The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880 by Beiser Frederick C.;

Author:Beiser, Frederick C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

5. War and Peace

In July 1870 Liebmann’s academic career was abruptly interrupted by a dramatic political event: the advent of the Franco-Prussian war. On July 19 Kaiser Wilhelm I had called upon all the German provinces to unite and to defend the fatherland against “the aggressions” of their traditional foe, France. A wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept through the land in response to the Kaiser’s appeal. Among those who responded was the young Liebmann himself, who later admitted to having been infected with the “furor teutonicus”. He duly enlisted as a volunteer in the Prussian Gardefüsilierregiment. For four months, from September 1870 to January 1871, Liebmann participated in the siege of Paris, sheltering in little villages outside Paris which were under constant French bombardment. After his return to civilian life, he published his memoirs and diaries from these months, which appeared in September 1871 as Vier Monate vor Paris.36

Prima facie it would seem that there is little of philosophical value in Liebmann’s reminiscences. This is indeed the case for most of the book, which is chiefly of historical interest. Still, these four months mark one of the most formative periods of Liebmann’s life, not only morally but also intellectually. There is nothing like the experience of war to collect the mind and to make it think about the meaning of life. Several sections of Liebmann’s tract are filled with general reflections, sometimes in verse, about death, war, peace, history and human nature in general. We cannot ignore these sections, not least because they are the basis of Köhnke’s damning portrait of Liebmann as Heinrich Mann’s Untertan.

There is a remarkable passage from Liebmann’s diary, dated September 24, 1870, where he praises the discipline and esprit du corps of the Prussian Army. Though such discipline might seem ridiculous to an outsider, someone like Heinrich Heine, that would be only a superficial view of its meaning and purpose, Liebmann declares. What reveals itself in such discipline is the spirit of self-sacrifice, devotion to law and the state (30). Egoism is held in check as the individual becomes a working member of the social and political whole. This spirit of obedience and public purpose does not oblige the subject alone, Liebmann is careful to add, but also the Prussian monarch himself, who is only “the first servant of the state” (31). Viewing the Prussian army through a Kantian prism, Liebmann then declares that this ethic of discipline and self-sacrifice is nothing less than “the spirit of the categorical imperative”. Here are the crucial lines:

In this army everything down to the smallest detail and in the greatest extreme is made “exact”, “proper”, [it is] pedantically and painfully prescribed and executed. For an outside observer this might appear as servitude (Kamaschendienst) … But in it is revealed the spirit of discipline and subordination, the postulate of selfless, strict fulfillment of duty, the consciousness of duty to the point of complete self-sacrifice toward law and state. Resistant egoism has to keep silent, and the individual feels himself constantly an obedient member of the whole.

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