Law, War And Peace: are the Laws Silent During the War?

Abstract

The research paper is devoted to understanding the way of existence of law during the war. This is done by referring to theoretical and methodological foundations of philosophical thought. The author examines the classical ways of the existence of law: normative legal act, the idea of law, custom, and comes to the conclusion that the law, in conditions of war, cannot exist in this form. Conversely, the reduction of classical forms of the existence of law results in a “remainder” of law in the form of person’s bodily existence, which sets a limit to the actions of other people. This limit is specified with the help of three factors: locality, modality, subjectivity. Therefore, it should be concluded that under the conditions of war, law can exist only in the form of living bodily presence, and the experience of law from the sphere of ideas and norms moves to the plane of corporeality, when the offence is initially interpreted not as a violation of natural or positive norm, but as causing bodily harm to a person.