Some Existential Reflections on Self-Determination in the Conditions of the War. (Review Article)

https://doi.org/10.23939/shv2022.02.028
Received: April 21, 2022
Accepted: October 08, 2022
Authors:
1
Lviv National Polytechnic University

         Although any war is a "continuation of politics by other means" (Karl von Clausewitz), the article examines the ongoing russian-Ukrainian war from the point of view of existentialist philosophy as a philosophy of human crises. The Russian-Ukrainian war actualizes the forgotten existentialist ideas of choice, situation, freedom, duty, responsibility in the context of individual and collective self-determination. In the article, the exisentialist ideas of such philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, are analyzed in the context of the ongoing russian-Ukrainian war. War destroys a person's life world, and therefore it must resist such destruction. Russia's war against Ukraine is seen as the destruction of the individual and collective existence of Ukraine. The resistance of Ukrainians is resistance to this destruction, and this resistance gives a new, relevant meaning to coexistence based on the solidarity of all Ukrainians. Therefore, Ukraine is constituted as Res-Publica, i.e. as a "common case", "being-in-common" (Jean-Luc Nancy).

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