A háború ontológiája és filmi ábrázolása
Ontology of War and It’s Cinematic Representation

Summary/Abstract: Every war is transgressive, just as every new start is transgressive. The first transgression is committed by the countries and nations at war while the second is accomplished, if it is, by the individual. For it is him or her who has the power and the possibility to address the other as the stranger who is considered the enemy, the intruder into our world and whose existence is disrupting our community. It “cuts and shapes” our being subverting our life but opening new horizons in thought. Wars are caused by the contradictory transgressive intention of a tribe, a community or a nation to conquer new territories way beyond their borders while they fear those tribes, communities or nations who inhabit the “unknown”. The borders, however, need not be external; in many cases they are cultural and internalized by the people. The reason for them is deeply evolutionary: they provide a strong sense of belonging to the group in question. Consequently, the community has got no option whatsoever to turn toward the stranger; it would jeopardize its own constitutive principles which form the basis of its existence. In contrast, the individual, even if he or she is a member of the community, is originally endowed with the power and the ability to address and to receive the Stranger who appears first and foremost and by necessity as an invader. By receiving and welcoming the Other the individual subject enters into an ethical relation with him or her. The singular and unique character of the ethical relation is distinctly different from the moral norms which define any human community or society. Wars are transgressive in terms of existential, economic, social, cultural etc. conditions in that they are waged in order to oppress, exploit or even exterminate peoples living within or without the borders. Transgression morally defined is always immoral for there is no moral law that could prescribe the violation of its own boundaries. The immoral chaos that war introduces cannot be replaced by another “new” moral system; it can be redeemed only by the singular ethical gesture of the individual.

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