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On War, that collective drunkenness

E Stanislao Zuleta is a character, a great thinker Colombia. Philosopher, writer, educator and psychologist. When I was in high school bathroom, left studies and devoted himself to study on your own. Since that time, he worked in the fields of Literature, History, Philosophy, Theory and Art, Social Sciences, was a student of Socrates and Plato thought, was passionate about Greek drama, poetry of Homer and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, was also interested in studying the rationalist philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries XVII: Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Deleuze, and others. In the field of literature his inclinations were toward Cervantes, Marcel Proust, Kafka, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Edgar Alan Poe and Goethe.

I knew the thought of this character in college and has been very inspiring in a lot of my current thinking. I want to present this document based on his oratory entitled "On War, that collective drunkenness." There is a lot more of it to read and discuss. I also recommend "praise of difficulty" and "Education and democracy."

By Estanislao Zuleta *

This classic storyteller with "unjustly forgotten, but always ready to jump into this with his insight, Estanislao Zuleta, dissects the heart of human conflict and war. Page unforgettable

1. I think the most urgent when it comes to fight the war have no illusions about the nature and possibilities of this fight. Especially do not oppose the war, as they have so far almost all the trends peace, a kingdom of love and abundance, equality and homogeneity, social entropy. In reality, the idealization of the social in the name of God, reason or anything always leads to terror, as Dostoyevsky said, the whole formula is "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ... de la mort." To fight the war with a remote possibility, but real success, it must begin by recognizing that conflict and hostility are phenomena as constituting the social bond, as interdependence itself, and that the notion of a harmonious society is a contradiction n in terms. The eradication of conflict and coexistence in a warm solution is not an attainable goal, or desirable, or personal life, in love and friendship, "or collective life. It should, however, build a social and legal space in which conflicts can be manifested and developed without opposition to another leads to the suppression of another, killing him, reducing it to impotence or silencing.

2. It is true that this, the overcoming of "antinomian contradictions" between the classes and relations of domination between nations is a very important step. But it is not enough and is too dangerous to believe that is enough. Because then it will inevitably reduce all the differences, opposition and confrontation to one difference, one opposition and a single confrontation, is trying to deny the internal conflicts and reduce them to an external conflict with the enemy, with another way: the other class, the other religion, the other nation, but this is the most intimate mechanism of war and the most effective, since it is the happiness generated by the war.

3. The various types of pacifism speak plenty of sorrows, misfortunes and tragedies of war and This is fine, but everyone knows "but often silent on this one look so shameful and so decisive, that is the happiness of the war. Because if the man wants to avoid the fate of the war must begin by confessing, serene and severely truth: the war party. Feast of the community at last united with the most intimate of ties, the individual finally dissolved in it and freed from their loneliness, their particularity and their interests, able to give everything, even his life. Party being able to pass without shadows or doubts regarding the evil enemy, foolishly believe to be right, and most foolishly believe we can still bear witness to the truth with our blood. If this does not take into account most wars seem bizarrely irrational, because everyone knows in advance the disproportion between the value of what is sought and the value of what you are willing to sacrifice. When Hamlet complains that his indecision in a company as seemingly clear before him, said: "While to my shame I see the immediate destruction of twenty thousand men, on a whim, on a barren glory go to the tomb and their beds , fighting for a cause that the multitude is incapable of understanding for a land that is not enough to bury so many bodies. " Who knows that this is often the case? I must say that the big words solemn: honor, country, principles, almost always serve to rationalize the desire to surrender to the collective drunkenness.

4. Governments know this, and to deny the dissension and internal difficulties imposed on their subjects by showing unity, as Hegel said, the figure of the absolute master, death. Put them to choose between solidarity and defeat. It is certainly sad death of the young Argentine and the pain of their relatives and the British and the boys of their own, but is perhaps more sad to see the momentary joy of the Argentine people united behind Galtieri and the English people united behind Margaret Thatcher.

5. If someone objected that the previous recognition of conflicts and differences, its inevitability and suitability, we would risk paralyze the decision and the enthusiasm in the fight for a fairer society, organized and rational, I would reply that to me a better society is a society capable of better conflict. To recognize and contain. To live not in spite of them, but productive and intelligently on them. That only people skeptical about the party of war, ripe for conflict, is a town ripe for peace.

* (Medellín 1935 - Cali 1990). One of Colombia's most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Response to a series of questions posed by Directorate of the Magazine "Kabbalah." The text published here is included in Praise of Difficulty and Other Essays Hombre Nuevo Publishers, Colombia.