Nombre: Jean Nicolas Sanchez Mojica

Science progress and social justice

Universidad del Rosario
9th Critical commentary

Chapter 4: On the pan-cultural origins of evil

Question: The chaos is necessary to have an armed war?

As I mentioned in the previous critical commentary about morality, that group of norms,

beliefs, and values is essential to have an organized and peaceful society, but there is a

major change in armed wars. The existence of conflicts with guns implies that there is an

organized society to manufacture weapons. A place where fear, death, competition, and

violence (Hobbes’s concept of natural state) reigns not necessarily need to be a chaotic

location. The existence of an armory in war depends on a massive commodity chain based

in a system made up of people and legal or illegal companies related to each other, by a

succession of operations for the production, transformation, and marketing of a product or

group of products in a determined environment. 

 I think the most appropriate concept to assign an armed war is the “Banality of war”

proposed by the German philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt. According to

my lecture, this concept is based on individuals who act outside the rules of the system to

which they belong without reflecting on their actions. They do not care about the

consequences of their actions, only about the compliance of orders. Actions like torture,

manufacturing weapons, and execution of human beings are not considered as “evil” in the

context of the war. “I only followed orders” is an example of the “Banality of evil” and an
excuse for who makes these operations. I’m going to take another example, is very

probable that the persons who produce the guns in the Colombian conflict have nothing to

do with the war, and is very likely that these subjects don’t have any features of a person

with mental problems or evil intentions. They act according to their necessities and his

actions were a result of following orders from superiors. In the conclusion of this

information is going to say that Hobbes's definition of war is very simple because there

were a lot of wars with some organizations without any characteristics related to chaos and

disorder. The modern wars are far away from savage bestiality but there are more massive

and cruel. 

References:
Johnstone, Maxine Roots of Morality. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2008.