achieve a certain goal (victory over the aggressor, successful defense against the aggressor, etc.) to be selected and used effectively. For this, according to Bochénski, it is essential that certain exemplary skills be present in the army, and in a weakened form in society as a whole, so that the goal of ending the war can be achieved. These military virtues include, above all, righteousness, bravery, obedience, and decision-making efficiency on the battlefield. If these qualities are not found, then it is difficult to achieve a goal that one has set for oneself. In this regard and similar to Scheler, Bochénski has observed something very interesting that can also be well applied to the current situation in the Ukrainian war and the state of the Russian army and society: ‘It does not seem certain that the moral neglect that we actually observe after major wars would be the result of the war itself, of all things. It is for the most part merely the outward expression of the actual state of morality in the society in question’ (20).

Virtue ethics between war and peace

I now come to the actual core of Bochénski’s military ethics: his remarks on the military virtues. It must first be said that Bochénski, as a professed Thomist, assumes that virtues cannot only be acquired, but also received – as virtutes infusae. These virtues are added, i.e., higher abilities that one cannot acquire or earn but that are given to someone undeservedly. For example, the virtue of the soldier’s obedience to his superior is different from the virtue of the same soldier’s obedience if he believes in God. Especially in war, as we know from many diaries of famous literary figures, the infused virtues play a major role, since trained bravery in battle is not enough or is to be supplemented by a higher ability, if—in a certain challenging or dangerous situation—the ‘gift’ of bravery, whereby someone’s life can be saved, has been received. This usually results in what can be called ‘honour’ or ‘heroism’.

I do not want to go into detail now about the military virtues of righteousness, bravery, obedience, and efficiency of decision-making in combat cited by Bochénski, but only cursorily address certain aspects that seem weighty enough to me to make them fruitful for current discussions on the ethics of war and peace.

Regarding the development of the soldierly and general capacity for righteousness, Bochénski emphasises that it is important to know where one comes from. Those who fight or want to fight for their country should love it, insofar as they know and value their own history, culture, and the values that apply there. Part of this righteousness is that anyone who is or wants to be militarily engaged for their country is or becomes just and benevolent towards their colleagues and comrades.

With regard to the cultivation of bravery, it is worth mentioning that, according to Bochénski, we are dealing with a basic, perhaps even the most original military virtue, which is rarely encountered in normal everyday life (except perhaps in the form of ‘civil courage’). The fact that we rarely encounter bravery in everyday life today and therefore probably rather disregard it is also due to the fact that our society, ‘under the influence of Kant, generally holds in higher esteem the person who controls himself by force than a calm soldier who is sure of his nature’ (54). That is, brave is rather the one who does not have to force himself to be self-controlled (because he may be too afraid), but the one for whom self-control has already become an integral part of his habitus of bravery. Consequently, a coward who has self-control would still be a coward. (55) Furthermore, it is also important to address some of the cognitive conditions of bravery, e.g., ‘the awareness of danger’ (58). For example, the person who overestimates the danger often needs more bravery than the person who is unaware of the extent of the danger. Looking at the Ukrainian defense against the Russian attack, and this is really an interesting observation by Bochénski, the position of the defender often requires greater bravery than the position of the attacker. Why? Because the attacked party is in a tense permanent state of threat and defense against that threat. If the attacked party lacks the means and opportunities to counterattack and has to spend the time enduring the danger, then it needs real stamina, which, however, is not possible without bravery.

As far as the virtue of obedience is concerned, Bochénski makes it clear that we do not primarily submit to other people, but to a norm (which these people represent). The obedient person—this is true in the military as in everyday life—is of course free, because he could also choose disobedience. In general, obedience in the sense of a limitation of the mind (not of the will) leads us to choose the direct goal. This also includes accepting the command without giving it much thought and concentrating one’s energies solely on choosing the right means to implement the command. Of course, every command must nevertheless be understood somehow and the attitude of obedience also has its limits, because: ‘Obedience to an unethical command would itself be unethical’. (93) Finally, Bochénski addresses whether and how obedience can be learned. The answer is virtue-theoretical: yes, and by means of role models.

The fourth disposition that Bochénski examines is the ability to make decisions on the battlefield; next to bravery, this is probably the most typical military virtue. Here it is important to emphasise that a decision in battle follows the rules of practical syllogism and cannot be deduced abstractly and theoretically. In practical syllogism, the facts are included in the form of concrete circumstances of action: ‘No abstract conjecture will help here. One must not only be able to observe well, but also to see what is there and not what we would like to see’ (121). Misperceptions are often based on the fact that military decision-makers like to see the realisation of their own hypotheses. (Perhaps Putin has already fallen victim to this strategy.) For Bochénski, it is therefore important that someone who wants to and can decide well first cultivates a corresponding character that enables good decision-making behaviour, which also includes the expression of other virtues. Decisiveness is an ‘enduring and reason-driven inclination to act’ (134), which makes us more forward-looking and does not allow our mind to capitulate despite possible surprises.

Conclusion

In the preceding remarks, we were able to learn about the different views of Max Scheler and J.M. Bochénski on questions of the nature and morality of war. Nevertheless, we can also identify commonalities or overlaps between the positions of these two thinkers. Both deal with direct experiences of war in their works. While Bochénski, as a participant in the war, concentrates more on the development of an applied ethics for military personnel, Scheler’s experiences in the run-up to or during World War I result in a ‘pseudo-mystical nationalism’,^[8] which unfortunately can only make a modest contribution to a better understanding of what war is or what makes people wage war. Furthermore, not surprisingly, both reject pacifism for different reasons and sympathise with the idea of just war. While Scheler believes he can find the ethical justification of war in a phenomenology of value and a metaphysics of the person, Bochénski is guided by the classical principles of just war theory as developed by Thomas Aquinas in his Questio de Bello. Both Bochénski and Scheler attach special value to the virtues in the conception of an ethics of war. Above all, Scheler suggests that the reasons that lead to war are to be sought in the emotional value structure of individuals or certain groups (nations, value communities, religions, etc.). Hate in particular seems to be an important starting point and a special motive for wanting to wage war. Scheler thus places hatred in the vicinity of the vices, to which, according to Thomas Aquinas, war must also be counted. In contrast to Scheler’s reflections, which are unsuitable for application contexts, Bochénski’s analyses are a treasure trove for current research on military, peace, and war ethics, despite their contemporary historical character. Some may find the somewhat affirmative tone in relation to the topic of waging war somewhat off-putting, but many of the Polish logician’s arguments are valid and should be taken into account in the current debate. His approach to natural law and virtue ethics, which is enriched by personal experience, also deserves to be re-examined, especially with a view to making a meaningful addition to the lively international debate on ‘just war’.

 

^[1]  Bochénski, J.M. (1975), Is Scheler‘s language translatable into an analytical one?, in: Paul Good (ed.), Max Scheler im Gegenwartsgeschehen der Philosophie, Francke Verlag: Bern und Berlin, 259–266.

 

^[2]  His material ethics of values is explicitly directed against utilitarian and deontological concepts. Although Scheler is sympathetic to the moral category of virtue, he chooses the concept of value as the starting point and basis of his systematic considerations.

 

^[3]  Bochénski, J.M. (1993): Wspomnienia, Philed, Krakow, 326.

 

^[4]  More on this: Schäfer, R. (2017): Scheler’s Metaphysics of War, in: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 79/4, 801–817.

 

^[5]  Scheler, Max: GW IV (1982, 2008): Politisch-pädagogische Schriften.

 

^[6]  Scheler, Max, GW 6 (1963): Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre, 202.

 

^[7]  Bochénski, J.M. (2018): Militärethik im Überblick, Bad Sassendorf 2018, published in Polish as a series of essays in 1938–1939.

 

^[8]  Lobkowicz, N. (2003): On Values, in Studies in East European Thought 55, 367-386, here: 375.