Hegel’s attitude to war is contriversial and has often been seen as constituting a glorification of state power and a willingness to use violence in asserting national interests. This essay relates Hegel on war to his understanding of the social recognitive status of indivudal self-consciousness. Hegel takes indivudals to be socially situated and to ground their identities in the willingness to risk life. Likewise, in his social and political thought Hegel sees mutual recognition and a willingess to risk life as constitutive elenets in establishing ethical social communities. Hegel does not advocate war, but sees it as playing a role in the determination of a consciusness of the role of the state in social life.