A forja da civilização

Abstract

Bringing together a set of reflections on military training and war itself, and immersing these concepts in the dialogue between war, culture, and civilization, this paper aims, based on a bibliographic study focused on names and topics of relevance in Brazilian and international academies, to present new reflections on military training, war, the regiment, and their interconnections, especially in the context of the cultural-civilizational discussion. In addition to the mobilization of primary sources, a set consisting of writings by Kant, Jomini, Foucault, Contamine, and Clausewitz, other papers that allow greater interpretive ease and that provide ideas of interest to the approach of the topic were also used. The research concludes that the insertion of war in the 19th century's scientific bias presupposes the existence of a military skill that can be acquired and parameterized, leading thus to the conception of military training based on Hegelian dialectics. In this sense, it is through the feeling of the sublime, instigated by contact with the experience of war, even in a training situation, that a serviceman’s personal development is observed. Furthermore, it is in the regiment that this process finds its physical space, being the institution indispensable not only for the adoption of a scientific war, but also for the process of civilizing a society and for a political project within the framework of the liberal State model.