FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PATHOLOGY


Andrew Hammer, Executive Director

Foundation for the Study of Political Pathology

Ideologies become real to the extent people die for them.

The Psychopathology of Normality

Part 1: Death as the Principle of Verification



by Richard Koenigsberg

 

Ideologies become real to the extent that people die for them. Any death will do—will serve the same purpose: enemy deaths, the deaths of one’s own soldiers, or civilian deaths.

Sacrificial death "gives witness" to the depth of devotion to a sacred ideal. Dying constitutes a principle of verification—testifying to the truth and power of the ideal.

 

Warfare is about killing and dying. This much we know. We ordinarily emphasize the role of killing. But perhaps the essence of war is dying. Warfare as an institution produces corpses. Historians focus upon warfare in terms of who “wins” and who “loses.” But what if this way of looking at war is obsolete.

If warfare is not primarily about killing, nor about winning or losing, what is war all about? We hypothesize that the institution of warfare revolves around the issue or question of truth. That for which we die becomes true.

The truth emerges, not only by virtue of the death of our enemy, but by virtue of the death of our own soldiers. We wage war to demonstrate our sincerity. Death constitutes a testament or testimonial; a demonstration that we believe in our sacred ideals. The proof of the pudding is in the dying.

When a soldier is killed in battle, we say that he has “died for his country.” No one will argue about this way of saying things. The soldier has “given his life” for his nation. But let’s put this slightly differently: soldiers are sent into battle by nations so that they may die. Death is not an unforeseen event. We send soldiers to war so that they may die or be wounded—thus demonstrating the sincerity of our belief—the depth of our devotion to our nation’s sacred ideals.

Each nation has different ideals. So, warfare is not dying for this ideal or that ideal; for this or that nation. Death in warfare, rather, constitutes a methodology for determining the truth. The proof of the pudding is in the dying.

After a war (and sometimes during a war, as was the case in the First World War) nations build memorials to the dead—monuments to confer honor upon those who have died in the name of their nation’s sacred ideals. Warfare seeks to produce sacrificial victims. Each side produces sacrificial victims in order to prove the sincerity of its beliefs.

 

Share your thoughts on this essay by writing a paragraph or two and sending them to:

newsletters@foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org

Best regards,

Andrew Hammer, Executive Director

Foundation for the Study of Political Pathology

FacebookXYouTubeWebsite