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One of the most challenging aspects of the war in Ukraine is the way in which the conflict has been constantly shifting in its form. In the first place, there is a conventional ground war between Russia and Ukraine, in which the identity and will of the two peoples is at stake. Yet Russia has used weapons supplied by Iran, and Ukraine depends on NATO for its own supplies, indicating that this war depends on the maintenance and expansion of alliances. The stability of these alliances in turn depends on a combination of Realpolitik and shared values as the glue that holds them together. This logic of alliances motivates the energy war that Russia is waging with Europe, revealing that, unbeknownst to Europe, Russian energy policy over the last decade was an early form of the war. Similarly, the threat of nuclear war also tests the resolve of NATO, forcing it to consider the values at stake in the conflict. Is the war about Ukraine’s sovereignty or the principle of nation-state sovereignty itself? Is it about human rights for Ukrainians or the entire human rights project? For Russia, is it about self-defense or a pan-Slavic identity? Is it about the protection of Russian minorities in Ukraine or the threat of Western secularization?

The material form of the war—economic, conventional, nuclear—will depend on the way in which the participants on all sides and in all parts of the world come to an understanding about these questions concerning the moral and spiritual stakes in the war. If it is just a matter of giving up Ukraine, then the economic costs for Europe may not be worth the fight, and Russia’s victory in the energy war could lead to a general NATO capitulation. But if the freedom and security of central and western Europe are also at stake, then even a severe economic recession would be a small price to pay for the reestablishment of a NATO-dominated security order. Is freedom worth the risk of annihilation? Is peace worth the indignities and repression of authoritarianism? As the most serious global conflict since World War II, the war in Ukraine risks going beyond the bounds of all other forms of war before it. What are the resources that are necessary for meeting its challenges? How can the shifting forms of the war be contained and channeled toward a future lasting peace?

These types of questions are not specific to the war in Ukraine but arise in any situation of war. Every war forces us to reconsider the character of war and the forms that it can take. In the first place, the insight that leads to a war is one about the nature of a conflict. War only begins once the parties determine that there is an otherwise irresolvable conflict about the basis of order. The course of a war also results in a practical insight into the form of a postwar order. Peace and stability cannot arrive until all come to an agreement about the new understanding of order. This intertwining of practical and theoretical gains means that the time of war is also a time of shifting manifestations of the forms by which war is fought, as well as the forms of order to be established by the outcome of the war. The course of a war will be decided by our understanding of the kind of world we want to live in, the risks we are willing to take to establish such a world, and our belief in its practical possibility. A war will necessarily change in form depending upon where we are in the movement from the conflict of competing ideas to the victory of a particular conception of order. Since the result of the conflict would be an establishment of sovereignty based on some understanding of order, the conflict is not just a material one but also a theoretical and spiritual one about the metaphysical basis of order. In the process of war, insight leads to conflict, and conflict leads to insight.

At the 2023 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference on forms of war, we will consider different ways of understanding the relationship between conflict and insight in war as well as examples of how the conceptualization of conflict affects the outbreak, progress, and outcome of wars. On the one hand, we will consider the way in which the experience of war, both on the battlefield and on the home front, affects the outcome of the war. On the other hand, we will look at how this importance of the experience of war in turn affects the strategy of war. Such strategizing begins already at the nascent stages of conflict, before any actual fighting begins, but in which the possibility of conflict can already lead to concessions by one side or the other that lead to a transformation of the basis of order. Similarly, fears and hopes for the future also determine the course of a war, helping the participants to end a war by offering them a mutually acceptable vision of the terms of peace.

Questions include:

• What are the different causes of war in any particular case? How do these causes attain such significance that they become a casus belli? Were there alternatives to war that were not taken?
• In what situations does the refusal of war lead to an outcome that is tantamount to surrender in war? How can the threat of war be used as a political tool?
• To what extent is war a continuation of politics? Or is war the breakdown of politics?
• How have different wars been experienced on the battlefield and on the home front? How have the different experiences of war affected the outcomes?
• How does our understanding of world order affect the turn to war?
• What is the relationship between war and peace in terms of international order?
• How do fictional or historical representations of war affect the conduct of war?
• What is the relationship between war and the collective identity of a people?
• How are wars between nation-states linked to their domestic politics? In what situations does an external enemy create unity or division in domestic politics?
• How is war used as a tool in domestic politics, for instance, as a way to divert attention from domestic political problems?
• What are the characteristics of different types of war, such as limited war, absolute war, civil war, cold war, proxy war, phony war, trade war, guerilla war, war on terror, nuclear war? What factors lead to a war being fought in a particular way?
• To what extent can a representation of war replace a real war, for instance, when single combat is supposed to substitute for the combat of armies, or when war is televised?
• What is the relationship between spiritual concerns and the forms of war? Are all wars in some sense religious wars?

Conference Location

The conference will take place at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City from Thursday, March 30, to Saturday, April 1, 2023.

Abstract Submissions

Please note: Abstracts for this conference will only be accepted from current Telos-Paul Piccone Institute members. In order to become a member, please visit our membership enrollment page. Telos-Paul Piccone Institute memberships are valid until the end of the annual New York City conference.

If you are interested in making a presentation, please submit a 200-word abstract and 50-word bio by December 15, 2022, to telosnyc2023@telosinstitute.net. Please place “The 2023 Telos Conference” in the email’s subject line.

The 2025 annual conference of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute will culminate the first year of a five-year program—the Telos China Initiative—that has aimed to set Telos on a distinct intellectual course.

The Telos circle falls outside many conventional intellectual categories. During the Cold War, this quality enabled us to form a bridge between Eastern Europe and the Anglosphere. We fostered work by Soviet-bloc intellectuals, helping Western readers understand the ideological dynamics at play behind the Iron Curtain; we supported a wide variety of dissidents in their opposition to bureaucratic centralization, as we have likewise for opponents of bureaucratic governance in the West; and we brokered an encounter between Marxism and phenomenology that was vital for critical thinkers in the Soviet and the liberal democratic world.

We believe that the future of the TPPI now lies in a parallel reciprocal engagement with China, to which we have given steadily increasing focus for the past ten years in our annual conferences. These meetings have laid the basis for seven special issues of the journal Telos, as well as numerous individual articles in the field. With the Telos China Initiative, we seek to become a key bridge for a mutually regarding, critical discussion of social and political theory between China and the West, well beyond the circles of East Asia specialists.

Keywords

Our 2025 conference will cap the first year of this initiative, during which we launched our webinar series “China Keywords.” Taking broad inspiration from Raymond Williams’s Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), each webinar critically explores a single concept essential for understanding contemporary Chinese social and political theory, illuminating these concepts with an eye toward non-specialists in the West, while also addressing deep contestations of interest to experts in the field. Our conference takes the name of this webinar series and seeks to build on its themes. We expect the conference to result in a special issue of Telos.

We seek proposals for individual papers and full panels focused on, or that take as their starting point, a single keyword important for critically understanding the political-theoretical dynamics of contemporary China, which include its ideologies of global order and Chinese mission. These keywords may change meaning based on where one is standing—and they are, therefore, key points of contention. Some examples include:

• tianxia (天下)
• wangdao (王道)
• Wealth and power (富强)
• The party-state
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics (中国特色社会主义)
• Cultural Self-Confidence (文化自信)
• New Confucianism (新儒家)
• Mr. Democracy (德先生)
• Reform and Opening-Up (改革开放)
• River Elegy (河殤)
• Sinocentrism (中国中心主义)
• Neo-imperialism (新帝國主義)
• The China Model (中国模式)
• Community of Common Destiny (人类命运共同体)
• The New Era (新时代)

We are also open to considering papers that examine keywords or concepts from the West as they may apply to China and its place in the world, such as: authoritarianism, New Cold War, liberal world order, Leninism, and illiberal globalization.

Papers or panels that illuminate the possibilities for critical theoretical dialogue between China and the West are most welcome, as are those from specialists that focus on intellectual debates within China. Likewise, contributions are welcome from specialists in Western theoretical traditions who seek to make a bridge to Chinese discursive communities—for instance, through the work of Carl Schmitt or the tradition of Critical Theory, with which the Telos circle has long been interested—as are papers that, fitting with the traditions of our circle, oppose any authority, East or West, that limits the possibility of individual emancipation within the telos of politics and of humankind.

Submissions Guidelines

Presentations at the conference should be no more than 15 minutes long, between 1500–2000 words. Our conference has a two-stage process for acceptance: first, submission of a presentation proposal and, second, submission of a presentation draft. Both stages must be completed for final acceptance to the conference.

Presentation proposals should describe the topic of a talk or of a full panel in 100–250 words. They should be made by September 1, 2024. Proposals for full panels, which can include up to four presenters, should include proposals for all presentations as well as for the panel as a whole.

With each proposal, please include the name and institutional affiliation of each presenter, as well as a curriculum vita or resume. In addition to established university faculty, independent scholars, students, and individuals working fully outside university circles are warmly invited to submit proposals.

Review of proposals will be conducted on a rolling basis until the September 1 deadline, with final notification by September 15. Successful proposals will be invited to submit a presentation draft.

Presentation drafts are due by November 15, 2024. A presentation draft need be only 1000 words long and need not be polished, though submission of full presentations is strongly encouraged. Final notification of acceptance will take place by December 1. Feedback on drafts will be provided by the organizers to ensure an excellent conference event based with a fruitful exchange of competing and complementary ideas.

Please note that TPPI is not able to provide travel or accommodation funds, that there will be no option to present via Zoom, and that there will be a conference registration fee. Past registration fees for non-student members of TPPI have been about $300. These fees provide not only for conference attendance but also for a celebratory conference dinner, lunches, and refreshments.

Submit proposals or inquiries to chinaconference2025@telosinstitute.net.