The Ukrainians’ sacrifice tells Europe it still needs heroes

Russia’s conflict in opposition to Ukraine, and particularly Ukrainians’ heroic dedication to defend their homeland, has sparked a full of life curiosity in such ideas and phenomena as self-sacrifice, braveness and political freedom. How can we clarify this dedication within the case of Ukrainians, and lack thereof within the case of Europeans? Does Europe possess an mental capability and sufficient vocabulary to seize the essence of sacrifice? 

Sure doubts relating to this had been conveyed by the well-known German thinker Jürgen Habermas who, in a textual content written 2 months after Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, argued that though Europeans admire Ukrainians’ resolve and braveness, they can not totally empathize with them as a result of the previous are within the grip of what he referred to as “the post-heroic mentality”. It’s an echo of an argument Habermas made a very long time in the past when he wrote that “Enlightenment morality does away with sacrifice”. 

In a purely rational universe the place equally rational brokers meet one another to deliberate and search compromises, there isn’t any want any extra for battle, wrestle, risk-taking, heroic deeds, radical selections and excessive, life-and-death conditions. That is the explanation why it’s so tough for a lot of within the West to rise to the decision of duty and totally admire the broader that means of Ukraine’s sacrifice. What precludes the identification of the phenomenon of sacrifice and its moral-existential import? How can we clarify the present misalignment between the political elites in Western Europe and Central-East Europe?

Many within the West have turn into complacent after the autumn of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama’s declaration that the tip of historical past was reached. The Western elites noticed liberal democracy because the unrivalled pinnacle of human growth, the final cease within the march of progress, and accordingly, historical past and politics had been willingly abolished in favour of economics, commerce, worldwide regulation and summary morality. No actual selections or sacrifices wanted to be made anymore. On this post-historical period, folks don’t even have to domesticate any “conventional” virtues anymore, particularly braveness – why on earth would you want braveness on this post-historical paradise? 

The entire of Europe is seen as an enormous secure area the place you solely meet like-minded liberals, at most respectful opponents who hear to one another and aspire to seek out widespread floor and finally search consensus. On this image of social actuality, not solely politics and historical past turn into out of date, however the that means of freedom invariably modifications – it turns into disentangled from duty.

Freedom turns into purely unfavorable – don’t contact me, don’t intervene, avoid me, I’m pursuing my very own pursuits, and nobody can inform me something. That is the explanation why in Lithuania, and plenty of different European nations, it’s nonetheless very tough to speak about conscription – folks consider that another person will sacrifice for his or her homeland in instances of disaster; why ought to it’s me? How can the state presume that it has the proper to take me out of my life, and to “wreck my profession”? 

Ukraine’s present to Europe

The prevalence of this selfish worldview confirms the truth that we’re shedding the sense of optimistic freedom – not freedom from, however freedom to, freedom to do one thing significant, to look after this widespread world of ours, to behave responsibly, to construct and creatively venture our future. I consider that that is exactly Ukraine’s present to all of us as we speak: a novel likelihood to turn into historic and accountable brokers as soon as once more, to rise as much as the decision of duty, to turn into engaged actors as an alternative of passive and frightened spectators, or, worse, detached customers.

On this context, it’s worthwhile to return to the wealthy ethical and political philosophy of two seminal thinkers of the twentieth century: German-Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt and the Czech thinker Jan Patočka. 

Arendt is understood for her try and retrieve an authentic idea of politics, which stems from the Greek phrase polis that refers to a novel type of political life developed by historic Athenians. It was a lifestyle that centred round day by day lively participation on the a part of the citizenry in day by day affairs of the town. Athenians created an area of look the place they may meet as equals and focus on with one another, persuade each other and venture their widespread future. The general public area was a website the place speech and persuasion reigned supreme, moderately than violence and manipulation. Athens even paid their residents to participate in political life and sit on the juries. 

That they had not solely elections and fixed rotation of residents via varied places of work, but additionally established the precept of lottery, which confirmed a large belief in all unusual residents (everybody might turn into a Justice of the Peace), a degree of belief unimaginable as we speak. Rotation and lottery had been expressive of Aristotle’s concept that democracy is a regime the place “all residents rule and are dominated in flip”. On account of this emphasis on lively participation and direct engagement in politics, residents developed an acute sense of civic duty for the world which they inhabited. They understood themselves as half of a bigger entire to which they made a fairly vital contribution. 

If you perceive your self as half of a bigger entire, self-transcendence turns into a key existential orientation in your life. You might be then reaching outwards, not being caught in your personal life with its slender pursuits and desires, however continuously reaching ahead in a gesture of care and solidarity with others. As Pericles says in his well-known Funeral Oration: “we don’t say {that a} man who takes little interest in politics minds his personal enterprise – we are saying that he has no enterprise right here in any respect.” 

Hannah Arendt and political braveness

In politics, the moral notion of self-transcendence interprets into braveness and willingness to self-sacrifice. Accordingly, for Arendt, braveness turns into a very powerful political advantage: “Whoever entered the political realm had first to be able to danger his life, and too nice a love for all times obstructed freedom, was a certain signal of slavishness.” (1) Political duty requires from us to transcend our personal pursuits for the sake of the widespread world. 

In genuine politics, concern for the destiny of the world takes priority over satisfaction of organic, financial or shopper wants. It takes braveness to depart the protecting safety of 1’s personal sphere and to dedicate oneself to the affairs of the town, exposing oneself to the sunshine of publicity and judgmental gaze of others, together with one’s adversaries. 

Ukrainians who embody braveness, sacrifice and perception in sure ideas give us a uncommon likelihood to get up, to be shaken out of our cosy, snug, recurring worldview

That’s why, as Arendt writes: “Braveness liberates males from their fear about life for the liberty of the world. Braveness is indispensable as a result of in politics not life however the world is at stake.” (2)  It’s a moderately strict distinction between life and world, the place life is known as personal and organic, and world as intersubjective and cultural-political. This distinction is similar to one other Arendtian distinction between personal and public. Arendt says that for a real citizen, the destiny of the world is extra essential than private achieve or particular person happiness. She takes inspiration from Machiavelli, who, as she writes, “was extra serious about Florence than in salvation of his soul”. (3)

Public happiness vs. particular person happiness

This type of political self-transcendence provides delivery to a really peculiar feeling that Arendt, following the American Founding Fathers, characterised as “public happiness”. For political actors, participation in public affairs isn’t a burden or a nuisance, however a type of enjoyment which they know can’t be skilled anyplace else besides in public with others. Public happiness, once more, refers to one thing that can not be diminished or assimilated to particular person happiness. This raises the query for us as we speak: can we acknowledge this notion of “public happiness”? It appears to me that kind of everybody as we speak feels merely particular person happiness. This can be a clear signal of our depoliticized mindset. 

One of many deep issues as we speak is that we have a tendency to pay attention completely on the wants of personal life and neglect the world and the general public. Arendt associates privateness with work, bodily survival and satisfaction of fundamental wants, and publicity with freedom, motion, speech and solidarity. Within the public realm, we emerge as distinctive individuals who, confronted with totally different views on the identical world, continuously check ourselves and thus kind our distinctive worldviews. This facet will be defined by the ontological class of plurality – a recognition that the world is inhabited by totally different individuals who carry their very own distinctive viewpoints to the desk. 

As Arendt writes: the general public curiosity is “the widespread good as a result of it’s localised on the planet which we have now in widespread with out proudly owning it.” (4) In different phrases, the world isn’t given solely to me, my associates and comrades, however is moderately created and sustained by a large number of people that, via the variety of standpoints, set up the world as a typical area of look. This imaginative and prescient of politics is nourished not solely by plurality, but additionally by natality – a human capability to create one thing utterly new and surprising. 

Recreating a public area

In the present day within the West, many individuals don’t really feel as residents, as plural and natal beings. Modern life is constructed on the primacy of economics, work, profession, and leisure. The dominance of social media and algorithmic governance alienates us from one another, from strangers, and finally from ourselves. For most individuals, public participation boils right down to clicking the like or hate button on social media, at most – casting a poll each 4 or 5 years. We’ve turn into passive spectators at greatest, and apathetic, detached people at worst. That’s why I feel that as we speak we should always attempt to retrieve the materiality of the general public area (be it city halls, councils, public discussions or one thing of that kind) – to recreate a public area as an area of look. 

On-line world lacks this aspect of direct, eye-to-eye engagement with one’s friends that’s attribute of a human dialog. Direct engagement, particularly if nourished by a willingness to hear, is a civilising apply that permits for nuances to spring up within the strategy of dialog and finally mitigate one’s ideological fervour, whereas on-line tweeting and commenting tends to erase the presence of actual humanity, and subsequently sharpens the tribal lens via which we view phrases on screens. However how can we recapitulate this materials aspect of a public area in current circumstances – that’s, after all, an open query.

The sacrifice of Jan Patočka

Jan Patočka was a thinker who not solely wrote in regards to the that means of sacrifice within the technological age, however in reality himself embodies the morality of sacrifice. In 1977, on the finish of his life, Patočka determined to take a danger and turn into a spokesperson of the well-known Constitution 77 dissident motion in Czechoslovakia. When Václav Havel approached him with this request, Patočka hesitated for some time due to his superior age and failing well being, however finally he dared to just accept the problem. He took a number one position within the motion and, inside a few months, revealed two essential texts within the underground highlighting and explaining the Constitution’s ethical goals and broader non secular that means. 

These texts put ethical ideas, particularly human rights, forward of political calculations, and thus offered a normative, ethical dimension which was lacking within the official manifesto. The circulation of those texts by Patočka within the underground additional strengthened the resolve of the dissidents, but additionally intensified the regime’s assaults on Patočka. He was repeatedly interrogated, and after the final interrogation, which lasted about 12 hours, his well being deteriorated quickly, and he died a couple of days later. Since then, Czech dissidents and Constitution fellows assigned a martyrological connotation to Patocka’s demise, deciphering it as a sacrifice for freedom and better ideas. 

Ukraine’s present to all of us as we speak: a novel likelihood to turn into historic and accountable brokers as soon as once more, to rise as much as the decision of duty, to turn into engaged actors as an alternative of passive and frightened spectators, or, worse, detached customers

In two influential Charta 77 texts, Patočka forcefully argues that there are particular issues, sure ideas or ethical beliefs value dying for. His personal actions embody a uncommon prevalence in mental life when the phrases and deeds of an mental in reality go collectively. Excessive-sounding rhetoric turns into empty if it’s not backed up and corroborated by expertise and concrete actions. As he writes in a type of Charta texts: “Our folks have as soon as extra turn into conscious that there are issues for which it’s worthwhile to endure, that the issues for which we would must endure are these which make life worthwhile, and that with out all of them our arts, literature, and tradition turn into mere trades main solely from the desk to the pay workplace and again.”

What mattered to Patočka was the truth that the technological (or, has he referred to as it, „technoscientific“) worldview prevents us from acknowledging and appreciating the ethical that means of self-sacrifice. From a technological, financial or scientific perspective, sacrifice is unattainable – it is just utilization of sources. That’s why there’s a lot cynicism as we speak within the West relating to Ukraine: Ukrainians are robbed of subjectivity, regarded solely as cogs, statistics, small items in a large geopolitical chessboard. Ukrainian troopers and residents are seen as sources, a standing reserve of vitality subsequent to tanks and weapons. 

The solidarity of the shaken

On this context, it turns into very tough to generate what Patočka calls “the solidarity of the shaken”, solidarity of co-sufferers who discover themselves within the widespread scenario of fragility and vulnerability, an awesome and tragic encounter with evil. Such solidarity is missing when folks and nations care solely about themselves. That’s why Patočka and Arendt had been so crucial of the notion of sovereignty – it creates an phantasm of self-sufficiency, self-mastery and complete management. It might solely result in nationwide egoism and harmful desires of growth. Arendt brazenly claims that true freedom can solely be skilled beneath the circumstances of “non-sovereignty”, or plurality.

Sadly, regardless of all of the horrors of Russia’s conflict on Ukraine, it has nonetheless not shaken Europe existentially. And a part of the blame goes to expertise once more, particularly to international media and social media, which is certainly one of prime examples of up to date expertise. If you see conflict footage within the information, it turns into routiniseed, just one information piece amongst many different information, and regularly we turn into de-sensitised, ambiguous, and eventually detached. Indifference: it’s a vital moral time period. When formulating his idea of sacrifice, Patočka says that sacrifice is a return of non-indifference, of a way that there are larger and decrease issues in life. 

Know-how, in contrast, makes us consider that there’s solely pure immanence, pure horizontality, the place nothing actually issues, every part is relative, whereas Peter Pomerantsev famously mentioned “nothing is true and every part is feasible”. Ukrainians who embody braveness, sacrifice and perception in sure ideas give us a uncommon likelihood to get up, to be shaken out of our cosy, snug, recurring worldview, what Patočka generally calls “everydayness”, generally “bondage to life”. Ukrainians give us an opportunity to make a leap from the shallow anonymity and tedium to a degree of authentically human existence the place we start to care about one thing extra, one thing that surpasses and overcomes our enslavement to materials issues and consumption. 

Europe, the knight and the bourgeois

I additionally strongly consider that we, intellectuals, have a really clear obligation as we speak: to take heed to Ukrainians, to Ukrainian voices. They must be heard as loudly as attainable, and we have to perceive what they’re telling us. That’s why I need to finish with two quotes by well-known Ukrainians. Ukrainian thinker Volodymyr Yermolenko argues that there are two hearts of Europe, two totally different ethics or moralities that are distinctive to Europe: 

“One is the ethics of the agora. It presumes an ethics of change. Within the agora, we give away one thing to get greater than we had. We change items, objects, concepts, tales and experiences. The agora is a positive-sum sport: everybody wins, although some attempt to win greater than others.

The opposite moral system is that of agon. Agon is a battlefield. We enter agon to not change, however to battle. We dream of profitable however are additionally ready to lose – together with to lose ourselves, even within the literal sense of dying for an amazing trigger. This isn’t the logic of a positive-sum sport; there will be no “win-win”, as a result of one of many sides will definitely lose.

Europe has constructed itself as a mix of agora and agon. It bears the picture of each the knight and the bourgeois. Europe’s cultural legacy is unthinkable with out the ethics of agon: whether or not it’s medieval novels with their cult of chivalry and loyalty, or early trendy dramas whose characters stand to die for his or her ideas and passions. However Europe can also be unthinkable with out the tradition of the agora, of dialog, compromise, of softness.”

Yermolenko rightly asserts that as we speak’s Europe needs to apply completely the ethics of agora. There’s a palpable disequilibrium between these two ethics as we speak. The ethics of agon, the ethics of braveness and sacrifice – that is what Europeans want to recollect as we speak, and to present it ample weight and consideration. Not being afraid of questioning the “post-heroic” mentality that defines Europe, as Habermas claims.

However I need to finish with an optimistic word. The well-known Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak writes in his newest ebook Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation: “Ukrainian historical past gives a basis for a restricted however defensible optimism. It’s not distinctive in that sense. Simply consider David and Goliath, the Greco-Persian wars, the autumn of fascism and communism, the tales of Frodo and Harry Potter. It doesn’t matter whether or not these tales are fictional or actual. What issues is that they remind us that the satan – within the Bible or in historical past – is a pathetic creature. He can destroy, enslave and corrupt, however he can’t win.” 

Footnotes

1) Hannah Arendt, The Human Situation

2) Hannah Arendt, Between Previous and Future

3) Hannah Arendt, Duty and Judgment 1959-1975

4) Hannah Arendt, Public rights and personal pursuits

This textual content is the transcription of the lecture Simas Čelutka gave at a convention organised by the Lithuanian cultural evaluate Kulturos Barai and Eurozine in Vilnius, October 2024.