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War as a sacrificial duty, though performing essentially destructive functions, has for men the significance of a destruction put into the service of the preservation of what they love: Fanatic behavior, the idealization of the leader, the need to sacrifice oneself in the name of an ideal, the giving and receiving of martyrdom, and the soldier’s being both the sacrificer and the victim in the sacrificial rite. What lies at the basis of this peculiar tendency of man to create certain values in the name of which he feels he must sacrifice himself?
Koenigsberg: It's not "sacrifice" that comes first, rather the creation of ideas in the name of which one may sacrifice himself. We create ideas so that we may have something to sacrifice for. The DESIRE FOR SACRIFICE is the independent variable, followed by the creation of various IDEAS to which we may sacrifice ourselves.
What is this absolute and unconditional something that would somehow justify the establishment of a masochistic-sacrificial position? (The masochistic-sacrificial position) would in turn become a sort of supervalue because it would be put into the service of that absolute and unconditional something).
Koenigsberg: Brilliantly put by Fornari. THE MASOCHISTIC SACRIFICAL POSITION ITSELF is the super-value, which leads to the belief in an absolute and unconditional "something." What is the "something" that we create? Quite frequently, "the nation."
But we still don't know what nations are, why they inspire such devotion and the sacrificial stance. ALL THE LONELY SCHOLARS, WHERE ARE THEY? All these many, many years and they STILL HAVE NOT "DECONSTRUCTED" THE MEANING OF NATIONS. They remain "absolutes." The historians write long, monumental books describing the "events" that have been generated, but still don't know why this WORD should be the source of the events.
It would be as if physicists were describing the nature of "matter," and had not yet discovered the nature of the ATOMS that constitute the underlying structure of matter. NATIONS ARE LIKE ATOMS THAT SPLIT INTO TWO TO CREATE WAR AND GENOCIDE, but historians still don't know what they atomic structures are.
From Fornari, Franco
The Psychoanalysis of War (on Amazon).
Excerpts on our Website here
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