Angličtina
This book outlines the emergence of the modern form of war, from the Napoleonic period to the present day. The author reveals how the awesome military potential of the revolution in armaments manufacture in the nineteenth century was not apparent in dominant nineteenth-century theories of social progress, which grew out of the Enlightenment. A major theme explored in Modernity and War is the contradiction between Enlightenment assumptions concerning human progress and the West's involvement in mass violence. Philip Lawrence suggests that the real cultural beliefs of Western states have been far removed from the proclaimed moral doctrines of Western philosophy. Although modernity's image was damaged by the Great War he argues that a modernist theory of war was re-established in the doctrine of strategic air warfare after 1918, which has allowed the West to distance itself from the effects of military violence. But the author reveals how the modernist theory of war was shattered by the advent of nuclear weapons.
