Wall, Heinrich de (Hrsg.): Herrschaft, Krieg und Frieden in der Staatslehre der Frühen Neuzeit

Events in Ukraine have brought war into public consciousness as a political reality. This prompts an examination of the themes of war and peace from the perspective of the natural law doctrines and constitutional history of the 16th to 18th centuriesfields of study to which the Johannes Althusius Society is dedicated. While the conference whose proceedings are collected in this volume could not offer an exhaustive analysis of this subject matter, it did provide an opportunity to address a fundamental political theme from the era that saw the emergence of modern, sovereign statehood and "classical" international law. The doctrines examineddrawn from diverse disciplines such as *ius publicum*, natural law, political theory, and cameralismdemonstrate that war and peace were central components of early modern state theory. Despite its ubiquity and the variety of justifications offered for it, war was never viewed as a normal state of affairs. What unites these various doctrines is the conviction that reasoned argument can lead people to recognize war as an avoidable evil.