Divine Justifications for War: Premodern Rationalizations and Assumptions (Part 2 of An Artificiality of War series)

This is part two of a nine part series where I share some current research that I am working on concerning the nature of human conflict and how our species socially constructs reality within which, we clash swords, fling missiles, and destroy tangible and intangible constructs. This was something I worked on originally as a book chapter, but since then re-organized my third book project so that many of these concepts become their own dedicated chapter. So, this will be put here at Medium as an example of the writing process that I personally like to perform: Creating rough drafts, flinging them in series online, re-tooling them, and eventually getting to the great book projects that we usually want to dive into immediately, often unprepared. My preparation is as follows- research, think, write, edit, post, write more, edit more, post more, refine, and eventually cobble together a book. Somewhere in there is arguing with editors…

If you missed Part 1 of this series, it is located here:

An Artificiality of War: Social Construction of Organized Violence

Christ leading crusaders into battle, detail from an Apocalypse, with commentary (The “Queen Mary Apocalypse”), early 14th century, f. 37 (British Library)

Earlier war theories did not share many of the contemporary associations gained over the last several centuries. Past western societies constructed mythologies, legends, ideologies, and blended these disciplines with those of analytically optimized, objective ones such as mathematics and engineering.[1] “Myths, it transpired, are stronger than anyone could have imagined,” as Harari observes in his explanation of how the Agricultural Revolution opened up the creation of cities, specialized roles, and the need for mathematics and language. Astronomy and astrology, for example, blended together along with religion, art, history, and politics to provide earlier societies with explanation of how the world worked, to include war. Deities such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus were paired with astronomical observations, tracked and plotted using mathematics, but also worshiped by ideological followers. Roman laws “depended on rules that got things done in the world…