Abstract

War and peace are, even in Hans Kelsen’s legal theory, two closely related concepts. The essay shows how, nevertheless, the specific relevance of these concepts emerges, in the development of Kelsen’s thinking, at distinct and rather distant moments in time, and how the positions they occupy, within the categorical architecture of the reine Rechtslehre, turn out to be quite heterogeneous. Two additions (Parerga) complement the research and enrich its results, from different perspectives of analysis: the first, philosophical, concerns the fundamental relationship between “oughtµ and “legal dutyµ; the second, philological, concerns the controversial relationship between “state of lawµ and “state of peaceµ.