Some Existential Reflections on Self-Determination in the Conditions of the War

Abstract

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 such philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, are analyzed from existentialist ideas. 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).