Stasis and Political Philosophy of Contemporary War

Abstract

In recent years, political philosophy has increasingly faced the question about the nature of the contemporary war. Despite the invention of nuclear weapons, war has not disappeared from the historical scene. However, has its essence remained unchanged? In an era of global political communication, when it is increasingly difficult to separate foreign policy from domestic policy, do the trends in the development of military conflicts correspond to the classical ideas about war? One definitely needs a clear paradigm that would help to trace the common logic behind the whole variety of such conflicts taking place in the world today. The article is devoted to the consideration of one of these paradigms, which is gaining momentum among political theorists. It concerns the conceptualization of all the modern military conflicts as a global civil war. Based on the works of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the author outlines the general contours of this approach, after which he turns to the analysis of the phenomenon of s civil strife, described by the ancient Greek notion of stasis — a term that Giorgio Agamben put back to the current political vocabulary. His detailed study of the original meaning of stasis and its interpretation in the works of Nicole Loraux and Agamben reveals the potential of this concept to be a theoretical tool for understanding the logic of modern war.