War is a despicable thing. As Sun Tzu states in The Art of War “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” and I couldn’t agree more with him. But sometimes war is a necessary tool in which to create a safer society or to extinguish a threat to innocent people around the world.
Now would I think that Tolstoy would consider war in itself to be an art in itself? No, I do not and I also do not think war in itself is art because of how Tolstoy deems art as the individuality of the feelings transmitted. But I do think the intricacies of war: the senior leaders, the commanders of battalions, and the small unit leaders and their passing of knowledge and wisdom with the ensuing destruction on a battlefield are art.
The activity of art as Tolstoy says is “receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it” and I see this is evident through personal experience during my stint in the military. The leaders I had through training leading up to a combat deployment would describe prior experiences they had in battle and through these shared experiences with words and emotion used were able to give us invaluable lessons towards learning how to stay alive and also while staying alive help us learn to defeat the enemy. These men, the leaders my fellow brothers and I had used their words and emotion to make us better warriors and I cannot say any different but what they did was art. The art for me comes from the fact that what they imparted to us took root in our hearts it became real and we were experiencing what they had experienced.
The second aspect of war that I believe is art is the destruction on the battlefield. For me there is almost no greater raw emotion creator than bombs and bullets raining down on a field of battle. The reason I consider this to be art is, behind every bomb, missile or bullet being sent down range is a man or woman pulling a trigger. Someone on one side of each exchange is inspiring fear, awe, anger, sadness, terror, and bravery and the people on the other are sharing those same feelings. Although this is a very brutal and savage display of art I believe it is art none the less and no one involved in these confrontations leaves the encounter unscathed emotionally or physically in some way.
I see art as a flower blooming, a tree blossoming, a baby being born, a shared happy experience from another person who has found success in some aspect of their life and really anywhere that life can be seen flourishing in a happy healthy way. But on the opposite side I can see art as being destructive power held in the hands few to be wrought only in dire circumstances to keep an evil held at bay and that is why I believe that in war there is art.
bryanhorsting 