THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
War and Human Nature
June 9, 2014 – June 20, 2014
Dean: Hillay Zmora
Core Instructors: Frederick W. Kagan and Barry Strauss
I.
Description:
War has always and inescapably been a defining part of the human condition. Courage and
cowardice, heroism and tragedy, love of country and hatred of enemies, loss, blood, death, and
memory—the human drama plays out, in sharp relief, on both ancient and modern battlefields.
While many human beings are spared the direct and brutal agonies of war, everyone lives in a world
shaped by the legacy of past conflicts and the possibility of future ones.
This course will explore the place of war in human life from a variety of angles: what drives men to
fight; what makes war moral or immoral; how soldiers and civilians live with the specter of killing
and dying; what war means for statesmen and generals, for ordinary soldiers and passionate
revolutionaries, for wives and children. In no small measure, our ideas about the meaning of war
reveal who we are and what we value, in this life or the next.
This course will draw on a mix of classical texts about war—from Homer to Thucydides, Clausewitz
to Machiavelli. It will study specific wars—both ancient and modern—looking at how they were
fought and what they meant for the nations, cultures, and citizens involved in them. It will explore
the ways in which strategists of war think about the deeper human questions, and how our moral
ideas about the meaning of war shape different war strategies. We will also look at what the new
sciences of man—especially evolutionary biology and neuroscience—may teach us about the place
of war in human life. And we will examine how new technologies—especially weapons of mass
destruction and the use of drones—are shaping and re-shaping the human meaning of war, for
better and perhaps, tragically, for much, much worse.
The seminar will be led by two of the world’s leading scholars of war—classicist and historian Barry
Strauss and historian and policy analyst Frederick W. Kagan. We will also be joined by various
experts—including soldiers and statesmen—who have lived the dilemmas of war firsthand.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
II.
Course Structure
The institute proceeds roughly from ancient to modern understandings of war, beginning in ancient
Greece and Israel. The main course sequence will be taught by the Core Instructors: Barry Strauss
in Week I and Frederick Kagan in Week II. These sessions will be punctuated by Visiting Speakers
– Eric Cohen, Charles Hill, Stephen Rosen, and Eric Edelman – whose sessions are designed to
have their own integrity and bring additional points of view to the overall course.
The large movement of the course begins with three sessions on three different ancient views on the
causes of war:
1. Honor, blind folly as the causes of war, to be controlled by marriage, family, the wisdom
of the elders, and poetry;
2. Fear, honor, and self-interest as the causes of war, to be controlled by studying history and
entrusting the government to a broad swathe of the propertied few;
3. Spiritedness and appetite as the causes of war, to be controlled but not abolished by
reason and philosophy.
Next we consider two different ancient takes on the relationship between the individual soldier and
the group:
4. The subordination of the individual to the group in order to create a perfect army in
Sparta, versus democratic freedom in Athens.
Next come two sessions on war and justice:
5. The paradoxical relationship between justice and necessity in wartime;
6. On just war theory and the ancients.
We then turn to two kinds of families, the nuclear family and the army:
7. The impact of war on women and children;
8. The general and his men.
Next, a question about freedom and order:
9. Which is better: peace and assimilation under a well-governed empire or fighting until the
death for freedom under a barbarian chieftain?
Finally, we return to the question of justice and imperium, this time in one of the founding texts of
modernity, one that turned classical virtue on its head and argued for injustice:
10. Machiavelli’s Revolution
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165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
Week II begins with Thomas Hobbes’ view of the natural condition of man and the causes
of war, asking



What are the elements of human nature that lead to conflict and war, according to
Hobbes?
What factors control or moderate human nature to make peace possible?
Why is there still war, according to Hobbes, even when those conditions are met?
A contrary view of the natural condition of man and the causes of war is then taken up by JeanJacques Rousseau. In the session dedicated to his work, we ask:




What are the differences between the state of nature described by Rousseau and that
described by Hobbes?
What are the causes of conflict and war, according to Rousseau?
What factors control those causes?
Is there anything, according to Rousseau, that could conduce to permanent or at least
stable peace?
After Rousseau, we study Clausewitz.



What are the causes of war, according to Clausewitz?
Is Clausewitz’s notion of the relationship between war and human nature more akin to
Rousseau’s or to Hobbes’?
Clausewitz places great emphasis on emotion and chance (or probability). How do
these concepts change the nature of the discourses Hobbes and Rousseau presented?
What do they tell us about Clausewitz’s notions of the causes of war beyond what he
explicitly writes?
Up until this point, early modern thinkers had relied on the “state of nature” to ground their views
of war and human nature. Marx dismisses the concept. What takes its place in his analysis? Why
do the crises and conflicts of bourgeois existence emerge, and where do they lead? Is war natural or
avoidable?
Following Marx, we turn to a Soviet text that articulates the Marxist-Leninist theory of the nature of
war much more concisely than Marx or Lenin ever did. It also articulates the basis whereby the
completion of the Communist revolution will end war by eliminating private property and the
economic structures that cause war.
For the session on Islam and War, we will study passages from the Quran and Hadith, as well as a
later tract. Dr. Kagan will give guidance during Week II about what specific passages to study, but
the conversation will range throughout the sources.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
III.
A Note on Readings
A.
Language
Note that for the Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes readings, we have included Hebrew
translations of the English sources.
B.
Specification and Supplemental Reading
The reading for the session on “Islam and War,” scheduled for Thursday, June 19, will include
selections from the Quran, Hadith, and Ibn Tamiyya’s Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong. Dr.
Kagan will specify exactly what he would like you to prepare earlier that week. We will be sending
you the specific edition of the Quran that we will use in the course, and you must bring it with you,
expecting reading guidance when you get here.
Additionally, we will announce and distribute Eric Edelman’s readings for his sessions on June 19-20
closer to the institute itself.
C.
Reading Material in New York
We will not have additional copies of this reader or the Quran for you in New York. You must
bring these with you to the institute.
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165 E. 56th Street
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IV.
Course Calendar
Monday, June 9
Times
Lead
Instructor
Welcome Breakfast
8:30
am
9:15 Barry
am – Strauss
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
Themes
Readings
The Causes of War, pt. 1:
Honor, Folly, Poetry and
the Past

Homer, Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011),
bk. 1.
The Causes of War, pt. 2:
Fear, Honor, and SelfInterest

The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Strassler, ( New
York: Free Press, 1998) I.1, 20-23, 66-88,
118, 139-146.
[Hebrew Translation]: Thucydides, The
Peloponnesian War, trans. A.A. Halevi
(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1959).

6:308:30
pm
Dinner and Participant Introductions
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
Tuesday, June 10
Times
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Barry
Strauss
Themes
Readings
The Causes of War, pt. 3:
Spiritedness and the
Appetites

Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. Grube
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 471c-474b,
484a-507a, 514a-521b.
The Relationship between
the Soldier and the Group:
Spartan Virtue vs.
Athenian Liberty

Plutarch on Sparta, trans. Richard Talbert
(London: Penguin Classic, 2005).
o Plutarch, “Life of Lycurgus,” para.
10, 12-22, 25
o Xenophon, “Spartan Society,” para.
7-12, 15
Herodotus, History, trans. David Grene
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)
VII.101-105.
Cicero, “On Duties” trans. Walter Miller
(Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press,
1913) I.36.
Thucydides, II.34-46



THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
Wednesday, June 11
Times
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Barry
Strauss
Themes
Readings
War and Justice, pt. 1:
Justice and Necessity

Thucydides, III.1-19; 25-50
War and Justice, pt. 2: On
Just War


Thucydides, III.9; IV.84-116
Livy, The Early History of Rome: Books 1-5,
trans. Aubrey De Selincourt (London:
Penguin Classics, 2002), I.24,32.
Livy, Rome and Italy: Books 6-10, trans. Betty
Radice (London: Penguin Classics, 1982),
IX.9.
Joshua 1-11

6:308:30
Eric Cohen Joshua and the Stones of
War

THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Thursday, June 12
Times
9:00
am –
11:45
am
1:002:30
pm
4:006:30
Lead
Instructor
Barry
Strauss
Charles
Hill
Barry
Strauss
Themes
Readings
War and the Bonds of
Family, pt. 1: The Impacts
of War on Women and
Children
War and Human
Consciousness


Homer, Iliad, Book VI
Homer, Iliad, Book XXIV
War and the Bonds of
Family, pt. 2: The General
and his Men

Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, trans. Carolyn
Hammond (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), II.16-27.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Friday, June 13
Times
9:1511:30
am
12:302:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Barry
Strauss
Themes
Readings
Freedom and Order

Justice and Order at the
Dawn of Modernity: The
Revolution of Niccolò
Machiavelli


Tacitus, Agricola, ed. James Rives and trans.
Harold Mattingly (London: Penguin Classics,
2010), sec. 1-5, 18-21, 29-38.
Machiavelli, Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998), ch. 12-18.
[Hebrew Translation]: Machiavelli, Prince, ed.
Hillay Zmora (Jerusalem: Shalem Press with
Dvir Press, 2003).
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Monday, June 16
Times
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Frederick
Kagan
Themes
War and the Condition of
Man in Thomas Hobbes’
Political Thought
Readings


War and the Condition of
Man in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Political
Thought

Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996) Ch. 18 and 19
[Hebrew Translation]: Hobbes, Leviathan, ed.
Menachem Lorberbaum and trans. Aharon
Amir (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2009).
Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed.
Roger D. Masters and trans. Roger D. and
Judith R. Masters (Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1964) pp. 141-181.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Tuesday, June 17
Times
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Frederick
Kagan
Themes
Carl von Clausewitz and
the Causes of War, pt. 1
Carl von Clausewitz and
the Causes of War, pt. 2
Readings

Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans.
Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989) Bk. 1, Ch.
1.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Wednesday, June 18
Times
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
6:308:30
pm
Lead
Instructor
Frederick
Kagan
Stephen
Rosen
Themes
Readings
Karl Marx: War and the
Movement of History

The Marxist-Leninist View

Decision Making and Fear:
A Biological View

Marx, Readings from The Marx-Engels Reader,
ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York and
London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978).
o Economic and Political Manuscripts
of 1844, pp. 70-81
o Communist Manifesto, pp. 473-483
Marxism-Leninism on War and Army (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1972) pp. 5-21 and 3139.
Stephen P. Rosen, War and Human Nature,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2005), pp. 135-178.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Thursday, June 19
Times
Lead
Instructor
Frederick
Kagan
9:15
am –
12:15
pm
2:305:30
pm
6:30- Eric
8:30 Edelman
pm
Themes
Islam and War
Readings



The Human Experience of
Wartime Leadership: A
View from the Front

Selections from Quran – TBD.
Selections from Hadith - TBD.
Selections from Ibn Tamiyya, Enjoining Right
and Forbidding Wrong, trans. Salim Abdallah
Ibn Morgan – TBD.
Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary
at War (New York: Knopf, 2014), selections
TBD.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Friday, June 20
Times
Lead
Instructor
Eric
Edelman
9:1511:30
am
12:30- Frederick
2:30
Kagan
pm
Themes
War and Human Nature in TBD.
the Nuclear Age
Summary and
Recapitulation
Readings
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
V.
Faculty Biographies
Core Instructors
Frederick W. Kagan
Frederick W. Kagan, author of the 2007 report “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” is
one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq. He is the director of
AEI’s Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. His books range from Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010), coauthored
with Thomas Donnelly, to the End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805 (Da Capo, 2006).
He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in Russian and Soviet military history.
Barry Strauss
Barry Strauss, the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell
University, is a military historian with a focus on ancient Greece and Rome. He teaches courses on
the history of ancient Greece, war and peace in the ancient world, history of battle, introduction to
military history, and specialized topics in ancient history.
His book, Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece—and Western Civilization was named
one of the best books of 2004 by the Washington Post. His latest book, Masters of Command:
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership (Simon & Schuster, May 2012), was named one
of the best books of 2012 by Bloomberg.
Strauss is editor of The Princeton History of the Ancient World, a series of books from Princeton
University Press. He sits on the editorial boards of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military
History, Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, The International Journal of the Classical
Tradition, and Strategika. He has published op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA
Today, and Newsday, been interviewed on NPR and the BBC, and has been quoted on the front page
of the Wall Street Journal and in other major newspapers.
Dean
Hillay Zmora
Hillay Zmora is professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er-Sheva, Israel. He is currently
a Visiting Scholar at The Graduate Center, CUNY. His main areas of research are late medieval and
early modern Germany, state formation in Europe 1300-1800, the European nobility, and the
political thought of Machiavelli. He is the author of State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The
Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440-1567 (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the
State in Europe, 1300-1800 (Routledge, 2001); The Feud in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge University
Press, 2011). He edited the Hebrew editions of Machiavelli, The Prince (Dvir and Shalem Press, 2003)
and Discourses (Shalem Press, 2010). He has published his work on the nobility and on Machiavelli in
scholarly journals in history and political thought, including Past and Present, The Historical Journal,
and History of Political Thought.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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Visiting Speakers
Eric Cohen
Eric Cohen has been the Executive Director of the Tikvah Fund since 2007. He was the founder
and remains editor-at-large of the New Atlantis, serves as the publisher of the Jewish Review of
Books and Mosaic, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Ethics and Public Policy
Center, the Witherspoon Institute, and National Affairs and on the Editorial Advisory Board of First
Things. Mr. Cohen has published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and
newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, Commentary, The
New Republic, First Things, and numerous others. He is the author of In the Shadow of Progress: Being
Human in the Age of Technology (2008) and co-editor of The Future is Now: America Confronts the
New Genetics (2002). He was previously managing editor of the Public Interest and served as a senior
consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Eric Edelman
Eric S. Edelman is Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a
Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins, and a senior
associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. Before retiring from
the U.S. Foreign Service in May 2009, he held senior positions at the Departments of State and
Defense as well as the White House, including U.S. Ambassador to Finland and Turkey, Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National
Security Affairs, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State George Shultz, Chief of Staff to the
Deputy Secretary of State and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
He also served as a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy
Talks. Among his awards are the Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the Légion
d’Honneur conferred by the French government.
Charles Hill
Charles Hill is a diplomat-in-residence and lecturer in international studies at Yale University. He is a
Career Minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, having served in roles including Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for the Middle East at the State Department, Chief of Staff of the State
Department, and Executive Aide to Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Mr. Hill has been a fellow
at the Harvard University East Asia Research Center and a Clark fellow at Cornell University; he is
currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as special consultant on policy to
the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Hill collaborated with former
UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the books Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, a memoir of the
Middle East peace negotiations, and Unvanquished, about U.S. relations with the UN in the post–
Cold War period. He is also the editor of the three-volume Papers of United Nations Secretary-General
Boutros-Ghali, published by Yale University Press. His books include Grand Strategies: Literature,
Statecraft and World Order (Yale University Press) and Trial of a Thousand Years: Islamism and World
Order (Hoover Press). He received an A.B. degree from Brown University in 1957, a J.D. degree
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, and an M.A. degree in American studies from the
University of Pennsylvania in 1961.
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
New York, New York 10022
Stephen Rosen
Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs
at Harvard University. He was the civilian assistant to the director of Net Assessment in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Political-Military Affairs on the staff of the National
Security Council, and a professor in the Strategic Department at the Naval War College. He
participated in the President’s Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy, and in the Gulf War
Air Power Survey sponsored by the Secretary of the Air Force. He has published articles on ballistic
missile defense, the American theory of limited war, and on the strategic implications of the AIDS
epidemic, and wrote the book, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military which won the
1992 Funriss Prize for best first book on national security affairs awarded by the Merchon Center at
Ohio State University. His second book, Societies and Military Power: India and its Armies, was published
by Cornell University Press in 1995. His next project is on the non-rational aspects of deterrence
entitled “Fear and Dominance in International Politics.”
THE TIKVAH FUND
165 E. 56th Street
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VI.
Our Mutual Commitment
Our pledge to you is that the program will be excellent and that the teachers are, in every case,
among the best people in the world teaching the subjects they are teaching. Your pledge to us is that
you will invest yourselves in the texts and the seminars, and do the work to the fullest extent of your
talents. You have put your everyday work on hold to join us, so we know you come to us with great
interest and commitment. We will insist that you continue that commitment—a commitment to
attending each and every session, a commitment to coming to class on time, a commitment to doing
all the readings—throughout the duration of the Institute. If anyone fails to honor his or her
commitment, he or she will be dismissed from the Institute.