دانلود کتاب جنگ – تبارشناسی ایده ها و شیوه های غربی

This book is mainly about ‘Western’ ideas about war, but also about Western practices. Ideas give a sense to action, but action can also be driven by more basic forces. War and warfare stand at the interface between instinctive behaviour and the driving force of ideas, invoked when collective violence is organized. Collective emotional responses can be catalysed by leaders proposing and extolling the benefits of the recourse to armed force, and then organizing it. They do so against a background of social conventions backed by the articulation of values ingrained in a particular culture. Such conventions and values are part practice, part ideas, meaning collective beliefs, accepted (or at times challenged) norms. Instincts are plural, often at odds with one another: the instinct to fight versus the instinct to flee, aggressiveness versus fear, a killer-instinct versus a protective instinct, hatred versus compassion, obedience versus violent confrontation. Ideas are brought in to suppress instinctive behaviour or to amplify it. Natural or learnt psychological barriers against certain behaviour must be overcome. This can happen intuitively (a soldier feeling a sudden surge in the desire to kill enemies because they have just killed his or her fellow-soldier), through group dynamics that can arouse passions and turn a reluctant onlooker into a volunteer spoiling for a fight, through rousing speeches by leaders who employ arguments or evoke past events, use conditioning similes and metaphors—ideas—to appeal to values and culturally founded beliefs.