GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THE WAR

Dr. J. Muirhead, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Birmingham, has issued a popular little work on the relation of German Philosophy to the present War. So much has recently been written by English writers against German philosophy — conceived vaguely as a whole — that we are apt to forget that there is as much “German Philosophy” in England or France as in Germany. Professional philosophers in these countries are, of course, quite aware of the fact; so, they are beginning at last to defend German philosophy while denouncing German politics. It is a delicate position to hold amid the fierce prejudices and extremist hatred bred by war. Any such attempt to exercise fairness and discrimination deserves respect and sympathy.

Professor Muirhead holds that militarism and imperialism “are not the offspring of what is commonly known as German Philosophy, but on the contrary are the legitimate issue of a violent reaction against all that German Philosophy properly stands for.” Thus, for him German philosophy is synonymous with the ideas of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel — though, of course, he grudgingly admits that each of these is both inconsistent with himself and irreconcilable with the others. Still, he holds, they agreed in a certain high-souled idealism which is the antithesis of militarism and materialism. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Haeckel, and such like are those who really sowed the needs of militarism. 

It may be so. But one cannot help remembering Fichte’s perfervid expositions of the destiny of the German nation and Hegel’s exaggerated doctrine of the State. Also, the Rationalist Press Association, which is the English equivalent of Haeckel’s Monistenbund, has been fiercely denouncing German ideas. Thus, it would seem that idealists attribute the war to naturalism and naturalist-philosophers attribute it to idealism.

It appears to the present reviewer that both sides err by opposite extremes. The conditions which make war possible are due to that idealess selfishness which puts individual interests before those of society, which values the ambitions of a nation more than the peace of Europe. And this ruthless selfishness of individual and class and nation is the outcome of a creedless ethic. The attempt to construct morality without historical Christianity is common alike to “German Philosophy” and to German Anti-Philosophy. The idealist sees the mote in his naturalist confrère’s eye, but what about the beam in his own? — A. J. R., An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 4, No. 14.