(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Svante Nordin: The Philosophers' War. European philosophy during the First World War. Dreyer's publisher, 2015
Some philosophers were too old to join the war, but lost their sons at the front. Others fought themselves, and fell. Some wrote ecstatically about the war as a cleansing bath, making total mobilization a model for the post-war society, such as Ernst Jünger. Still others sneaked away by simulating war prowess, such as Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukács. For most, the war was a turning point, a farewell to a world that would never return – a farewell to ancient Europe.
In the introduction to the book about the philosophers and the First World War, the Swedish idea historian Svante Nordin says that the discussion of the problem of the relationship between philosophy and war will not give a "clear answer". He has wanted to describe a long series of different individual reactions – and the result is an instructive book because many now relatively unknown philosophers speak. Let's look at some of the most famous ones.
Wittgenstein. One of the most heroic participants in the war was Ludwig Wittgenstein, but the war was only indirectly a theme of his philosophy. He was decorated several times for his courage, and at the same time worked on his first major work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. If there is a substantive connection between his philosophy and the war, then it must be negative: Wittgenstein ended up arguing that what one cannot talk about, one must keep silent about. The silence thus became extensive in areas such as ethics, aesthetics, politics and metaphysics. The "world" was reduced to "the case," which could be expressed in truth-value tables for true and false claims. While fighting heroically at the front, Wittgenstein was passionate about the meaning of life, read Dostoevsky and pondered religious questions. But this was defined by his very narrow philosophy of philosophy.
Heidegger. When it comes to the relationship between Martin Heidegger and World War I, Nordin is surprisingly restrained. He mentions that Heidegger, in his lectures in the spring of 1919, takes a settlement with the philosophy of the pre-war period and wants to found something new – to go back to pre-theory. But he does not mention the connection between Heidegger's philosophy of being-to-death in Aries and time (1927) and the experiences of the war. In this connection, Heidegger talks both about heroism, that existence (Dasein) should choose its hero, and that the people have a collective destiny. These formulations from Heidegger's main work have been extensively discussed following the debate that Victor Farias started with the book Heidegger and Nazism (1987)
Bergson and Russell. Henri Bergson (1859–1941), France's then most famous philosopher, was active as a diplomat and went to the United States to convince President Wilson that he could work for peace and international cooperation by participating in the war. In England, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a clear opponent of the war. Russell's pacifist writing business during the First World War meant that he had to spend six months in prison, a time he spent reading and writing. In the works Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916) Russell philosophically addressed the conditions for war and peace. For the world to be a better place, the attitudes of Germany and England at the outbreak of war must change. The pride that makes a defeat unbearable was linked to England's territory and prosperity, Russell writes. Here, the economic motives behind the war, which are only peripherally present in Nordic production, are thematized.
Chronological method. When the Norwegian idea historian Paulus Svendsen was to answer the question of which method he had used in his study Golden Age dream and developmental belief (1940), he replied: "a chronological method." Svante Nordin's "method" in this book is of the same type. The book follows developments throughout the war, each year from 1914 to 1918. All the time, philosophers came up with various plays related to the war. But the weakness is that the philosophical texts become rather one-dimensional documents that are cited because they are explicitly about war. When the lyrics indirectly thematizes the war, Nordin becomes more groggy. For example, Georg Lukács wrote The theory of the novel in the years 1914–1915 (published in 1916). Lukács understands the novel as the story "in a world abandoned by God". Of course, this novel understanding can be associated with the war, but this is just as much based on Lukác's self-understanding almost 50 years later. Nordin does not question this self-understanding.
Man, but not Luxemurg. But he rightly notes that the war changed Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy to the unrecognizable, both in England and Germany. The stylization of Nietzsche as a war philosopher was well aided by her sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who stated, among other things: "If there ever was a friend of the war, one who loved warriors and fighters and set the highest hopes for them, it was Friedrich Nietzsche. "
If Norway contributed some philosophy during the First World War, it must have been some kind of working-age hedonism in which speculators bathed in champagne and lit the cigars with dog tags.
One problem is also who is to be regarded as a philosopher: Thomas Mann gets a wide place in the book, while the peace activist Rosa Luxemburg is not mentioned. By "philosophy", Nordin obviously means professional philosophers who were either employed at the universities or later, although there are some significant exceptions, including Oswald Spengler, who obviously "hit the market" with The Downfall of the West which came out in 1918. Spengler admittedly had a doctorate in philosophy, but lived as a free writer and was evaded from military service.
Norwegian philosophy. Norway did not participate in the war other than with workers and war speculators. As a result, thousands of sailors lost their lives in a job that was completely out of control, well portrayed in Nordahl Grieg's Our honor and our power or in another volume by Johan Borgens Little lordtrilogy, The dark springs. If Norway contributed some philosophy during the First World War, it must have been some kind of working-age hedonism in which speculators bathed in champagne and lit the cigars with dog tags. The reaction to the animal era and the elusive speculation naturally became a political radicalization after the war.
The book contains no references to it Norwegian philosophers during the First World War. Who could have been affected by this war? Norwegian philosophers such as Anathon Aall and Arne Løchen had gone in the direction of empirical psychology and helped to build a psychological institute, although both cultivated their ideas-historical interests. It is difficult to put their philosophy in the context of the First World War. Perhaps Anathon Aall's younger brother Hermann Harris Aall (1871 –1957) could have been a candidate. He had both a legal and philosophical doctorate, and was very hostile to England during the First World War, including in the book The Underwater War and the World Depot (1918). Harris Aall later became a central Nazi and received the cultural award by Minister Gulbrand Lunde in 1942.
Regardless of whether one can object to Nordin's book, both professional philosophers and the wider public will find life stories and philosophical reactions to the First World War that were previously unknown to them. This alone is a good reason to recommend the book.
Tjønneland is an idea historian.
eivind.tjonneland@nor.uib.no
