Military Science and Tactics

Military Science and Tactics

Clausewitz's strategic judgment versus Kant's Synthetic a priori judgment: a phenomenological study

Document Type : Research/Original/Regular Article

Authors
mehdi shabani 1
Hossein Valivand Zamani 2
mohsen moradian 3
vahid Riazi 4
1 PhD student in Defense Management, Command and Staff University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Associate Professor, AJA Command and Staff University, Tehran, Iran.
3 Assistant Professor, AJA Command and Staff University, Tehran, Iran.
4 Associate Professor, AJA Command and Staff University, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/qjmst.2024.2038644.2095
Abstract
Purpose: The present research was conducted with the aim of comparing Clausewitz's strategic judgment and Kant's combined a priori judgment and the cases of disagreement and correcting the Kantian model by the Clausewitzian judgment model.
Method: This research had a qualitative approach and was practical in terms of its purpose and was done with the phenomenological method.
Findings: Based on qualitative analysis, 153 open codes have been identified in the form of 2 main categories, including Kant's combined a priori judgment (including 18 open codes and 4 concepts) and Clausewitz's strategic judgment (including 135 open codes and 10 concepts) with software. MAWQDA2020 is categorized. We can propose a Clausewitzian version of the Kantian structure. Politics may be seen as the role of reason, and the reality of war, or more precisely, war, replaces the empirical element. In a sense, strategy replaces understanding. Strategy, like understanding, is a middle term between politics and war.
Conclusion: In Clausewitz's strategic judgment, the concepts of strategy, tactics, friction and center of gravity, unlike the Kantian model of judgment, are closely related to the empirical matter. In Clausewitz's model, politics replaces reason, war replaces the empirical element, and strategy replaces understanding in the Kantian model. This is the "strategy" that plays an intermediary role between the demands of politics and the reality of war, that is, between the effort to create an abstract and falsifying unity and the movement towards the evacuation of chaotic and decentralized energy (friction).
Keywords
Synthetic a priori Judgment
Strategic judgment
Strategy
Tactics
Friction
Subjects

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Military Science and Tactics
Volume 20, Issue 70
Winter 2025
Pages 5-44