ABSTRACT: By virtue of what I call the Counterfeit White Flag Problem, a state of civil society and a state of war are shown to be both phenomenologically and epistemically indistinguishable. From this – or so I argue – it follows that all political categories are reducible, without remainder, to military ones. Having established this reducibility I then proceed to provide at least a sketch of how this reduction would go.

“A Theory of War”, in Twentieth-Century Values, University Press of America, 2000. 

Categories: Published Papers, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: Clausewitz, Contractarianism, counterfeit, Danielson, Dennett, Dennettian agent, dispositional state, Foucault, game theory, Gauthier, Glaucon, Hobbes, instrumentalist, Locke, maximizers, military, philosophy, Plato, politics, pre-commitment strategy, preferences, Prisoners' Dilemma, rational, Rawls, Republic, war, white flag