The Evolution of War and the Decline of the Heroic Warrior in Modern Conflict
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War, modern warfare, technology, warrior, heroism, combat, extermination, european civilization, laws of war, literature, philosophy
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Abstract
Explore the evolving nature of war and the warrior's role through the lens of literature and history. Discover how modern technological advancements have transformed the concept of warfare, rendering the traditional image of the noble warrior obsolete. This analysis delves into the contrast between the romanticized ideal of warriors from antiquity and the brutal reality of modern conflict, where technological warfare distances combatants from their enemies. Uncover the tension between the heroic narrative of warriors and the harsh realities of modern war, where the boundaries of honor and humanity are increasingly blurred. Learn how literature reflects on the changing face of war and its impact on our understanding of heroism and combat.
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[...] The 'modern war' means the death of the warrior? - Grand oral of Humanity, Literature and Philosophy (HLP) Problem: The 'modern war' or the death of the warrior? Introduction Captatio. On September the Azerbaijani army and the Turkish army launched a large-scale offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian diaspora, haunted by the fear of a second genocide, mobilized. I was 13 years old, I belonged to this diaspora and it was my first war. For me, born in France in a country that had not known war for so long and seemed to have to know it no more, war had not existed until then or barely: a few war memorials, history books, films, and a few atrocious images of distant conflicts on the evening news. [...]
[...] One of the short stories in the Comedy of Charleroi tells how a lieutenant of African riflemen, a brave cavalryman, who loves his men, is taken by an immense repugnance before this modern war that destroys the bravery of his men completely lost in this grayness and this machine gun fire. That's why he seeks to return to Africa where he considers that the ' old world». And yet, as his interlocutor tells him, what does he do in Africa if not to return the modernity of his arms against the ways of living of the indigenous populations? [...]
[...] receptacles of this supernatural force are elected: they belong to the caste of the best (aristoi). Paradoxically, this peak of vitality is due to the fact that the warrior despises death or more precisely knows how to walk alongside it like the knight in Dürer's engraving (The Knight, Death and the Devil) or Achilles warned by his mother of the brevity of his life. The warrior can feel fear, but he will know how to overcome it. And it is in this ability to overcome this constitutive fear of our humanity that lies its greatness. [...]
[...] Peroration Without denying, of course, that war can be the site of a revelation, heroization is a literary process above all. While can literature do when the breach of modern war has made impossible the heroism of the warrior? Is the new hero not this anti-hero who deserts the battlefield, less out of fear of death, than out of the refusal of that death? Boris Vian's deserter will not go 'kill poor people', but he is ready to receive the bullets of the gendarmes who would come to arrest him. [...]
[...] In French literary and intellectual life, World War I constitutes a real break that seems to relegating Homer and chivalric novels to the shelf of jests and tricks. The filmmaker Jean Renoir summarizes this feeling in La grande illusion by having one of his heroes say, Rauffenstein, a German aristocrat (Erich von Stroheim) who discusses with Captain de Boëldieu, an old French nobleman (Pierre Fresnay): 'Boeldieu, I don't know who will win this war. The end, whatever it is, will be the end of the Rauffensteins and the Boeldieus' ». The end of the warriors? II. How modern war has killed the warrior 1. [...]
