Metaphysics of War

Although there is an impressive amount of studies on the Great War, it remains an enigmatic event, which resists any attempt to fully understand it. It is distinguished from the past wars by the unprecedented use of technical means, which make man a ‘war material’ – an element of a mechanism, which has senseless purposes that transcend his will and his mastery. During the Great War the contrast between the nihilistic-technical aspect and a mystique of war, which celebrates the feral inebriation of combat and the unconfessable pleasure of giving death, explodes, exhibiting the indissoluble nexus that binds nationalism, vitalism and death. Nietzsche reveals the fundamental metaphysical character of each war, that is the inseparable link between Life and War, according to which the unconditional affirmation of the power of life fatally turns into the unconditional power of death. Foucault grasps this link, when he questions the «bellicose relationship» and recognizes that the origin of war and its tendency to the extreme is the mere clash of forces: every war tends, by its nature, to the annihilation of the enemy, because giving death is the only way to defend oneself. Hence, the metaphysics of war reveals the secret and inflexible law of life and death, from which the irrepressible drive to the annihilation of the other comes.