HI 130: Hard Choices: War and Morality

Over the semester, we will examine the ways in which war acts as a unifying and fragmenting force, as well as a moral challenge, in human society. The United States was at war for much of the last 80 years and has recently emerged from the longest war in its history. We can only understand the legacy of those conflicts by looking to the lessons of the past. We will examine a series of historical cases in which we can begin to understand how war promotes or undermines moral values. We will begin with two examples from ancient Greece: selections from Herodotus’ history of the Persian Wars and Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. Those accounts frame the contrast between the perception of war as a heroic epic and the perception of war as a force that undermines moral integrity and social values. Journalist Chris Hedges analyzes that dichotomy in his book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, based on his experiences as a war correspondent. We will then examine additional case studies from the Holocaust (World War II), from the French colonial war in Algeria (1954-1962), and from the early years of the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2001-2021).