Abstract
This article examines the dispute concerning the meaning of World War I among leading American intellectuals in the period 1915–1918. Taking center stage here are the views of one of the founding fathers of American pragmatism, John Dewey (1859–1952), on the causes of the “Great War,” its higher meaning and goals which led to America’s entry into the War and also its influence on the social reconstruction of American society and the post-War world order. The final section of the article is devoted to a critique of Dewey’s position towards American participation in the War by another famous American intellectual, Randolph Bourne (1886–1918), who laid the foundations for a tradition of social criticism in the U.S. in the twentieth century.
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Notes
“By historicism,” writes Dewey, “I mean the notion of an Ideal, a Mission, a Destiny which can be found continuously unfolding in the life of a people (at least of the German people), in whose light the events which happen are to be understood, and by faithfulness to which a people stands condemned or justified” (Dewey 2008c [1916]: 226).
Hegel’s idea of development was close to Dewey’s own, which he admitted in his philosophical autobiography. However, he interpreted the idea of development differently than Hegel did in his system of absolute idealism (Dewey 2008g [1930]: 147–160).
In fact, after Germany’s defeat in the War and the collapse of the Hohenzollern monarchy, Max Weber came to a similar bitter and self-critical conclusion about the absence in the German nation of the skills involved in political self-governing and about the need to acquire this political experience of democratic self-governing within the framework of the new republican form of government. In his article, “Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order” (1917), Weber, in discussing Bismarck’s political legacy, wrote: “He left behind a nation entirely lacking in any kind of political education, far below the level it had already attained 20 years previously. And above all a nation entirely without a political will, accustomed to assume that the great statesman at the head of the nation would take care of political matters for them. Furthermore, as a result of his misuse of monarchic sentiment as a cover for his own power interests in the struggle between the political parties, he left behind a nation accustomed to submit passively and fatalistically to whatever was decided on its behalf, under the label of “monarchic government”, without criticising the political qualifications of those who filled the chair left empty by Bismarck and who seized the reins of government with such an astonishing lack of self-doubt” (Weber 1994 [1917]: 144–145).
As President Woodrow Wilson announced in his second inaugural speech, the War on the European Continent “inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics and our social action” (Wilson 1965 [1917], 227–228). Let us note that this was said already before the U.S. entry into the War on 6 April 1917.
Bourne and other similar intellectuals and activists are called “realistic pacifists,” because opposing American entry into the War, they believed the U.S. should adhere to a policy not of simple neutrality, but one of “armed neutrality.” This is why Bourne and other “realistic pacifists” in 1916–1917, that is, before America’s entry into the War, suggested the use of the full power of the U.S. to insure the safety of navigation in the world’s oceans and thereby put an end to unlimited submarine warfare by Germany.
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This article was prepared in connection with a fundamental research program at the National Research University—Higher School of Economics—2013 Project of the Research Laboratory on Culture of the Center for Fundamental Research of the National Research University—Higher School of Economics: “State Policy and Ideology in the Field of Culture.”
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Dmitriev, T. Why are we fighting? A view of the “great war” from across the ocean. Stud East Eur Thought 66, 51–67 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-014-9197-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-014-9197-y