VOL. XX

JANUARY, 1918

No. 1

GERMAN IDEALISM AND ITS WAR CRITICS1

C. I. LEWIS

If there be any hour in history when the fundamental and vital importance of philosophy should be apparent, that hour has come. At this moment we are engaged in a war more terrible, more destructive, in some respects more subversive of human interests and more ruthless than the world has ever seen. And we must realize, if we are at all observant, that were it not for certain ideals that have been set up, certain conceptions of the state and of the relation of the individual to the state which have been entertained, a certain attitude toward life which has characterized some classes at least of the German people, this war could not have been. Other causes have contributed, without doubtfear of encroachment by other peoples, the desire for unhampered economic expansion, mutual fear and suspicion, the intrigues of a secret diplomacy. But, giving these causes their proper weight and place, it still remains true that were it not for a certain philosophy, certain ways of thinking and feeling about the distinction of German and alien and about a nation's moral obligation to other peoples, the more materialistic considerations would hardly have sufficed to precipitate this crisis. The most potent issues do not concern merely material aims but incompatible doctrines of right and of the state-opposing ideals.

Philosophy-German philosophy at least-is not a negligible affair; it is capable of wrecking nations, of setting

1 Read before the Philosophical Union of the University of California, September 28, 1917.

the world afire, of renouncing national obligations upon which international assurance depends, of providing apologetic for inhumanities more barbarous than the world had thought to see again. For the rest of the world, the comprehension of this philosophy is no luxury; it may be a matter of life and death.

It is for such reasons, no doubt, that so large a portion of current literature is philosophical in tenor and that so much of it is concerned with the evaluation of German thought. It is a little surprising, however, that these discussions of German philosophy have been so largely occupied with Kant and his successors in the idealistic tradition-a movement whose prestige in Germany suffered notable eclipse in the latter half of the nineteenth century, while during that same period it became the dominant philosophic influence in England and America. The presumption would seem to be against any intimate connection between this philosophy and the present state of the German mind. Yet a majority of those who have discussed the subject in print have inclined to consider just this idealistic movement as expressing the principles which underlie the most sinister aspects of the present temper of Germanyits egotism, its subjectivism, and its idealization of the German state, ignoring the rights of individuals and of other states.

Professor Dewey, in the series of lectures entitled "German Philosophy and Politics," has traced what seems to him the connection between this movement and certain obliquities of the present German attitude-between, for example, Kant and Bernhardi. Mr. Santayana's "Egotism in German Philosophy," though written in somewhat different vein, still emphasizes much the same thought-the great defect of the German genius is its subjectivism, its other-worldliness, its glorification of the internally willed, as against the external and palpable fact. This egotism finds its philosophic expression in German idealism; its expression in deeds, in the present war. M. Félix Sartiaux,

writing under the title Morale Kantienne et morale humaine, is concerned to show that the ethical principles of Kant are destitute of all generosity and every esthetic charm, lacking any true sense of the individual, of liberty and of humanity. And J. M. de Dampierre, in "German Imperialism and International Law," has said: "It was German philosophy which constituted the essential originality of Germanism. . . . The origin of that remarkable mentality which characterizes actual Germanism—a mentality of which so-called Pan-Germanism is only a brutal and premature expression-is to be found in the teachings of the German philosophers of the late eighteenth century. Tannenberg or Bernhardi are descendants in the direct line from Hegel, Fichte, or Kant, by way of Treitschke, Lasson, or Ostwald.''2

This temper of the more competent critics is reflected. also in the unguarded and extravagant statements of writers less well equipped, until the blood guiltiness of German Idealism threatens to become a platitude. And so far no voice has been raised in protest, although the strictures of the lesser critics have, some of them, amounted to libel against the dead. Surely it will be well to mention Kant's "Perpetual Peace," to examine the political and cultural background of Fichte's nationalism, and to note that NeoKantians and Neo-Hegelians are counted amongst the most liberal thinkers in recent political and legal theory. To allow an impression so one-sided to gain currency will work

2 Pp. 22-23.

3 For example, the following paragraph from a popular periodical: "The philosophical basis for the defense of war, imperfectly expressed throughout the ages, was finally crystallized by Kant in his harmful political philosophy. That gentle and ascetic old person, who pondered and wrote in an age when any philosophy, not scientific inquiry, was the basis of thought, worked it out that a state has a soul apart from the individual souls which compose it. The duty of citizenship is to advance the state without regard to the interests of the individuals in that state. If, by a given movement, like a war, the interests of the state are advanced, it matters not whether every person in the state is rendered poorer and unhappier. The glory of the state has been achieved and the highest duty is fulfilled."

a double injury; it will prejudice discussion of the philosophic issues between idealism and various rival views by interjecting inapposite considerations, and it will blind us to other, and probably more potent sources, of the present German temper.

One searches in vain through this critical literature for references or quotations from the writings of Kant and Fichte which deal specifically with war and with the stateKant's "Perpetual Peace" and "Principles of Progress' and "Principles of Political Right," or Fichte's work of the untranslatable title, Der geschlossene Handelsstaat. Professor Dewey says that it is difficult to make quotations from Kant which will be intelligible without command of his technical vocabulary. But surely he is not thinking of any of the treatises just mentioned. For these will be sufficiently clear to the most unlearned, and the proposals set forth in "Perpetual Peace" are summarized in set theses:

Preliminary Articles of a Perpetual Peace Between States

1. No conclusion of peace shall be held to be valid as such if it is made with the secret reservation of material for a future war. 2. No state having a separate existence-whether it be large or small-shall be acquired by another state by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or donation.

3. Standing armies shall be entirely abolished in course of time. 4. No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the external affairs of the state. . . [since] a credit system when used by the powers as an instrument of offense against one another . . . is a dangerous money power.

5. No state shall interfere by force with the constitution or government of another state.

6. No state at war with another shall adopt such modes of hostility as would necessarily render mutual confidence impossible in a future peace, such as the employment of assassins or poisoners, the violations of terms of surrender, the instigation of treason, and such like.