Abstract
Disillusioned and dismayed at the failure of Wilsonian progressive ideals supporting World War I, John Dewey converted his energies toward achieving a peaceful democratic world order. He became actively involved in the 1920s Outlawry of War crusade, which sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy. Although the crusade culminated with the signing of the 1928 Pact of Paris, Dewey was dismayed that it did not fulfill his own progressive hopes for full citizen participation as part of a global democratic mandate. Still, Dewey continued to press for public engagement on behalf of world peace as the 1930s witnessed the rise of military dictatorships in Europe and the Far East. Dewey, in terms of foreign policy issues, tied his pragmatic philosophy to progressive ideals on behalf of internationalism and world peace between the world wars.
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Notes
- 1.
White uses the term “destructive intelligence” as distinguished from “creative intelligence”. His purpose is to point out Dewey’s ambivalent stand regarding his philosophical support for the war.
- 2.
Ratner used the title “Force and Ideals” in his edited book but the original title is “The Discrediting of Idealism”.
- 3.
Marchand also notes that “The identification of peace with order was not unrelated to the predominance of conservative and moderates in the peace movement in the prewar years. Conservatives occasionally carried the precepts of the peace movement back into their discussions of industrial conflicts, their encomiums of judges and the domestic judicial system, and their general defenses of constitutionalism and legalism. The more radical social reformers of the period, by contrast, were inclined to ignore the prewar peace movement , finding it too abstract, too far removed from pressing internal problems, and too much the province of groups unsympathetic to fundamental social reform” (381–382). See also, Wiebe, 1967, 260–61.
- 4.
DeBenedetti also pointed out that “progressives looked upon law not as a means of social control as much as an instrument for purifying democratic processes and abolishing pernicious social institutions. Law provided a regenerative means for expanding democracy’s opportunity to do good , not for checking its excesses. Law imparted progress to change and sealed the success of popular reform efforts” (1978, 59). Outlawrists, like Dewey, accepted the existence within American institutions of a moral framework operating according to objective norms in the best interests of democratic understanding.
- 5.
On March 3, Kellogg wrote the following words to Levinson: “I am very glad that men who are giving deep thought to this subject approve of my stand on the Briand proposal. I cannot bring myself to the position of undertaking to define aggressive warfare or to make all kinds of exceptions and reservations as to when nations should go to war. I think when we get into that field we are in an interminable tangle and I thought it best to cut the Gordian knot and simply say we renounce war for the settlement of international disputes” (quoted in Levinson to Dewey, February 8, 1928, 1996, electronic edition). See also, Ellis (1961).
- 6.
Where the peace pact proved effective as an instrument of American diplomatic policy was when the Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson protested Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Its last application occurred at the Nuremberg war-guilt trials after World War II as a basis for prosecution; all wars, preventive or defensive, just or unjust, were regarded as illegal only if waged after the signing of the Pact of Paris. In the last case, a moral condemnation was attached to the legal judgment rendered—a point Dewey all along had encouraged.
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Howlett, C.F. (2017). John Dewey: A Pragmatist’s Search for Peace in the Aftermath of Total War. In: Cochran, M., Navari, C. (eds) Progressivism and US Foreign Policy between the World Wars. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58432-8_6
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