Why? by Philippe Huneman;

Author:Philippe Huneman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

In this sense, if we recall the definition of causality in the counterfactual sense from chapter 2—” if there had not been A, there would not be B”—the attack was not even a cause of the war since this definition is not satisfied. If the attack had not happened, there would still have been a war because we would have found another pretext to butcher each other. And if we use the terms from above, the structuring cause was thus so conducive to war that the triggering cause was no longer a cause at all since almost anything else could have played that role.

To understand this apparent paradox, we must look into the metaphysics of events and facts.3 Metaphysicians distinguishes between “fine-grained” and “coarse-grained” events.4 What do they mean by this? World War I fits at least two descriptions: “The War of 1914” (after all, a war between the same protagonists starting a little before or a little after the real date would still be “World War I”), and “the war started on June 28, 1914, by Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war.” These are both the same event of course. But the second description is defined with a much higher degree of finesse since it is distinguished from all other wars that may have been started at different times—while the former is differentiated only from peace in 1914. This first event is “coarser,” covering a much broader portion of time, and potentially corresponding to many “fine-grained” events. We can go on to imagine still coarser-grained events (like “war in Europe”) that enfold the coarse-grained event in question among other similar events.

These differences somehow overlap with the differences between contrast classes found in chapter 1 when we dealt with the semantics of causality. Here the fine-grained event “World war started on June 27, 1914” would contrast in some inquiries with other fine-grained events such as “A world war started on September 1, 1914,” so that the Sarajevo assassination, cause of the fine-grained event, answers “Why World War I at this moment rather than later?” In turn, the coarse-grained event “World War I in 1914” contrasts with coarse-grained events such as “no war in 1914,” and a cause of such coarse-grained event (namely, the geopolitical situation that rendered it almost inexorable) would answer “Why a war in 1914 rather than peace?” And the most general why-question here would be “Why war in general?”, and would bear on a very coarse-grained event (namely, “a war”). This question could be an issue addressed by social scientists rather than historians.

Thus, the Sarajevo assassination itself in no way causes the coarse-grained event “First World War in 1914.” Whatever may have ultimately been the trigger, it was essentially caused by the structure of European geopolitics. For its part, the fine-grained event “World war started on June 27, 1914” was indeed caused by the shooting in Sarajevo; if it had not taken place, the war would have presumably erupted but on another day and thus this specific fine-grained event would not have occurred.

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