On the Saying: There Have Always Been Wars. There Will Always Be Wars as Long as Humanity Exists

Abstract

The occasion for this lecture is to present a non-representative survey of 156 members of the audience at this lecture on 5 November 2012, in which 71.8 % of participants agreed with the notion that wars have been waged between humans since their existence. Only 26.9 % agreed that war, defined here as the specific, lethal form of conflict over the order within and between polities, has been invented at some point during the history of humanity, and that thus, there has been a war-free prehistory of humanity.

The assumption or conviction that there have always been wars in human history, and that the inclination towards war lies in the nature of humans, naturally facilitates political views that it is futile to attempt to abolish war as a way of staging a socio-political conflict, although they do not entirely exclude the possibility of avoiding wars or of limiting them in terms of area, and of moderating them in terms of the form in which they are staged. Conversely, evidence that in the long early period in the history of humanity there were no wars is not sufficient in itself as grounds why it might be possible in the future to create a lasting world peace.

In recent decades, numerous academic disciplines such as anthropology, primatology, ethology, palaeontology and archaeology have made contributions to the research into the historic origins of war in the history of humanity, even if it continues to be a matter of contention as to when the first war took place—several tens of thousands of years ago, or already during the emergence of humanity. However, it appears that it has always been the case that some people have killed other people. More recent studies nevertheless make it plausible that people living during the first hundreds of thousands of years were not yet capable of waging war, since for a long time, they did not have the sense of community necessary to do so. Blood vengeance could have been a preliminary form of war. The more recent empirical studies and theoretical considerations override numerous older philosophical speculations regarding the original conditions in human society and also refute theories that have been widespread for a long time as to the historical development and causes of wars. However, the interest in a lasting world peace at the present time and in the future requires not evidence of an original peace in the early history of humanity, but instead, the refutation of the theory that war is rooted in the nature of man. This is an important prerequisite for the opportunity, if not the certainty, of realising such a peace.

Lecture given on 17.6.2013.