QuestionsWhat is a just society?Against war: one human family
What is a just society?One humanity

Against war: one human family

Erasmus 1466 · 1536In Praise of Folly: learning against fanaticism.
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What it claims

There is scarcely any peace so unjust that it is not better than the justest war.

Why

Humans are born naked and weak, made for mutual help; each side thinks its cause is just, and war's evils outweigh its goods.

In short

"Against war: one human family" is an argument by Erasmus (The Complaint of Peace (1517, Peace speaks) and Adages (1515)) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: one humanity). Its claim: There is scarcely any peace so unjust that it is not better than the justest war. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Complaint of Peace (1517, Peace speaks) and Adages (1515)
Valid with an implicit premise

Erasmus saw Europe at war almost without pause: France, the Empire, England, the popes. In an adage of 1515 ("War is sweet to those who have not tried it") he speaks in his own name; in the Complaint of Peace (1517) he has Peace herself speak, driven out from everywhere. The idea is the same: humans are made to get along, they have one homeland, the world, and war almost always costs more than it yields. He does not say "never" war, but "almost never".

P1Nature gave the other animals weapons, but brought man into the world naked and weak: he can live safely only through alliance and mutual help. He is made for friendship, not for war.
P2The world is the common homeland of all humans, and all descend from the same ancestors: those we fight are brothers.
P3Everyone believes his own cause is just. If we weigh the goods and evils of war in a balance, the evils almost always win, and they fall mostly on the innocent.
P4 · implicit premiseWhen those who would fight are made to get along, belong to one family, and war would do more harm than the wrong it seeks to right, peace must be preferred, even an imperfect one.
Therefore there is scarcely any peace so unjust that it is not better than the justest war.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where man is made for friendship, all are brothers, war costs more than it yields, and yet peace is not preferred: nothing in P1 to P3 rules it out.
With P4 the conclusion follows. P4 links the three findings (nature, family, balance) to a choice: prefer peace. Without it, one could accept the three findings and still think one must fight, for example for honour or to punish a crime. The most disputed point is P3: is it true that war almost always costs more than it yields? Just war theorists answer that letting the aggressor have his way sometimes costs even more.
Analogy. Two brothers quarrel over a field. They could go to court, or fight, and lose their health, their money and the peace of the whole family. Erasmus would tell them: an imperfect division is better. And remember that you are brothers.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

A
Augustine (just war) 426 · attacks premise 3

The wise man will wage just wars, with regret. It is the adversary's injustice that forces him: if crime is not answered, it is left to triumph. The whole Christian just war tradition (Augustine, then Thomas Aquinas) draws conditions from this: a just cause, legitimate authority, right intention.

Érasme replies
Érasme Erasmus's answer (Adages, 1515), to those who compare war to punishing a criminal
When the law punishes a convicted criminal, he alone pays, and his punishment serves as an example. In war, neither side is without fault, and the harm falls mostly on those who least deserve punishment: peasants, the old, women, children. Better to leave the fault of a few unpunished than to endanger thousands of innocents.
The debate goes on (our summary) Just war theorists later built this objection in: they add the rule of proportionality (cause no more harm than the harm one fights) and civilian immunity. But they maintain there are cases, such as an invasion or a massacre, where doing nothing is worse than fighting. Erasmus answers the punishment argument without discussing Augustine himself. And in the Complaint of Peace, Peace partly grants the point: if war cannot be avoided, let the harm fall on those who caused it.
Machiavelli (The Prince, 14) 1532 · attacks premise 4

Written in 1513, published in 1532. An unarmed prince is despised, and is not safe among armed men. War is the only art fitting for one who commands; in peacetime he must prepare for it even more. Preferring peace at any price means handing oneself over to those who do not.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Érasme in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) The Prince was printed in 1532; Erasmus died in 1536 without answering it, as far as we know. The two men are not quite discussing the same thing: Machiavelli advises a prince surrounded by enemies, Erasmus asks Christian princes not to make war on one another. The question remains open: does preparing for war protect peace, or make it more fragile?