German philosophy and politics · John Dewey
THE GERMANIC PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
To be defeated in a way which causes the nation to take a secondary position among nations is a sign that divine judgment has been passed upon it. When a recent German writer argues that for Germany to surrender any territory which it has conquered during the present war would be sacrilegious, since it would be to refuse to acknowledge the workings of God in human history, he speaks quite in the Hegelian vein. Although the phenomenon of nationalism was very recent when Hegel wrote, indeed practically contemporary with his own day, he writes in nationalistic terms the entire history of humanity. The State is the Individual of history: it is to history what a given man is to biography. History gives us the progressive realization or evolution of the Absolute, moving from one National Individual to another. It is law, the universal, which makes the State a State, for law is reason, not as mere subjective reflection, but in its manifestation as supreme over and in particulars. On this account, Hegel's statement that the fundamental principle of history is the progressive realization of freedom does not mean what an uninstructed English reader would naturally take it to mean. Freedom is always understood in terms of Reason. Its expression in history means that Thought has progressively become conscious of itself; that is, has made itself its own object. Freedom is the _consciousness_ of freedom. Liberty of action has little to do with it. Obviously it is only in the German idealistic system--particularly in the system of Hegel himself--that this has fully taken place. Meantime, when citizens of a state (especially of the state in which this philosophic insight has been achieved) take the laws of their state as their own ends and motives of action, they attain the best possible substitute for a reason which is its own object. They appropriate as their own personal reason the objective and absolute Reason embodied perforce in law and custom.
After this detour, we are led back to the fact that the Germans possess the greatest freedom yet attained by humanity, for the Prussian political organization most fully exemplifies Law, or the Universal, organizing under and within itself all particular arrangements of social and personal life. Some other peoples--particularly the Latin--have thought they could _make_ constitutions, or at least that the form of their constitution was a matter of choice. But this is merely setting up the private conceit of individuals against the work of Absolute Reason, and thus marks the disintegration of a state rather than its existence. Other peoples have tried to found the government on the consent of the governed, unwitting of the fact that it is the government, the _specific_ realization of Reason, which makes a state out of what is otherwise an anarchic mass of individuals. Other peoples have made a parliament or representative body the essential thing in government; in philosophic reality this is only a consultative body, having as its main function communication between classes (which are indispensable to an "organic" state) and the real government. The chief function of parliament is to give the opinion of the social classes an opportunity to feel it is being considered and to enable the real government to take advantage of whatever wisdom may chance to be expressed. Hegel seems quite prophetic when he says: "By virtue of this participation subjective liberty and conceit, with their general opinion, can show themselves palpably efficacious and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to count for something." Finally, the State becomes wholly and completely an organized Individual only in its external relations, its relations to other states. As his philosophy of history ignores the past in seizing upon the national state as the unit and focus of history, so it ignores all future possibility of a genuinely international federation to which isolated nationalism shall be subordinated. Bernhardi writes wholly in the Hegelian sense when he says that to expand the idea of the State into the idea of humanity is a Utopian error, for it would exclude the essential principle of life, struggle.
Philosophical justification of war follows inevitably from a philosophy of history composed in nationalistic terms. History is the movement, the march of God on earth through time. Only one nation at a time can be the latest and hence the fullest realization of God. The movement of God in history is thus particularly manifest in those changes by which unique place passes from one nation to another. War is the signally visible occurrence of such a flight of the divine spirit in its onward movement. The idea that friendly intercourse among all the peoples of the earth is a legitimate aim of human effort is in basic contradiction of such a philosophy. War is explicit realization of "dialectic," of the negation by which a higher synthesis of reason is assured. It effectively displays the "irony of the divine Idea." It is to national life what the winds are to the sea, "preserving mankind from the corruption engendered by immobility." War is the most effective preacher of the vanity of all merely finite interests; it puts an end to that selfish egoism of the individual by which he would claim his life and his property as his own or as his family's. International law is not properly law; it expresses simply certain usages which are accepted so long as they do not come into conflict with the purpose of a state--a purpose which always gives the supreme law of national life. Particularly against the absolute right of the "present bearer of the world spirit, the spirits of the other nations are absolutely without right. The latter, just like the nations whose epochs have passed, count no longer in universal history." Since they are already passed over from the standpoint of the divine idea, war can do no more than exhibit the fact that their day has come and gone. World history is the world's judgment seat.
For a period Hegelian thought was almost supreme in Germany. Then its rule passed away almost as rapidly as it had been achieved. After various shiftings, the trend of philosophic thought was definitely "Back to Kant." Kant's greater sobriety, the sharp distinction he drew between the realm of phenomena and science and the ideal noumenal world, commended him after the unbridled pretensions of Hegelian absolutism. For more than a generation Hegel was spoken of with almost universal contempt. Nevertheless his ideas, loosed from the technical apparatus with which he surrounded them, persisted. Upon the historical disciplines his influence was peculiarly deep and abiding. He fixed the ideas of Fichte and fastened them together with the pin of evolution. Since his day, histories of philosophy, or religion, or institutions have all been treated as developments through necessary stages of an inner implicit idea or purpose according to an indwelling law. And the idea of a peculiar mission and destiny of German history has lost nothing in the operation. Expressions which a bewildered world has sought since the beginning of the war to explain through the influence of a Darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, or through the influence of a Nietzschean philosophy of power, have their roots in the classic idealistic philosophy culminating in Hegel.
Kant still remains the philosopher of Germany. The division of life between the world of sense and of mechanism and the world of the supersensible and purpose, the world of necessity and the world of freedom, is more congenial than a complete monism. The attempts of his successors to bridge the gap and set up a wholly unified philosophy failed, historically speaking. But, nevertheless, they contributed an indispensable ingredient to the contemporary German spirit; they helped people the Kantian void of the supersensible with the substantial figures of the State and its Historical Evolution and Mission. Kant bequeathed to the world an intellect devoted to the congenial task of discovering causal law in external nature, and an inner intuition which, in spite of its sublimity, had nothing to look at except the bare form of an empty law of duty. Kant was kept busy in proving the existence of this supernal but empty region. Consequently he was not troubled by being obliged to engage in the unremunerative task of spending his time gazing into a blank void. His successors were not so fortunate. The existence of this ideal realm in which reason, purpose and freedom are one was axiomatic to them; they could no longer busy themselves with proving its existence.
Some of them, called the Romanticists, filled it with visions, more or less poetic, which frankly drew their substance from an imagination inflamed by emotional aspiration in revolt at the limitations of outward action. Others, called the idealistic philosophers, filled in the void, dark because of excess of light, with less ghostly forms of Law and the unfolding in History of Absolute Value and Purpose. The two worlds of Kant were too far away from each other. The later idealistic world constructions crumbled; but their debris supplied material with which to fill in the middle regions between the Kantian worlds of sense and of reason. This, I repeat, is their lasting contribution to present German culture. Where Kantianism has not received a filling in from the philosophy of history and the State, it has remained in Germany, as elsewhere, a critique of the methodology of science; its importance has been professional rather than human. * * * * * In the first lecture we set out with the suggestion of an inquiry into the influence of general ideas upon practical affairs, upon those larger practical affairs called politics. We appear to have concluded with a conviction that (in the instance before us at least) politics has rather been the controlling factor in the formation of philosophic ideas and in deciding their vogue. Yet we are well within limits when we say that ideas which were evoked in correspondence with concrete social conditions served to articulate and consolidate the latter. Even if we went so far as to say that reigning philosophies simply reflect as in a mirror contemporary social struggles, we should have to add that seeing one's self in a mirror is a definite practical aid in carrying on one's undertaking to its completion.
When what a people sees in its intellectual looking glass is its own organization and its own historic evolution as an organic instrument of the accomplishment of an Absolute Will and Law, the articulating and consolidating efficacy of the reflection is immensely intensified. Outside of Germany, the career of the German idealistic philosophy has been mainly professional and literary. It has exercised considerable influence upon the teaching of philosophy in France, England and this country. Beyond professorial circles, its influence has been considerable in theological directions. Without doubt, it has modulated for many persons the transition from a supernatural to a spiritual religion; it has enabled them to give up historical and miraculous elements as indifferent accretions and to retain the moral substance and emotional values of Christianity. But the Germans are quite right in feeling that only in Germany is this form of idealistic thinking both indigenous and widely applied. A crisis like the present forces upon thoughtful persons a consideration of the value for the general aims of civilization of a philosophy of the _a priori_, the Absolute, and of their immanent evolution through the medium of an experience which as just experience is only a superficial and negligible vehicle of transcendent Laws and Ends. It forces a consideration of what type of general ideas is available for the articulation and guidance of our own life in case we find ourselves looking upon the present world scene as an _a priori_ and an absolutistic philosophy gone into bankruptcy.
In Europe, speaking generally, "Americanism" is a synonym for crude empiricism and a materialistic utilitarianism. It is no part of my present task to try to show how largely this accusation is due to misunderstanding. It is simpler to inquire how far the charge points to the problem which American life, and therefore philosophy in America, must meet. It is difficult to see how any _a priori_ philosophy, or any systematic absolutism, is to get a footing among us, at least beyond narrow and professorial circles. Psychologists talk about learning by the method of trial and error or success. Our social organization commits us to this philosophy of life. Our working principle is to try: to find out by trying, and to measure the worth of the ideas and theories tried by the success with which they meet the test of application in practice. Concrete consequences rather than _a priori_ rules supply our guiding principles. Hegel found it "superficial and absurd to regard as objects of choice" social constitutions; to him "they were necessary structures in the path of development." To us they are the cumulative result of a multitude of daily and ever-renewed choices.
That such an experimental philosophy of life means a dangerous experiment goes without saying. It permits, sooner or later it may require, every alleged sacrosanct principle to submit to ordeal by fire--to trial by service rendered. From the standpoint of _a priorism_, it is hopelessly anarchic; it is doomed, _a priori_, to failure. From its own standpoint, it is itself a theory to be tested by experience. Now experiments are of all kinds, varying from those generated by blind impulse and appetite to those guided by intelligently formed ideas. They are as diverse as the attempt of a savage to get rain by sprinkling water and scattering thistledown, and that control of electricity in the laboratory from which issue wireless telegraphy and rapid traction. Is it not likely that in this distinction we have the key to the failure or success of the experimental method generalized into a philosophy of life, that is to say, of social matters--the only application which procures complete generalization? An experimental philosophy differs from empirical philosophy as empiricism has been previously formulated. Historical empiricisms have been stated in terms of precedents; their generalizations have been summaries of what has previously happened. The truth and falsity of these generalizations depended then upon the accuracy with which they catalogued, under appropriate heads, a multiplicity of past occurrences. They were perforce lacking in directive power except so far as the future might be a routine repetition of the past. In an experimental philosophy of life, the question of the past, of precedents, of origins, is quite subordinate to prevision, to guidance and control amid future possibilities. Consequences rather than antecedents measure the worth of theories. Any scheme or project may have a fair hearing provided it promise amelioration in the future; and no theory or standard is so sacred that it may be accepted simply on the basis of past performance.
But this difference between a radically experimental philosophy and an empiristic philosophy only emphasizes the demand for careful and comprehensive reflection with respect to the ideas which are to be tested in practice. If an _a priori_ philosophy has worked at all in Germany it is because it has been based on an _a priori_ social constitution--that is to say, on a state whose organization is such as to determine in advance the main activities of classes of individuals, and to utilize their particular activities by linking them up with one another in definite ways. It is a commonplace to say that Germany is a monument to what can be done by means of conscious method and organization. An experimental philosophy of life in order to succeed must not set less store upon methodic and organized intelligence, but more. We must learn from Germany what methodic and organized work means. But instead of confining intelligence to the technical means of realizing ends which are predetermined by the State (or by something called the historic Evolution of the Idea), intelligence must, with us, devote itself as well to construction of the ends to be acted upon.
The method of trial and error or success is likely, if not directed by a trained and informed imagination, to score an undue proportion of failures. There is no possibility of disguising the fact that an experimental philosophy of life means a hit-and-miss philosophy in the end. But it means missing rather than hitting, if the aiming is done in a happy-go-lucky way instead of by bringing to bear all the resources of inquiry upon locating the target, constructing propulsive machinery and figuring out the curve of trajectory. That this work is, after all, but hypothetical and tentative till it issue from thought into action does not mean that it might as well be random guesswork; it means that we can do still better next time if we are sufficiently attentive to the causes of success and failure this time.
America is too new to afford a foundation for an _a priori_ philosophy; we have not the requisite background of law, institutions and achieved social organization. America is too new to render congenial to our imagination an evolutionary philosophy of the German type. For our history is too obviously future. Our country is too big and too unformed, however, to enable us to trust to an empirical philosophy of muddling along, patching up here and there some old piece of machinery which has broken down by reason of its antiquity. We must have system, constructive method, springing from a widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results achieved. We have said long enough that America means opportunity; we must now begin to ask: Opportunity for what, and how shall the opportunity be achieved? I can but think that the present European situation forces home upon us the need for constructive planning. I can but think that while it gives no reason for supposing that creative power attaches _ex officio_ to general ideas, it does encourage us to believe that a philosophy which should articulate and consolidate the ideas to which our social practice commits us would clarify and guide our future endeavor.
Time permits of but one illustration. The present situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and cultural. It is by the accident of position rather than any virtue of our own that we are not sharers in the present demonstration of failure. We have borrowed the older philosophy of isolated national sovereignty and have lived upon it in a more or less half-hearted way. In our internal constitution we are actually interracial and international. It remains to see whether we have the courage to face this fact and the wisdom to think out the plan of action which it indicates. Arbitration treaties, international judicial councils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace movements, are all well in their way. But the situation calls for more radical thinking than that which terminates in such proposals. We have to recognize that furtherance of the depth and width of human intercourse is the measure of civilization; and we have to apply this fact without as well as within our national life. We must make the accident of our internal composition into an idea, an idea upon which we may conduct our foreign as well as our domestic policy. An international judicial tribunal will break in the end upon the principle of national sovereignty.
We have no right to cast stones at any warring nation till we have asked ourselves whether we are willing to forego this principle and to submit affairs which limited imagination and sense have led us to consider strictly national to an international legislature. In and of itself, the idea of peace is a negative idea; it is a police idea. There _are_ things more important than keeping one's body whole and one's property intact. Disturbing the peace is bad, not because peace is disturbed, but because the fruitful processes of cooperation in the great experiment of living together are disturbed. It is futile to work for the negative end of peace unless we are committed to the positive ideal which it cloaks: Promoting the efficacy of human intercourse irrespective of class, racial, geographical and national limits. Any philosophy which should penetrate and particulate our present social practice would find at work the forces which unify human intercourse. An intelligent and courageous philosophy of practice would devise means by which the operation of these forces would be extended and assured in the future. An American philosophy of history must perforce be a philosophy for its future, a future in which freedom and fullness of human companionship is the aim, and intelligent cooperative experimentation the method.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.