Clausewitz’s concept of material warfare is a reaction to the trend of reducing the art of war to the application of self-evident rules of engagement. By putting tactical outcomes in the perspective of strategic decision-making, the battlefield becomes the place where the trend to the extremes plays out. Based on his concept of material warfare, immateriality will be presented not as an abstraction of material circumstances but rather as the tendency to escalation that is inherent to every combat. Some conclusive remarks will be dedicated to the relation between military history and interpretations of military genius, in order to support the claim that materiality and immateriality are semantic concepts that express a state of equilibrium between evidence and decision.
