Page "Carl von Clausewitz" Paragraph 12

Clausewitz was a professional soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war.

He wrote a careful, systematic, philosophical examination of war in all its aspects.

The result was his principal work, On War, the West's premier work on the philosophy of war.

It was only partially completed by the time of his death, but just how close to completion it was is a matter of considerable scholarly dispute.

It clearly contains material written at different stages in Clausewitz's intellectual evolution, producing some significant contradictions between different sections, and the sequence and precise character of that evolution is a source of much debate.

Clausewitz constantly sought to revise the text, particularly between 1827 and his departure on his last field assignment, to include more material on " people's war " and forms of war other than between states, but little of this material was included in the book.

Soldiers before this time had written treatises on various military subjects, but none had undertaken a great philosophical examination of war on the scale of those written by Clausewitz and Leo Tolstoy, both of which were inspired by the events of the Napoleonic Era.