Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 37 No. 1, 2017.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21464/fi37102
Permanent Condition of War-and-Peace: From Total Mobilization to the Absolute Construction of Event
Žarko Paić
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Tekstilno-tehnološki fakultet, Baruna Filipovića 28a, HR–10000 Zagreb
Abstract
In this paper, the author shows the three levels of the fundamental turnover in the way in which the total dynamics of the binary opposition of war and peace unwinds in the planetary-defined space of postnational sovereignty: 1. Transition from modern history metaphysics with binary nation-state machine into the biopolitical production of power on global scale conflict between the “empire” (United States of America, Russia, China) and “rouge states”, which brings into question the ontological definition of modern war as civil, guerrilla or ethnic conflict; 2. The definition of world as total mobilization (of techno-science and capital) which necessarily leads to the possibility of total war as the absolute construction of event on planetary level; 3. Re-examining Kant’s Enlightenment idea of “perpetual piece” in correlation with the state of permanent “state of emergency” on global scale, which leads to, instead of Manichean logic “either war or peace”, living in the age marked by the logic “both war and peace” within the intervals of world safety crisis. This is the reason why the question on the essence of “human nature” as either evil or good does not seem to be the key philosophical topic, and neither theological because the ethics of responsibility becomes merely a powerless appeal to preserve life on Earth, whilst the theology of salvation presupposes battle against evil in the form of negative theodicy anyway. What, then, remains of the idea of not only world history but various versions of “just war” in the age during which terror, total control and biopolitics decide about the events in the world? The answer is not in the pseudo-humanization of world, and inflation of ethical doctrines as the means of therapy for the frenziness of technologically constructed apocalypse. Instead in utopias and apocalyptics, perhaps the solution is hidden in thinking about the constellation of techno-cybernetic thinking as a danger which enables the mentioned inbetween-state of “total mobilization” and “absolute construction”.
Keywords
permanent condition; total mobilization; absolute construction; planetarity; biopolitics; Ernst Jünger; event
Hrčak ID:
187885
URI
Publication date:
16.3.2017.
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