Dewey, World War I and Social Intelligence

What's at Stake?

• Pragmatism's effectiveness in time of war: Can we exercise social intelligence in war?

• Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) charged that pragmatism was OK when times were peaceful but it unable to function effectively as a philosophy of life when times are difficult.

Dewey's Evolving, Emerging, Shifting Position on WWI

• American involvement in WWI: April 1917 - November 1918

• Early on Dewey was associated with the pacifists, such as Jane Addams, but was critical of German absolutism and dualism and was unwilling to make the simple equation of force with war and violence.

• So: as it became clear that the U.S. would enter the war, Dewey began to talk about how the war and American involvement could be beneficial to democracy both within the United States and internationally.  But he did so in rather vague terms without doing the sort of social scientific investigation that such problematic situations require.

• NOTE: War tends to be an either-or issue; Dewey was not an either-or thinker.  Thus his "thinking-out-loud" was vulnerable in a harsh climate to misunderstanding and hostile criticism.

Bourne's Increasingly Vociferous and Personal Reaction

• 1912 graduate of Columbia University; student of Dewey's

• 1915: "John Dewey's Philosophy"

• June 1917: "real enemy is war rather than imperial Germany"

• September 1917: "War determines its own end--victory, and government crushes . . . all forces" that would sidetrack it."

"Twilight of Idols" (October 1917)

• contrasts Dewey to James, unfavorably

• "Dewey's philosophy is inspiring enough for a society at peace, prosperous and with a fund of progressive goodwill" but where there is no progressive consensus it is ineffective.

• Pragmatism subordinates values to technique; lacks vision.

• "War undermines all values."

• "mechanics of life" versus "quality of living"

Assessing Dewey's Role

• Dewey did support Woodrow Wilson's war policy but he also opposed the suppression of dissent, universal military service, and the glorifying of war.

• He underestimated the totalizing character of the war effort.

• He overestimated Wilson's commitment to democracy and his ability to exploit the war for democratic ends.

• He tried to be a moderate supporter of the war, but the expectation is that one is either an all-out supporter or an all-out opponent

Dewey’s Assessment in “The Discrediting of Idealism”

. . . those who [were] strongly opposed to war in general . . . broke with the pacifists because they saw in this war a means of realizing pacific ideals--the practical reduction of armaments, the abolition of secret and oligarchic diplomacy and of special alliances, the substitution of inquiry and discussion for intrigue and threats, the founding, through the destruction of the most powerful autocracy, of a democratically ordered international government, and the consequent beginning of the end of war
[1918; MW 11.180f].

But it may fairly be argued that the real cause of the defeat [of idealistic aims] is the failure to use force adequately and intelligently. The ideals of the United States have been defeated in the settlement because we took into the war our sentimentalism, our attachment to moral sentiments as efficacious powers, our pious optimism as to the inevitable victory of the "right," our childish belief that physical energy can do the work that only intelligence can do, our evangelical hypocrisy that morals and "ideals" have a self-propelling and self-executing capacity [MW 11.181f].

Joseph Ratner’s Judgment 13 Years Later

I know you accept these crises and necessities for jumping and leaping--otherwise you never would have gone into the War and been so sympathetic to revolutions abroad.  All those I have met--not many it is true--consider your War attitude and your attitude after the War as opposites., that, as they put it, you are a good revolutionary away from home, but not at home.  I don't see it that way.  Editing Characters and Events taught me that.  (It was the first time I read yr War articles--I was afraid to go near them before and continued afraid until I actually read them carefully)  Your war attitude was a bad mistake of judgment--but it was no mistake at all of purpose.  If it had been of purpose, you couldn't have recovered from it--not at least so rapidly.  You thought the War was a horse of a different color.  And colorblindness is not a crime [in letter Dewey, 25 March 1931; modified].

Dewey’s Reaction

I have never thought it needful to explain away my attitude on the war, because I know that under the same circumstances I should have done it over again.  I was never as rabid as I was said to have been by [the] out and out pacificists, but under the conditions the world would have been worse than it is if Germany had won--I had illusions of course, but that to my mind remains a fact.  Another war may have to be fought yet; it surely would have been if Germany had won unless we joined her for a common economic materialism, and in that second war we should have been in up to our necks.  I can’t imagine any alternative now when I should elect for war, but alternatives come when a choice has to be made.  I should even now probably choose the same way under the same circumstances tho I hope with a clear head and fewer illusions: but as I say I simply can’t imagine any alternative now when I wouldn’t choose to go to jail first [Dewey to Ratner, 27 March 1931; modified].

Conclusion

•  Bourne had a good point--it is difficult (he would have said “impossible”) to fight a limited, intelligent war.

• But his position (contra Westbrook) was unpragmatic; he employed an absolutist argument and his attack on Dewey was intemperate.

• Dewey overestimated the power of social intelligence: we even now are not at a point where we can engage in war intelligently.