Fichte, Johann Gottlieb | John Dewey (essay date 1915)
John Dewey (essay date 1915)
SOURCE: "Moral and Political Philosophy," in German Philosophy and Politics, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942, pp. 98-113.
[Although Dewey's German Philosophy and Politics appeared in a revised edition in 1942, the chapters were revised as little as possible in order to retain their World War I perspective. In a view characteristic of the years spanning both world wars, Dewey presents Fichte as "the beginning" of modern German nationalism.]
. . . Kant was enough of a child of the eighteenth century to be cosmopolitan, not nationalistic, in his feeling. Since humanity as a whole, in its universality, alone truly corresponds to the universality of reason, he upheld the ideal of an ultimate republican federation of states; he was one of the first to proclaim the possibility of enduring peace among nations on the basis of such a federated union of mankind.
The threatened domination of Europe by Napoleon...
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