This text could also have the title "Nothing New in the East". It wouldn't be original at all, and no doubt someone has already thought of it, but on the other hand, you couldn't think of a better reminder of what's been happening on the frontline in Ukraine two years since Putin invaded that country. The paraphrase of the newspaper headlines of the French and German press from the First World War suggests the same thing that Erich Maria Remarque described so well in his great novel: "nothing new" at the front means only that we have become insensitive to the fact that there, on Ukrainian soil, every day dozens, maybe even hundreds of people die.
What is worst, there is nothing inhuman, monstrous in that kind of "forgetting", just as we are not surprised by the shame that permeates us when we remember that now, while we are writing, dining, going to a theater performance, or following Alcaraz's tennis struggles in Brazil, not so far from us, people are suffering terribly. Forgetting is healing, and shame is a sign that we have not irreversibly Googled other people's suffering.
Finally, this kind of oblivion saves us from the fear that the shadow of nuclear war has once again loomed over the world: we know that, we knew from the first moment when the maddened tyrant sent his troops into the territory of Ukraine, that the specter of the atomic bomb had awakened, but how did that thought the barely bearable oblivion of the war banishes patience.
But if we don't see something, and especially if we try hard not to see it, it doesn't mean that it isn't there. The sights of the Ukrainian city of Avdivka refreshed our memories these days.
Evaporation of war enthusiasm
On the other hand, we are direct witnesses of media and political phenomena that, with their subtle mechanisms, determine what will be the focus of our attention. Putin started the occupation of Ukraine two years ago, and the bloodshed initiated by Hamas and Israel's criminal response happened only a few months ago, and we are already numb to the unimaginable scenes, and we are inclined to add that nothing is new in the Middle East either. .
Or, in other words, the spectacularization of death and destruction makes us somewhat immune to a reality that is neither as fast nor as concise as it can be presented to us in the selected sequences. Truth be told, since ancient times, wars have been accompanied by spectacle, or at least they try to present themselves as spectacles. Let's just look at the enthusiasm with which Remarque's heroes went to the First World War, only to have all their stupid enthusiasm evaporate, in an instant, in muddy trenches and under artillery fire.
The paradox of Nietzsche's eternal return of the same
From all that has been said so far and from all that we know about the war in Ukraine, can anything be extracted that has not already been said?
Difficult. And it's hard to say anything new because essentially nothing new is happening, but the same thing is returning forever, only that it swirls around this opens in different places. After all, let's look again at what the Ukrainian city of Avdivka looks like. If we, still interested in the new conflict, followed what was happening in Mariupol every day (and compared it to the destruction of Vukovar and Sarajevo), Avdivka, until it fell into Russian hands, was on the periphery of our field of vision and attention, except for those who, for whatever reason, monitored the daily movements of the front line thanks to satellite technology.
Today we see that Avdivka is the same as Mariupol: a pile of burnt ruins. Nothing new, then. But the paradox of Nietzsche's eternal return of the same is the difference in sameness itself. Even without pulling out the heavy philosophical artillery, we will quite easily understand the constitutive paradox of sameness and difference: that something is this we can only tell if there is difference in relation to which one is it this - the same, equal to yourself. Without the difference, we wouldn't even be able to pronounce it this.
And vice versa. Or: Avdivka is the same as Maiuplj and Avdivka is not the same as Mariuplj. In the specific case, this means that the Russian attack on Ukraine significantly changed the face of the world, which it did not this that face before the war started, regardless of how it seems to repeat itself forever ista matrix of conflict and destruction. Putin, with his incomprehensible move, has established himself as the world's first tyrant, and Russia is, quite inevitably, moving towards collapse. On the geostrategic map of the world, this entails consequences that, for now, we can only guess a little about.
Freedom is at stake.
Along with forgetting the Ukrainian war, we also forgot the true stake of this whole story: freedom.
Putin started trampling Ukraine believing it was the beginning of trampling the free world. That Putin's Russia has turned out in a worse light than even cautious observers were saying is one of the reasons the free world has, for now, resisted. Another reason is that the free world is tougher than it might appear from the outside.
The essence of the problem posed in this way could be reduced to the following formula: the freedom of free countries is on the greatest test in the last eighty years, and the war in Ukraine is actually a turning point that decides the future of such and such a free world. To that extent, the story we find in Thucydides is valid for today's Europe Peloponnesian War: when a surprised foreigner, in the middle of the war between Athens and Sparta, saw how in dilapidated and exhausted Athens theatrical performances were being performed properly, he asked the Athenians why they were doing this when Athens was in danger? The Athenians looked at him in amazement and noticed that they did not see the point of fighting for their values if they would abolish those values themselves: the theater was one of the pillars of Athenian freedom.
Although, therefore, Europe suffers blows both from the outside and from the inside (in the form of right-wing movements that show a high degree of understanding for Khazjain), it has before it the imperative to preserve its own values, because only European values are universal. Only the European concept of freedom carries within it the idea of freedom for all. That is why Europe must do everything it can to break the tyranny without, at the same time, destroying the foundations on which it stands.
Although we all yearn for concrete solutions here and now, and we are more interested in the momentum of the war industry of Europe and Russia (for example) than empty philosophizing, actually this philosophical loop about freedom is at the very core of our understanding of the war in Ukraine. Without it, we could easily sink into complete oblivion and complete indifference.
