The trivialisation of death in Western military culture: A Heideggerian analysis


Mark Gilks, Independent

In an ideal-typical sense, the role of the combat soldier in contemporary Western society is paradoxical: On the one hand, they volunteer to die – to make the “ultimate sacrifice”; while on the other hand, they volunteer to kill – to commit what is regarded, in a (post-)Christian world, as a sacred taboo. But how do Western soldiers regard the prospect of their own “sacrifice”; and what is the relationship between this prospect and the prospect of the death of the other at one’s own hands – whether of the enemy or of civilians caught up in war? Focusing on the case of the British soldier in Afghanistan, this paper explores these questions from an existentialist-phenomenological perspective. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s notion of 'Being-towards-death', I argue that the willingness to die and kill in war are grounded, to some degree, in a trivialisation of death in military culture – of one’s own death and of the death of the other. This argument develops in three main steps. First, I conceptualise “death” in a strong existential and paradoxical sense as 'non-existence'. In this sense, death—as Heidegger shows us—is a dreadful and anxiety-provoking prospect. Although largely unfathomable (and, as we see, culturally obscured), this prospect is always lurking in the soldier’s imagination – as will be demonstrated through empirical examples (in the form of testimonials by British soldier). Following Heidegger’s logic, in the second part I theorise how the dreadful prospect of existential death leads the soldier to “flee” into-the-world – which, for the soldier, is a World of military culture in which death is trivialised. Drawing on a variety of first-hand accounts of war by British soldiers, I show how the prospect of 'existential death' becomes obscured and estranged. In particular, I explore how death becomes something which only happens to the other; and that, as a result, one’s own death becomes an inconceivable possibility – as is even tragically illustrated in cases when that death ultimately occurs. Finally, I explore the linguistic significance of death for the British soldier. Specifically, I examine how in military culture death is disguised in abstractions and metaphors. Together, as such, these argumentative steps explore the significance of death ranging from the most existential and unfathomable to the most Worldly and culturally “perverted” (to use Heidegger’s term). We see, for example, how the British soldier expresses all of these notions of death: how, in one sense, it “doesn’t make any sense […] how can you be talking to someone ten minutes earlier and then later on you find out you’ll never talk to them again”; yet, we also see how, when soldiers die, comrades refer to meeting them again at the “bar in the sky”, at the “final rendezvous” where all soldiers will reunite in a kind of warrior heaven. This paper makes three main contributions. First, once the ways in which death is trivialised are understood, the willingness to participate in organised violence (from an individualist perspective) becomes less paradoxical: If death remained as anxiety-provoking as Heidegger theorises, then war (as well as many dangerous activities) would surely be impossible; yet, once trivialised, death is detached from its essential and original anxiety-provoking nature (it is “perverted”), thereby becoming a less dreadful prospect (and even, in the greatest perversions, something to be welcomed). Second, this theory of death enables us to better make sense of acts of violence against others in war, whether the enemy or civilians. Since the trivialisation of one’s own death in military culture leads to the trivialisation of the other’s death, acts of killing become devoid of existential significance and become more akin to procedures – bound up in abstractions such as “professionalism”, “strategy”, “duty”, or “collateral damage”. Lastly, and ultimately, this argument offers a moral and political problematization of death in military culture: Critiquing the tendency to trivialise death in military culture will facilitate a reckoning with the real and existential consequences of war, and hence a reassessment of the willingness—whether personal or collective—to participate.

This paper will be presented at the following session: