On War
Chapter One
The Genesis of On War
Despite its comprehensiveness, systematic approach, and precise style,
On War is not a finished work. That it was never completed to its author's
satisfaction is largely explained by his ways of thinking and writing.
Clausewitz was in his early twenties when he jotted down his first
thoughts on the nature of military, processes and on the place of war in
social and political life. A pronounced sense of reality, skeptical of contemporary
assumptions and theories, and an equally undoctrinaire fascination
with the past, marked these observations and aphorisms and lent
them a measure of internal consistency; but it would not be inappropriate
to regard his writings before 1806 as essentially isolated insights-building-blocks
for a structure that had not yet been designed.
The presence of a few of his earliest ideas in On War suggests the consequentiality
with which his theories evolved, though in the mature work
these ideas appear as components of a dialectical process that Clausewitz
had mastered in the course of two decades and adapted to his own pur ... read full excerpt from On War ebook
