Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
* We are grateful to Peter Baehr, Christopher Coker, Maarten Van Alstein, Alexander Wendt, Yana Zuo and two anonymous reviews for help with a previous version. As always, the resources available at the Internet Archive {www.archive.org} proved invaluable.
In The Invention of Peace, Michael Howard argues that the idea of perpetual peace was first introduced only in the Enlightenment.1 While the dream of an end to all wars may be eternal, the belief in its practicability, he says, is thoroughly modern. The idea of perpetual peace is modern above all since it presupposes a progressive view of history which only appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. As assorted liberal thinkers affirmed, human beings can use science and philosophy to understand society, and once it is thoroughly understood, it can be improved - made more rational and more efficient. War, they argued, is irrational and peace is rational. Through the inexorable progress of history, perpetual peace will eventually happen.
Howard, however, rejects the possibility of perpetual peace. His grounds, most would agree, are surprising. As he puts it: 'bourgeois society is boring'.2 The explanation of why boredom leads to war is essentially anthropological. Life in bourgeois society, Howard explains, is necessarily frustrating, at least to some of its members:
There is something about rational order that will always leave some people, especially the energetic young, deeply and perhaps rightly dissatisfied [...] Militant nationalist movements or conspiratorial radical ones provide excellent outlets for boredom. In combination, their attraction can prove irresistible.3
Everyday humdrum existence, Howard suggests, is not good enough for the 'energetic young'. Bourgeois life fails to grab and hold their attention; they are turned off and they tune out. In short, they are bored.4 It is this boredom which war relieves. Since society causes boredom, and war relieves it, wars will continue to take place.
Interestingly, boredom, like peace, is often said to be a modern invention.5 People in modern society are bored in a way that people in previous times and places were not. We expect to be engaged and entertained, and when these expectations are disappointed, boredom overcomes us. There is situation-specific boredom - brought on by long...