The concept of apocalypse is well established in all the major religions of the world, be they Semitic religions or Hinduism. The underlying idea behind the concept in all the religions remains the same, that is, the world will come to an end. The end itself, which has been called the Judgment Day, Day of Resurrection, or the Day of Retribution or Reckoning will be preceded by some signs. It has also been called the day of Apocalypse, the (...) day when the whole world will be destroyed. One of the distinct forms of it is Muslim Apocalypse about which a lot has been written. However, the argument of the present research paper shall be to examine the concept of the Mahdi primarily from the Shi’te Muslim point of view. The premise of the argument is that Shi’te argument or concept of the Mahdi is far more substantial having a solid theoretical foundation than the other perspectives about it. No wonder, therefore, the concept of the Mahdi has manifested itself in literature across cultures and ages. There are so many poets, primarily, Muslim poets who have highlighted this concept in their poetry and thus the research paper shall make an attempt to look at some of those poets and their understanding of it. (shrink)

European civilization largely lost its sense of direction after World War One when its humanist consensus, that promoted human betterment, collapsed into a fruitless political opposition between left and right wing extremism. This collapse is here exemplified by the breakdown in relationship between left winger Bertrand Russell and right winger D.H. Lawrence during WW1. However, the real causes of the loss of the humanist consensus are more deep-rooted, as that consensus has its roots in the Renaissance andn Enlightenment movements (...) when the influence of humanist views was at its height. By the late 19th century imperialism and militarism threatened the consensus, and the senseless slaughter of WW1 brought it to an end. The humanist consensus re-emerged post-WW2, largely through American influence, but it has declined since. To restore the consensus, it is argued here that humanism can be strengthened by dualist theory and by a process of contextualization that brings humanity to the fore. By using ‘connecting contexts’ we can open our minds to larger perspectives. In that way, we are collectively more inclined to be optimistic about our prospects. The future of humanity seems to depend on such developments in our critical thinking about ourselves. (shrink)

The article reviews the concepts of the multi-author book Society. National Strategy. War: Political and Strategic Lessons of the First World War. This collective research is notable for rich original scientific apparatus and methodological proficiency. Thus, the analysis of participating countries is conducted according to a single template, which includes: the state of pre-war society in all participating countries ; goals of engaging in war and expectations of the powerful and financial elites for the war ; assessment of how (...) did different strata of society find the war; the evolution of the morale of the people during the war; problems that arose during the war ; the evolution of women’s position in society during the war, the development of a broad segment of women-workers, the extension of emancipation as one of the positive results of the war; the outcome of the war for the country. Special attention is drawn to the pacifist nature of the ideology of the reviewed research, demonstration of deprivation and suffering of people in all countries. The book’s authors identify the main causes of the First World War: ambitions and inefficiency of the world’s elites, the lack of a coherent strategy. As the result, the USA, thanks to their strategy, received the maximum dividends with minimal participation. At the same time, it is noted that the context of research on the nature of war should be expanded to take into account the general competition of countries and civilizations. The authors comprehensively analyze the informational and propaganda activities of the participating countries and conclude that England’s activities in this field were the most effective. Based on the methodology of this collective research, the nature of a future world war, its potential participants and their goals can be considered. (shrink)

Combining history and biography with astute philosophical analysis, Nicolas de Warren explores and reinterprets the intellectual trajectories of ten German philosophers as they reacted to and experienced the First World War. His book will enhance our understanding of the intimate and invariably complicated relationship between philosophy and war.

ABSTRACTAccording to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess n...

An exceptional collection of letters, postcards, original writings, and photographs The First World War witnessed an unprecedented mobilization of philosophers and their families: as soldiers at the front; as public figures on the home front; as nurses in field hospitals; as mothers and wives; as sons and fathers. In Germany, the war irrupted in the midst of the rapid growth of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological movement – widely considered one of the most significant philosophical movements in twentieth century thought. Philosophers (...) at the Frontoffers a documentary history of phenomenology in the First World War. Through an exceptional collection of primary source materials (letters, postcards, original writings, photographs) from the Husserl Archives in Leuven, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and the Archives of the University of Göttingen, the complex narratives of how the war affected the lives and thought of central figures in the phenomenological movement are charted. Key figures such as Edmund Husserl, his sons Wolfgang and Gerhart, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Adolf Reinach, Martin Heidegger, and others are included in this collection of materials. The volume includes reproductions of original material, as well as German transcription of all texts and their English translation. (shrink)

The phrase military ethics is sometimes regarded as a contradiction in terms. To some, the idea of ethics seems out of touch with modern realities and sensibilities. "How can an external moral standard dictate one's actions?" some might ask. Ethics can therefore bring up memories of bygone eras that seem irrelevant. Coupled with the qualifier military, ethics can seem even more puzzling. Ethics is not merely a concern for past eras, but is increasingly relevant in an age of rapid technological (...) and societal development. From its beginning, our nation's military leaders have viewed ethics as imperative to the task of warfighting. This is a refrain echoed by contributions to this book who address a range of issues concerning political actors, technological capabilities, and societal shifts of the past and the present. And in commemorating the centenary of World War I, it is appropriate to consider the ethics of warfare. This book helpfully relates lessons from the past to the major ethical issues of modern warfare. By providing diverse reflections on the history of military ethics and challenges of contemporary and future warfare, this book serves as a repository of meaningful material for a new generation of warfighters to develop their own faculties of ethical judgment. (shrink)

The Second World War was a watershed in history in many ways. I focus on the World War II discontinuity as it relates to the intersection of scientific and military enterprise. I am interested in how we should conceptualize that intersection and in offering a preliminary tracing of the “World War II regime” that has grown out of it—a regime that includes new forms of scientific and military practice but that has invaded and transformed many other cultural (...) spaces, including—my primary example here—the industrial workplace. I exploit the figure of the cyborg to thematize the social, material, and conceptual heterogeneity of the developments at issue; specify a distinct range of cyborg objects and sciences that emerged from the World War II matrix; and exemplify a historiographical approach that escapes the traditional master-narrative structures of science studies. (shrink)

Abstract This essay examines Gramsci?s writings about the First World War, primarily his immediate reflections in 1914?1918, but also relevant prison notes (1926?1937). The most striking feature of his attitude during the war years is ?Germanophilia?, a label I adapt from Croce, whose writings on the Great War also exhibited this attitude. A key common motivation was that political conflicts should not be turned into religious ones in which one portrays the enemy as an evil to be annihilated. But (...) they also had other divergent motivations. Another striking feature of Gramsci?s writings during the war years was his opposition to economic measures against Germany. He seemed to suggest that a military conflict should not be automatically expanded to include an economic war, conflating politics and economics. But later in prison he theorised that modern wars tend to be wars of position, in which military operations and industrial production are vitally connected. (shrink)

This article explores the potent force of material objects in testimional culture by enacting an encounter with the ‘debris’ of a World War Two internment camp for Japanese Canadians. Pushing beyond the limits of the repetition of linear history, the article moves instead towards a phenomenological analysis of how yielding to remains of the past might allow us to reconnect with the destroyed worlds from which they were removed. Using Michel Taussig's notion of mimesis and Peggy Phelan's work on (...) mimicry, alongside Merleau‐Ponty's work on the habit‐body, this article brings into relief the neglected place of material objects collected by archives and brought to memorials in testimonial culture. (shrink)

It is widely believed that John Maynard Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace to protest the reparations imposed on Germany after the First World War. The central thesis of this paper is that Britain’s war debt problem, not German reparations, led Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace. His main goal at the Paris Peace Conference was to restore Britain’s economic hegemony by solving the war debt problem he helped to create. We show that Keynes (...) was responsible for many of the most notorious aspects of the reparations section of the Treaty, and he crafted his proposals in light of mercantilist theories designed to keep Germany relatively poor after the war. His desperate desire to solve Britain’s war debt problem, mixed with his mercantilist ideas, inspired him to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace. (shrink)

As one of the few philosophers to subject civilisation and barbarism to close analysis, Collingwood was acutely aware of the interrelationship between philosophy and history. This book combines historical, biographical and philosophical discussion in order to illuminate Collingwood's thinking and create the first in-depth analysis of Collingwood's responses to the Second World War.

Evidence found in The New York Times from 1939 to 1945 and corroborating sources are used to demonstrate the impact of the Second World War on the progressive educational movement. We posit that December 7, 1941 initiated the waning of the progressive education movement in the secondary social studies curriculum. Progressive education emphasized a child-centered, experiential curriculum, an issues-centered approach to learning, and a critical analysis of society. Our findings indicate that the educational climate during the Second World (...) War initiated a shift from questioning American institutions to celebrating them. Education became more centralized and many educational organizations were mobilized to support the war effort. Specifically, the secondary social studies curriculum became one of several propaganda vehicles in support of the war. In addition, colleges and universities became training grounds for teachers, defense workers, and soldiers. A war on the home front ensued. The progressive secondary social studies curriculum itself was viewed as placing the nation at risk. While other factors such as the Back-to-Basics movement and the Cold War contributed to the waning of the secondary progressive educational movement, World War Two (WWII) set the decline in motion. (shrink)

During the First World War the radical nationalist sentiments were widespread in different European countries involved in military activities, including the Russian Empire. In Russia this rise united the features of Russian ethnonationalism and imperial enthusiasm. The Russian philosopher Vladimir Ern in his article “From Kant to Krupp” attempted “to ground” the hostility between Russia and its allies, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other hand. This attempt turned Ern’s article into one of the earliest manifestoes of (...) cultural racism in Russia, maybe the very first one. Discussing this article in the context of other works by Ern of 1910–1917, one can see that Ern applied Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical method for the political interpretation of “the problem of technology” causing the aggressive approach to the human’s environment. Nevertheless, Ern’s cultural racism and aggressive rhetoric blocked further development and even reception of his methodological innovations. The psychological compensatory pragmatic of his rhetoric seems to resemble the analogical function of rigid opposition between “Russia” and “West” in speeches of contemporary Russia’s official ideologues. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century there was a marked decline in biological conceptions of man and society. This paper describes the development of the views concerning eugenics held by the Norwegian scientific expertise, from open racism before World War I to a moderate nonracist eugenic program in the 1930's. It is claimed that public criticism of the popular eugenics movement by the experts came earlier in Norway than in most other countries, including the United States. The (...) first attack in 1915 was directed at dilettantic and irresponsible handling of scientific ideas, data and arguments. The conflict was over different views of science and its social role rather than over different aims for social development. The strict methodological demands that the scientific expertise wanted to enforce, provided a barrier against extreme eugenic views and proposals, and a source for critical arguments against eugenics in general. The experts differed considerably in their political views, but united in the crusade against dilettantism. They all feared premature applications of science to social problems. John Alfred Mjøen was leader of the popular eugenics movement in Norway. He learned about race-hygiene in Germany and started a public campaign in Norway around 1908. Mjøen formulated the so-called « Norwegian program for racehygiene » and played a prominent role in the international eugenics movement, but he was ostracized by Norwegian genetic scientists. Mjøen's strongest critic was Otto Lous Mohr, medical doctor and biologist, trained in genetics under T. H. Morgan. Mohr led the attack on Mjøen in 1915. Besides being a human geneticist of international prominence Mohr was strongly involved in campaigns for birth control and sexual instruction. Important supporters of a moderate eugenic program were Ragnar Vogt, founder of modern Norwegian psychiatry, and Johan Scharffenberg, psychiatrist and central public figure. Both were clearly on Mohr's side in the conflict with Mjøen. (shrink)

The article presents some additional biographical online sources to Ludwig Wittgenstein in the years 1913-1918.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Research Ethics after World War II: The Insular Culture of BiomedicineAllan M. Brandt (bio) and Lara Freidenfelds (bio)Human subjects research in the United States has only recently emerged as an important area of historical investigation. Over the last quarter century, scholars have begun the process of grounding within an historical context both the complex relationship between researchers and subjects and the processes by which biomedical knowledge is produced. (...) Their studies examine topics ranging from the impact of the anti-vivisectionist movement on human experimentation in the early twentieth century (Lederer 1995) to the development of the discipline of bioethics in the 1960s and 1970s (Rothman 1991) and the emergence of the legal concept of informed consent for human research (Katz, Glass, and Capron 1972). Many of the discussions focus on isolated incidents of scandal, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Jones 1993; Brandt 1978) and the Willowbrook School hepatitis study (Rothman and Rothman 1984). In doing so, they attempt to explain how such clearly unethical research could have been initiated and what consequences have resulted from public knowledge of such research.Nonetheless, the broader historical contexts and implications of human subjects research have yet to be fully delineated. This project will be of crucial importance, not only for historians, but also for those concerned with research policy and medical ethics. The historical examination of human subjects research will provide further insight into the details of research methods, the construction of protocols, and the historically specific interest in certain diseases. In addition, scholars will better understand the relationships of power and authority between researcher and subject, as well as the social and scientific mechanisms for the production of new biomedical knowledge. The process of enlisting research subjects illuminates the significance of class, gender, ethnicity, and race in science, in biomedicine, and in society. The fact that, historically, much research has employed research subjects from vulnerable populations, who participated in coercive contexts, has exposed powerful social assumptions embedded in the research enterprise. [End Page 239]The revelation of new documents indicating past abuses has sparked much of the investigation into human subjects research and the recent investigation of human radiation experiments during the Cold War era. One of the most important achievements of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was the uncovering of thousands of documents, a remarkable mine of archival data, that had been previously inaccessible to researchers. Jonathan Moreno and Susan Lederer’s article on the history of Cold War research ethics in this issue of the Kennedy Institute ofEthics Journal represents the first attempt since the publication of the Committee’s Final Report to analyze the Committee’s findings in a serious historical context.Historical accounts of the emergence of bioethics traditionally have left a great void in their discussions of human experimentation, generally ignoring the period between the writing of the Nuremberg Code in 1947 and the publication of Henry Beecher’s 1966 New England Journal ofMedicine article condemning systematic, unethical practices in human experimentation (Rothman 1991). The period from 1946 to 1966, however, was a time of vigorous research characterized by a fragmented community of medical researchers who applied inconsistent ethical standards and employed highly variable research practices. Both military and civilian medical researchers were intensely interested in radiation and thus conducted human subjects research along those lines, including examinations of the effects of plutonium injections and of total body irradiation, the use of trace radioisotopes to study various body processes, and observations of the effects of radiation intentionally released into the environment. The U.S. Government sponsored several thousand such studies (ACHRE 1995 [GPO, pp. 227–31; Oxford, pp. 135–38]), some of which were conducted on hospital patients, institutionalized children, military personnel, and prisoners. The Cold War scientific culture that produced this research must be examined from an historical ethical perspective.A central aspect of the culture of biomedical science after World War II was its insularity. Increasingly high standards of admission and challenging training had come to ensure that only a select group of individuals was admitted to the professions of medicine and research science. In this culture of experts, trustworthiness and ethical judgment were considered to be dependent upon expertise... (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze two methods of reading archives: ‘against the grain’ and ‘along the grain’. First one focuses mainly on revealing what is marginalized and omitted in archive’s dominant narration. The other carefully studies the logic of an archive itself. As such, reading against the grain allows to reveal victims’ forgotten stories, while reading along the grain helps to understand perpetrators’ perspective that may further lead to better recognition of the mechanisms of organized violence. I apply both approaches (...) to the album War against War (1924) by Ernst Friedrich, which contains archival photographs from World War I. Keywords: War against War; World War I; archival photographs; reading against the grain; reading along the grain. (shrink)

Like in all industrial societies, in the United States economic planning was a prominent political-economic ideal in the wake of World War II. Paying attention to the postwar decades, this article focuses on how and why private American industrial corporations appropriated the practice and rhetoric of planning, in the context of the outbreak of the Cold War. This corporate appropriation displaced debates about planning into a social and cultural register in the United States. Paradoxically, the outward-looking U.S. state accepted (...) robust state planning regimes abroad even as the Cold War hampered the legitimacy of state-centered economic planning at home. The paradox helped set the stage for the global crisis of industrial societies after 1968 that brought the postwar era to a close and would ultimately undermine economic planning everywhere. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preamble Introduction Three Historical Periods Contemporary Debate Virtue and Tradition in Japan Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes References.

Recently, I have proposed an extension of the framework of the ethics of collegiality (Berber & Subotić, forthcoming). By incorporating an anti-individual perspective and the notion of epistemic competence, this framework can reveal the epistemic virtue/vice relativism, which, in turn, charts the tension between being a good colleague and an efficient, loyal employee. In this paper, however, I want to sketch how the ethics of collegiality could be applied to practical domains, such as the historical accountability and atonement of corporations (...) that participated in the anti-Semitic policies of the Third Reich and contributed to the Holocaust by using slave or forced labor. New studies suggest that corporations ought to engage in deeper historical reflection and ethical dialogue between Shoah survivors and top managers to address the issue of industrial compliance (Federman 2021), whereas most of the work on this topic traditionally focused on the issue of reparations litigation (Kelly 2016, Neuborne 2003). Through the notions of collective institutional epistemic vice and institutional ethos (Fricker 2021), the upshot is to assess whether it is feasible for corporations to be genuinely repentant regarding their role in the Holocaust thanks to the ethics of collegiality instead of merely offering compensation. I will argue that instead of emphasizing ethical leadership and the top-down approach to the (re-)implementation of values in corporate conduct, the spotlights should be on the bottom-up approach grounded in collegial solidarity among all employees. (shrink)

The rich body of understudied imagery constituting the culture of satire in pre-World War I Paris represents the work of scores of contributing artists, ranging from mockery of manners to biting critique of government policy. While František Kupka is recognized as a major Parisian contributor to the development of modernism and abstraction, his career as a satirist has been sidelined. In 1900, Kupka wrote to his friend the Czech poet Josef S. Machar that he would devote himself in future (...) mainly to lithography and graphics as these media are more "democratic". Kupka published scores of cartoons in France in the prewar period and was recognized at the time as a leading satirist. Here I explore his work... (shrink)

'We will overcome it [and] I hope in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge, and those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any' Her Majesty The Queen The Coronavirus pandemic forced the great British people to dig to the very depths of their resolve. It was during this crisis, the gravest crisis the country has faced since the Second (...) class='Hi'>World War, that members of the Greatest Generation - Tom Moore, Dame Vera Lynn, the Queen - proved vital reminders of the self-effacing stoicism required in times of emergency; to summon our 'Blitz spirit' and to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. Taking twelve qualities of the wartime generation, including fellowship, courage and integrity, and drawing on personal interviews with over two hundred Second World War veterans - from SAS officers to London firewomen to Dame Vera herself - Guidance from the Greatest shows us how we can improve our individual character and our collective approach to life. Guidance from the Greatest reminds us of all that is great about Britain and shows how we can build upon that greatness for the future. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 319-342, Spring 2022.

In this essay, I want to explore one of the most ironic episodes in the history of propaganda, the attempt by various federal agencies to moderate American WWII anti-Japanese propaganda films. My texts will be four films, two produced by the military, and two by Hollywood: December 7th (1943), directed by Gregg Toland and revised by John Ford; Air Force (1943), directed Howard Hawks; Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945), directed by Frank Capra; and Betrayal for the East (1945), directed by (...) William Berke. As all of these films are readily available on YouTube, I will be brief in my description of them. Instead, I will focus on how they served to intensify racial hatred of Japanese in general and Japanese-Americans in particular, and how the federal government tried to control that propaganda—but was limited by its own policies regarding Japanese-Americans. (shrink)

Dans sa critique de la démocratie libérale de Weimar, Carl Schmitt s’oppose avant tout au pluralisme. La souveraineté de l’État qu’il veut maintenir prend la forme d’un présidentialisme renforcé ; il entend ainsi sauver la substance de la Constitution allemande contre la Constitution de Weimar. Walter Benjamin, sans se placer sur le même plan, critiquant le monde de l’après-guerre avant d’envisager une essence démocratique, rencontre Schmitt sur la notion de souveraineté. Alors que tout les éloigne, et malgré l’hommage explicite de (...) Benjamin à la Théologie politique, l’hommage plus discret de Schmitt à Benjamin, l’impression qu’ils ne raisonnent pas avec la même définition de la souveraineté doit au moins être une hypothèse appelée à être démentie. Sur quoi véritablement se rencontrent-ils? Le diagnostic du conflit et le constat sur une époque ne sont qu’une réponse partielle et à bien des égards insatisfaisante. En s’appuyant sur les analyses de Giorgio Agamben, on partira de la rencontre fugace entre Schmitt et Benjamin pour étudier un concept qui a le rôle de pivot chez l’un et chez l’autre : l’état d’exception, concrétisé par la guerre civile mondiale chez Schmitt, par la guerre civile muée en terreur chez Benjamin. Dans le jeu des concepts, le point de rencontre focalisant deux pensées très différentes est aussi un point de divergence. Cela nous amènera dans un premier temps à déterminer la guerre civile mondiale comme une signature, semi-concept ou illustration de concept, et dans un deuxième temps à redéfinir ce qui sous-tend ces deux conceptions : la temporalité politique en temps de crise de la démocratie. (shrink)

For nearly a century, the French have entertained an unshakable conviction that their ability to recognize themselves-to know and transmit the essence of Frenchness-depended on the teaching of the history of France. In effect, history was a discourse on France, and the teaching of history-"la pédagogie centrale du citoyen"-the means by which children were constituted as heirs and carriers of a common collective memory that made them not only citizens, but family. In this essay, I examine the rhetorical and conceptual (...) effects on history writing that emerge out of this preoccupation with the elaboration of a continuous, coherent national identity. Focusing on schoolbooks, I begin by looking at the dominant, nearly hegemonic model of French history created by Ernest Lavisse in the 1890s-a model informed by the dream of a unified, unitary French nation, embodied in and articulated through the history of France-and at the disruption of this paradigm in the aftermath of the Great War. I then consider a text written in the 1990s specifically to repudiate the kind of nationalist narratives that prevailed for most of this century-a new supranational history of Europe. I argue that, in their different experiments with fixing history, both Lavisse and the contemporary textbook authors did not so much repair a deficient history as produce a historical fixation, creating mythicized histories that are complete, closed, predictable, and at bottom ahistorical. Finally, I turn to a recent World War I novel, A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot, in order to suggest ways in which the narrative strategies of a fiction writer may be useful to historians in thinking about a different kind of historical project. (shrink)

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

World War I was an epochal event that permanently redefined international politics. Yet, there is no consensus about what kind of international system it erected. This article argues that since 191...