authors: Svitlana Solianyk, Olena Nevmerzhytska
Relevance of the research. The phenomenon of war is one of the most profound and tragic themes in the philosophical reflection on human existence. Modern armed conflicts encompass not only the military fronts but also the cultural space, putting identity and collective memory under threat. This underlines the importance of researching how war influences a society’s system of cultural values.
Problem statement. The article is devoted to analyzing how war becomes a catalyst for profound shifts in cultural values and the rethinking of fundamental concepts in society amid armed conflict. The need for such research is driven both by the historical tradition of philosophical reflection on war and by the recent experience of war in Ukraine, which has cast this problem in especially sharp relief.
Analysis of recent research and publications. This work relies on the contributions of classical and modern thinkers. Ever since antiquity (Heraclitus, Aristotle) through the Enlightenment (T. Hobbes, I. Kant, G. Hegel), different conceptions of the nature of war have been formulated. In the 20th century, existentialists (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre) consider war as an extreme experience of freedom and moral choice. Modern researchers, including Yuval Noah Harari, Hannah Arendt, Aleida and Jan Assmann, also examine the influence of war on culture and morality, emphasizing that war deeply transforms norms and collective identity. However, the transformation of Ukraine’s cultural space during the current war remains insufficiently explored, which underlies the necessity for this study.
Research task. The aim of the article is to investigate how war affects the cultural identity of society, transforms notions of humanism, heroism, patriotism, and solidarity, and alters fundamental philosophical categories. Special attention is given to the current war in Ukraine as an example of such transformations.
Main material presentation. The analysis demonstrates the dialectical nature of interpretations of war from antiquity to the modern era (oscillating between destruction and historical dynamism). It also explores the existential dimension of ultimate choice and responsibility, and discusses the mediatization of war as a global narrative. In the Ukrainian context, the study traces the consolidation of identity, the actualization of cultural memory (through symbols such as “Azovstal”), the fusion of art and volunteerism into a “cultural front,” accelerated de-Russification and decommunization, and a shift in youth values toward action and responsibility. The article articulates the paradoxes of war ethics (jus ad bellum and jus in bello) and outlines the practical dimension of “wartime humanism” as the combination of armed defense with the upholding of moral norms.
Conclusions. War acts as an “existential catalyst” of cultural transformations: it exposes and reorders values, while simultaneously opening up space for an ethics of solidarity, new forms of memory, and cultural subjectivity. For Ukraine, this means not only trauma and losses, but also nation-building consolidation, a strengthening of cultural sovereignty, and the development of practices capable of serving as moral guideposts after victory.
Keywords: philosophy of war; cultural values; identity; cultural memory; symbols; wartime humanism; solidarity; volunteerism.
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