Bertrand Russell

The Evolution of the Concept of Pacifism in the 19th and 20th Centuries

The concept of pacifism refers to a doctrine, or even a set of ideas or attitudes, and their corresponding movements. At least two meanings denote all this: firstly, the condemnation of war as an appropriate means of resolving international disputes; secondly, the consideration of permanent – or perpetual – peace among states as a possible and desirable goal. Therefore, pacifism includes the sum of all endeavours and programmes for the realization of lasting or, if possible, perpetual peace among peoples who believe that this goal is of positive value and can be achieved in the foreseeable future; this is a broader definition, of course, which refers to movements in favour of the total abolition of war. Pacifism has existed in all higher cultures and in different historical epochs as a more or less distinct and vivid idea; indeed, in its broadest sense, it dates back to classical antiquity – for example, we can find invocations for peace in Xenophon and Isocrates – and in the religious conceptions of the main Biblical prophets and the first Evangelical Irenicism, which were handed down in certain Protestant sects such as the Quakers. This concept acquired authority in the theorizations of the “peace of submission”, from the Pax Romana of the Augustan era to the Pax Universalis supported by Dante Alighieri in De Monarchia (1312–1313) as a function of the Byzantine Empire. In the 19th century, a period of relative peace in Europe and in the world was identified with the Pax Britannica, which lasted as long as the British Empire retained its dominant position.

For the purpose of this introduction, it is useful to recall some reflections drawn from authoritative contemporary intellectuals. In his Profilo ideologico del ‘900, the Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004), Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Turin, wrote that in the 19th century there were two main and antithetic conceptions of war (and peace): “the positivist and evolutionist one”, whereby the Industrial Revolution would transform military societies based on war “to the point that peace would be inevitable”; and “the romantic one”, which, based on a dramatic and dialectic conception of history, considered war as “not only inevitable but also beneficial”¹. However, as Bobbio pointed out, the end of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of antagonism between the great powers, which fought each other in order to conquer new colonies and markets. Thus “passive” and “fatalistic” pacifism – a sign of the positivistic age – gave way to “active” pacifism as a result of man’s “intelligent and organised effort”². Bobbio also noted that “active pacifism” could move in three directions depending on whether it acted on means, institutions or men. In the first case, he spoke of “instrumental pacifism”, whose action was aimed at drastically limiting the instruments of war (doctrine and disarmament policy) or at replacing violent means with nonviolent ones (the theory of nonviolence, such as Gandhi’s doctrine of Satyagraha). Instead, “institutional pacifism” directed its criticism at the institution of the state through a twofold analysis: the first referred to “juridical pacifism”, which, through law enforcement, aimed to establish a universal state that would be able to resolve conflicts between sovereign countries; the second related to “social pacifism”, according to which war was an event that depended on a certain notion of the state characterized by the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (in internal relationships), and by imperialist expansion (in external relationships), the remedy being a transition from a capitalist society to a socialist one. Finally, he outlined the concept of “finalist pacifism”: peace could be achieved through an understanding of humans either from an ethical-religious standpoint or from a purely biological one. The real reason for war was to be found, respectively, in man’s moral defects (Leo Tolstoy) or in the primitive impulses of human nature (Sigmund Freud): in this respect, Bobbio used the expressions “ethical-religious pacifism” and “scientific pacifism”, respectively³.

In the entry Pacifism published by the Enciclopedia del Novecento (Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century) Mulford Quickert Sibley (1912–1989), Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, underscored the typical 20th-century difference between “political pacifism” and “non-political pacifism”⁴. The former emphasized nonviolent political action, including parliamentary activity, and was called “pacifism of the transformation”; the latter argued that peace movements were not to engage directly in the renewal of political and social institutions. For this reason, it was befitting to limit the economic needs of the citizens in order to avoid this involvement, proposing that they live in communities separated from industrial and commercial centres, and urban life; in essence, non-political pacifism implied “an ethic of isolation and simplicity”, as Sibley pointed out. For example, Tolstoy incorporated it in his thought; in fact, in the last period of his life, he became a pacifist-anarchist, focusing his attention on the values of simplicity, the necessity of hard manual labour, and a refusal to obey the state when it demanded tributes and compulsory military service.

We must also note the entry “Pacifism and Nonviolent Movements” published in The New Encyclopædia Britannica and written by Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1904–1988), Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rupert Charles University of Heidelberg. Mühlmann claimed that pacifism was based on three key points: the postulate of tolerance; religious and philosophical demands for the abandonment of violence; and programmes aimed at the improvement of relations between nations, limitation of armaments, moderation and rational discussion of conflicts, and the institution of neutral courts of arbitration. As a rule, the basis for such programmes lay in the conception of an ethical and harmonious human society. Mühlmann identified different conceptions of pacifism: firstly, an “integral pacifism” that condemned violence as a means of settling conflicts in any circumstances and rejected war unconditionally; secondly, a less severe “semi-pacifism” that permitted wars under certain conditions, for instance when they were “just”, or were decidedly wars of “defence”, or wars against “unbelievers” or “rebels”⁵.

From this point of view, it is possible to examine the distinction between “absolute” and “non-absolute pacifism”. The former expressed an uncompromising condemnation and rejection of violence; one of its most recent supporters was the American philosopher Michael Allen Fox, who argued that war was inconsistent with morality: “Even military action aimed at protecting people against acute and systematic human-rights violations [could] not be justified”⁶. Along these lines, the US scholar and peace activist David Cortright used the concept of “realistic pacifism” to claim the essential and vital need to avoid war in the nuclear age, although in other kinds of conflicts “the use of force, constrained by rigorous ethical standards, [might] be necessary at times for self-defense and the protection of the innocent”⁷. This reflection adequately introduces us to the concept of “non-absolute pacifism”, also called “contingent pacifism” or “just war pacifism”⁸, for it accepted the permissibility or even the necessity of war in some cases, and rejected it in others. For example, in his famous work A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls (1921–2002) asserted that “the possibility of a just war [was] conceded”, while also considering the danger of nuclear weapons but “not under present circumstances”⁹.

With reference to the distinction between absolute and contingent pacifism, we can note the difference between “particular” and “universal pacifism”. Particular pacifists articulated their position as merely personal and did not condemn the war system a priori; in contrast, universal pacifists condemned war unconditionally. Eric Reitan, Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University, supported a sort of “personal pacifism” that need not be universally applied; he defined it as “a purely personal commitment to nonviolence, one that is not adopted on the basis of a perceived general obligation to refrain from violence and […] not intended to express the belief that all persons ought to oppose violence under every circumstance”¹⁰. In more recent times, some intellectuals – Johan Galtung and David Boersma among them – have especially emphasized the distinction between “negative” and “positive” pacifism: the former described the mere absence of violence or war, the latter involved the construction and consolidation of harmonious relations between states¹¹. This difference had already been underlined by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), who, in his A Political Treatise (1677), identified peace through the presence of justice, law and order: “Peace is not just the absence of war, but a virtue which comes from strength of mind”¹².

The reflections of Bobbio, Sibley, Mühlmann, Fox, Cortright, Rawls, Reitan, Galtung, and Boersma give us fundamental insights to understand the evolution of modern pacifism. The latter was born in the form of a philosophical-legal doctrine at the beginning of the 18th century with the famous work of Charles-Irénée Castel, abbot of Saint-Pierre (1658–1743), Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe (Project for Making Peace Perpetual in Europe, 1713); he published his book in Cologne while he was engaged in the Congress of Utrecht as the secretary of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac. In his work, he emphasised that only lasting peace between European states would represent the necessary condition to ensure the welfare and progress of France and the Old Continent. Saint-Pierre was among the most farsighted supporters of the ideal of perpetual peace perceived as fundamental for the coexistence of the European peoples and of a renewed jus gentium. He described the relationships between European sovereigns according to natural-law models; as ordained by nature to rule, princes enjoyed absolute sovereignty and were competing against each other to satisfy their aspirations. Therefore, states were in a condition of perpetual struggle: neither treaties nor the balance of the European powers would be enough to preserve the continent from the misfortunes of war, he wrote. A free contract among equal countries was to be approved in order to overcome this natural conflict, possibly signed by all European sovereigns to create a “permanent society” that could enforce what was promised, namely the laws imposed by the rulers with their treaties¹³. Despite its limitations, Saint-Pierre’s work was of primary importance for the history of European unity. In fact, for the first time in the philosophical-legal and political sphere, it theorized the existence of a structural connection between the value of “perpetual peace” and the European federative pact, and at the same time, between the rules governing the “permanent society” – deriving from this pact – and the reform of international law. Hence the need to replace traditional diplomacy and the state of armed peace with a permanent seat of arbitration for the definitive removal of the state of war.

The discourse on “perpetual peace” was revived through a federal interpretation and examined in depth from the philosophical-legal point of view by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). The philosopher drew inspiration from the Peace of Basel signed by Prussia and revolutionary France for his most famous political text, Zum ewigen Frieden (Perpetual Peace, 1795). In the footsteps of the abbot of Saint-Pierre, Kant transferred the model of the state of nature from the interpersonal level to the level of relations between states; in the condition of “wild freedom”, men lived in perpetual antagonism generated by their “unsocial sociability”. This contradictory trait would lead them to unite by reaching a condition of legality represented by the rule of law; however, legal certainty within the single state did not keep mankind safe from destructive conflicts between states. Faced with such a scenario, Kant offered the following solution: as the transition to civilian constitution allowed for the regulation and the resolution of inter-individual conflicts and guaranteed civil peace even through coercion, so a legal constitution among states decided their disputes, ensuring perpetual peace through a universal cosmopolitan order, namely a situation diametrically opposed to the Hobbesian state of nature (bellum omnium contra omnes). Kant offered a series of precepts concerning the preconditions for the establishment of peace such as the disappearance of standing armies and good faith in the observance of treaties. The central part of his essay was devoted to three “definitive articles” proposed as the basis of the future legal community with a supranational and universal character. Firstly, “the civil constitution of each state shall be republican”; in this respect, he did not oppose the term “republican” to “monarchical” but to “despotic” – in fact, according to Kant’s political lexicon, republics were also monarchies. Secondly, “the law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states”. Thirdly, “the rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality”¹⁴.

Criticising the natural-law model in his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 1821), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) argued that states were not a mere sum of individuals; more precisely, “States [were] not private persons but completely independent totalities in themselves”, so that “the relations between them [were] not the same as purely moral relations or relations of private right”¹⁵. Therefore, war was an inevitable phenomenon because, among sovereign subjects such as states, it was impossible to imagine any impartial authority capable of resolving conflicts. According to Hegel, however, war had also a moral value; as a matter of fact, through it “the moral health of peoples [was] preserved”¹⁶. While supporting the inevitability and ethicality of such a dramatic event, Hegel did not exclude that interstate relations could be regulated from a legal point of view. He had already clarified this issue in the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 1817): if, on the one hand, the exclusive sovereignty of states caused a potential condition of war, on the other hand, peace was necessary for their mutual recognition; hence the need to establish an international law in order to ensure a peaceful situation among people¹⁷. In short, despite the temporary inevitability of war, Hegel found a solution to international disputes.

In the 19th century, particular projects linked to individual figures were gradually replaced by newly established peace associations. Firstly, these had a religious character; examples are offered by the New York Peace Society founded by the Presbyterian David Low Dodge (1815), the American Peace Society created by William Ladd (1828) and the Society of Peace set up by Count Jean-Jacques of Sellon in Geneva (1830). Secondly, the peace associations drew inspiration from the economic doctrine of free trade, of which Richard Cobden (1804–1865) was one of the leading exponents; they organised the first international conferences for peace (London, 1843; Brussels, 1848; Paris, 1849). It was during the Peace Congress of Paris, held on Cobden’s initiative, that Victor Hugo (1802–1885) delivered one of his most significant speeches, which can be regarded as “the pinnacle of French pacifist literature”¹⁸. On 21 August 1849, Hugo supported a form of universal peace of a religious nature: “The law which rules the world cannot be different from the law of God […] which is not war, [but] peace”¹⁹. Moreover, he explicitly used the expression “United States of Europe”²⁰; this idea represented a peaceful alternative to despotic regimes and was identified in a Europe of Peoples in opposition to a Europe of Kings. Hugo was one of the forerunners of this project, together with Carlo Cattaneo (1801–1869) and Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)²¹. Thirdly, peace organisations were inspired by democratic and radical groups seeking to promote peace through the triumph of the principle of nationality, the dissolution of the old empires, and the establishment of governments based on popular sovereignty. Soon after the 1848 Revolution had generated a different policy framework from that of the Restoration, Mazzini proposed his political programme in contrast to the Realpolitik of the self-styled Concert of Europe formulated by Napoleon III, Cavour and Bismarck; it rallied democratic and revolutionary forces from various countries to liberate the oppressed nationalities and contribute to the establishment of a European confederation²². From this perspective, the Geneva Congress (1867) was organized by the International League of Permanent Peace of Frederick Passy, with the participation of Giuseppe Garibaldi; subsequently, the congresses of Bern (1868) and Lausanne (1869) were organized.

On the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Michail Nikolayevich Muravyov urged European governments to find concrete measures to reduce armaments; in 1899, an international conference attended by representatives of 26 states was held in The Hague with the aim of achieving “a real and lasting peace, and above all, of limiting the progressive development of existing armaments”. The participating states did not reach an agreement on disarmament; however, they signed three conventions, two of which concerned the regulation of land and sea war, and the third – and most important – provided for the peaceful resolution of international disputes. In this regard, the Permanent Court of Arbitration based in The Hague was created, namely an international organization that encouraged the resolution of disputes involving states, intergovernmental organizations and private parties by assisting in the establishment of arbitration tribunals. In 1907, a second conference took place in The Hague with representatives from 44 states – this time there were also Latin American states. Despite the failure of the proposals to limit armaments, on this occasion 13 conventions were signed, including one on the Limitation of the Employment of Force for Recovery of Contract Debts and the Opening of Hostilities²³.

Between Anthropologism, Internationalism, and Irrationalism

War was also considered intrinsic to the human condition; its anthropological analysis was inspired by Charles Darwin’s revolutionary ideas. In his On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin developed an evolutionary theory characterized by three main peculiarities: the “natural selection” of the best and most adaptable species, made on the basis of innumerable microvariations accumulated by nature over millions of years; the “struggle for existence”, namely the spring capable of activating the mechanism of natural selection and, at the same time, its environmental context; the drawing of a “tree” of the species that visually rendered the concept of their infinite biological ramifications from a single infinitely distant root. Darwinian theories determined an epochal revolution not only in the scientific field but also in the cultural sphere. In fact, the struggle for existence could be used by those who claimed their racial superiority, thus justifying their aggressiveness. An example is offered by the French diplomat Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), who enunciated the superiority of the white man and, in particular, the purity of the Aryan race; his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853–1855)²⁴ represented the first full-bodied document of doctrinal legitimation of European imperialism. In a forward-looking way, Darwin outlined not only the incessant struggle between animal and plant species but also the aggressiveness that emerged within the same species; indeed, in this case, the behaviours were extremely violent. He believed that the struggle for survival was particularly hard among individuals of the same species, for they frequented the same places, required the same food, and were exposed to the same dangers. In the third chapter of On The Origin of Species, “Struggle for Existence”, he wrote: “As species of the same genus have usually, though by no means invariably, some similarity in habits and constitution, and always in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between species of the same genus, when they come into competition with each other, than between species of distinct genera”²⁵.

In the mid-19th century, pacifism distinguished itself from internationalism, which proclaimed the unity of supranational individuals belonging to the same social group, class or party in order to strengthen solidarity and cooperation among peoples by not always peaceful means. An example was offered by the proletarian internationalism inspired by the solidarity of the working classes, which considered the overthrow of class division dictated by capitalist society as a necessary condition to foil national antagonisms. Moreover, pacifism was antithetical to imperialism as a concept interpreted based on the “reason of state” doctrine, with particular reference to the German doctrine of the power-state; it highlighted the primacy of foreign politics over domestic politics, which was rather a distinguishing feature of internationalism. While not excluding peace a priori, imperialism pursued it through the political, economic and military hegemony of the stronger countries over the weaker ones; from this perspective, it developed as a kind of new colonialism between 1870 and 1914. Finally, pacifism was the flip side of bellicism, represented by the political position of those states willing to resolve international disputes through armed conflicts; bellicism was a doctrine often inspired by the irrational thought that exalted war as a factor of moral or social progress, especially from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

Within the various socialist theories, war was considered not so much as a product of a particular type of political regime as a particular form of production, namely the capitalist one. Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) formulated their war theory; it was based essentially on its structural causes, which were inherent in the nature of social relations. Only by abolishing the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class would conflicts be stopped, both within countries and internationally. In fact, wars were none other than a direct result of the antagonisms between the bourgeoisies of the various countries that were competing for control of markets, hoarding of resources and domination over other states. Moreover, in the essay Die deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology, 1845–1846), the internationalist thought of the two German intellectuals emerged when they wrote that “the relations of different nations among themselves depend upon the extent to which each has developed its productive forces, the division of labour and internal intercourse”²⁶. Furthermore, since industrial growth occurred unevenly in different countries, international relations were necessarily based on a relationship of inequality. Marx entrusted an ambitious mission to the International Working Men’s Association – better known as the First International – founded in London in 1864; it was outlined in the last lines of his inaugural address: “The working classes [have] the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power […] and to vindicate the simple laws or morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations. The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of working classes”²⁷.

The First International argued in one of its clearest stances on the problems of war and peace in a collective address adopted at the Geneva Peace Congress on 9–12 September 1867. On this occasion, it asserted that “war weighs chiefly on the working class, in that it not only deprives it of the means of existence, but also constrains it to shed the workers’ blood”; furthermore, “peace, first condition of general well-being, needs in its turn to be consolidated by a new order of things that will no longer know in society two classes, the one of which is exploited by the other”²⁸. This ideological approach constituted not only the basis on which the labour movement initially oriented its action despite various contradictions, but also the reference point for the subsequent development of Marx and Engels’s thoughts on the causes of war, namely Lenin’s theory of imperialism. This involved a review of the internationalist strategy, which manifested itself mainly through the total aversion to war generated by the system of bourgeois states. Faced with a massacre that was likely to involve the proletariat, the workers’ cause – ideally united by a common feeling of solidarity – could be pursued through strong support for peace; therefore, working classes around the world would have to work jointly to achieve this aim. The outbreak of the First World War caused the failure of internationalism. The affirmation of national solidarity over class solidarity proved that a “foreign policy” of the working class could not be identified solely through the fight against war. Internationalism did not determine a limitation of sovereignty within the system of nation-states because it conceived the nation-state as the highest form of political organisation. This situation generated the collapse of the Second International (1914), the alignment of most socialist parties to the interventionist choices of their respective countries in the name of nations’ “sacred union” and defence of the motherland.

The diffusion of the capitalist model strongly influenced relations among states between the 19th and the 20th century; the growing economic and social interdependence led industrialized countries to seek new markets. The most relevant consequence of this phenomenon was represented by the advancement of imperialism; this was analysed from the early 20th century by the English economist John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940). In his essay Imperialism (1902), he confuted the thesis that wars were generated by man’s aggressive natural tendencies; in short, they were not the product of “blind passions of races or of mixed folly and ambition of politicians”²⁹. Instead, he argued that wars were caused by the most economically developed countries, which sought new investment opportunities outside the national borders after reaching the saturation threshold of their profits. In light of these considerations, the foreign policy of Great Britain – which inspired Hobson’s work – was primarily embodied in “a struggle for profitable markets”; this also concerned France, Germany, the United States and, more generally, all those countries in which “modern capitalism [had] placed large surplus savings in the hands of a plutocracy or of a thrifty middle-class”³⁰.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924) described this phenomenon in his famous work Imperializm, kak novejsij etap kapitalizma (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916) within a different historical context, namely the Russian Revolution. In his view, the system of bourgeois states had involved the proletariat in the world war because it was unable to resolve its contradictions without resorting to armed conflict. Lenin’s analysis did not differ radically from Hobson’s; his thought was innovative because he identified imperialism with “the highest stage of capitalism”. More precisely, imperialism emerged “at a definite and very high stage of its development”, namely “when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres”³¹. At the end of this evolution, imperialism was “moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to socialism”³²; it could only be overcome in a violent way. According to this interpretation of history, summarized by the theories of the imperialist phase of capitalism, international peace could not be achieved except through the elimination of capitalism. Already two years before the formulation of Lenin’s theories, the Manifesto adopted by the Zimmerwald International Conference of the Socialist Parties on 5–8 September 1915 had explicitly stated that war was “the product of imperialism”; it represented the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of every nation to “feed their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and of the natural resources of the entire globe”³³. This view was confirmed at the following Kienthal Conference held in April 1916, which reaffirmed that “the modern development of bourgeois property relations gave rise to imperialist antagonism. The present World War is one of the consequences of these antagonisms in the interest of which unsolved national problems, dynastic aspirations, and all the historical relics of feudalism are being utilized”³⁴.

The affirmation of imperialist policy was one of the most debated topics within the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD); it is sufficient to remember the theses formulated by Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) in Militarismus und Antimilitarismus (Militarism and Anti-militarism, 1907)³⁵. On 2 December 1914, Liebknecht was the only representative of the Social Democratic Party who voted against the renewal of war credits in the Reichstag. At the outbreak of the First World War, he hoped for the awakening of the Socialist International; in this view, the peace movements in all belligerent countries had to be simultaneously strengthened – the only way of calling a “halt to the bloody slaughter”. However, only the international solidarity of the working class could create the conditions to achieve secure and lasting peace. Therefore, as Liebknecht pointed out, it was the task of the proletariat “to carry out common socialist work in every country for peace”³⁶. He claimed that the armed conflict had not broken out to advance the interests of the people; instead, it represented “an imperialist war to dominate the capitalist world market” hatched by the “pro-war forces” of the Central Powers in “the obscurity of semi-absolutism and secret diplomacy”. As Liebknecht pithily asserted, it was a “Bonapartist venture to demoralize and destroy the rising workers’ movement”³⁷. Referring to the concept of Bonapartism, he dissociated himself even more from the expansionist policy of the Wilhelmine Empire because it aimed at enhancing the prestige and power of the ruling classes to the detriment of internal adversaries, first and foremost the proletariat, making their claims appear as factors in weakening the state.

The main ideas of pacifism were seriously put to the test by irrationalism, which exalted war as an example of social progress and moral integrity. Irrationalism was not only the expression of a crisis of values but also the favourite ground of those who accepted reality without having to worry about explaining it. This supine attitude spurred a mystical exaltation of war and therefore absolute obedience to the omnipotence of the state; man was not to understand, judge or criticise but to obey because the purposes of history were inscrutable. Given this preliminary remark, it was not difficult to recognize the warning signs of the birth of a culture that in some countries, such as Germany and Italy, would show the triumph of violence. If the origins of this cultural crisis could be traced back to Social Darwinism, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was the author who best embodied the values – or rather the disvalues. Nietzsche revalued man and his “will to live”, denying the values of positivistic civilisation and outlining the concept of the Dionysian that was contrary to metaphysics, theology, the social system and the triviality of everyday life. It followed the nihilistic vision contained in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human, 1878), which overturned the prospects of the bourgeois world and the myth of human “redemption” described in Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) with the figure of the Superman solely conditioned by his Will to Power³⁸. In Morgenröte – Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile (The Dawn of Day: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, 1881), Nietzsche foretold an era of absolute anarchy for men: “Whatever may be the influence in high politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need for the feeling of power – a need which rises not only in the souls of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from inexhaustible sources in the people. The time comes again and again when masses are ready to stake their lives and their fortunes, their consciences and their virtue, in order that they may secure that highest of all enjoyments and rule as a victorious, tyrannical, and arbitrary nation over other nations”³⁹. Nietzsche’s theory was soon accepted by the German academic world, as evidenced by the posthumous publication of one of the most famous works by Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), Politik (Politics, 1897–1898), which brought together his lectures at the University of Berlin. Supporting the idea of Pan-Germanism through the doctrine of the power-state, he wrote: “Without war no State could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is multiplicity of States”⁴⁰.

Among the intellectuals who openly supported the war, we should remember Henri Bergson (1859–1941)⁴¹, the Parisian writer of Jewish origin who endorsed French nationalism and was the author of works such as Matière et mémoire (Matter and Memory, 1896), Le Rire (Laughter, 1900) and L’Évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution, 1907)⁴². In March 1915, Bergson delivered a speech on the evolution of German imperialism at the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques entitled “La Signification de la Guerre” (The Meaning of the War)⁴³; on this occasion, he interpreted the World War that had just begun by identifying France – the creative and spiritual power – as the “vital momentum”, and Prussian Germany as “the continuous clang of militarism and industrialism, of machinery and mechanism, of debased moral materialism”⁴⁴. In his opinion, Prussia was the homeland of rigidity and automatism; therefore, it was imprisoned in its armour according to the will of the “evil genius”, as he called Bismarck.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) expressed a somewhat provocative thesis in his Manifesto del Futurismo (Manifesto of Futurism, 1909)⁴⁵; article 9 of this document stated that war was the “only hygiene of the world”. Therefore, it was identified as a kind of purification of the human spirit, the privileged place for a radical renewal of mankind and the fertile ground to give birth to a new man, even at the cost of many lives sacrificed in the name of a palingenetic idea. These reflections would inspire the different forms of totalitarianism developed in the following years in Germany, Italy and Russia. In turn, Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), in his masterpiece Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West, 1918–1923)⁴⁶ left neither possibility nor hope for a future redemption of Western civilization. His voice did not remain isolated; in fact, there were some who even hypothesized a sort of imminent “end of the world”. For example, in the 1930s the Swiss writer and historian Louis Gonzague de Reynold (1880–1970) described the disturbing spectacle of a continent, once ambitiously civilizing, that had now lost its undisputed prestige and showed many signs of decay; he presented a very gloomy picture of a “tragic Europe”⁴⁷.

The New Theorized European Order Between the World Wars

Due to the outbreak of the Great War, it was no longer possible to cultivate the idea – widespread in the previous century through positivist and evolutionary philosophy – that war could disappear with the growth of industrial societies. The efforts and interventions of prestigious figures proved fruitless; see the case of the English journalist Norman Angell (1872–1967)⁴⁸, who was especially remembered for his 1909 pamphlet Europe’s Optical Illusion⁴⁹, expanded and published two years later under the title The Great Illusion⁵⁰. In this essay, Angell proposed the model of uneconomic war: in a world increasingly influenced by the “economic interdependence of civilized nations”, conflicts that strengthened political supremacy had become futile and anachronistic. He feared the risks of a conflict, even more likely if the states had succumbed to the “great illusion” of the traditional policies of imperialism, nationalism and colonialism. Wars for conquest between established industrial states such as Great Britain and Germany – relations between the two countries worsened with the Moroccan crises of 1906 and 1911, and with rivalry in naval construction – were futile because the international economic system involved a high degree of interdependence between such states, so enmeshed in one another that none could benefit significantly at the expense of the other.

Major industrial states were unable to capture one another’s trade either through wars or through annexing one another’s colonies. This would be a “logical fallacy and an optical illusion […], because when a province or State is annexed, the populations, who are the real and only owners of the wealth therein, are also annexed, and the conqueror gets nothing”⁵¹. It followed that even a victorious war did not result in any financial gain and, at the same time, did not serve people’s general interest; indeed, the ideologies and institutions of war would clearly hamper the development of the idea of progress. Angell described these concepts in the context of a possible war between Great Britain and Germany; however, he was conscious that the other European states might be similarly compared with these two countries. His theses were rooted in English liberal thought, which, based on a utilitarian logic, assigned the harmonious and integrated development of relations between states to market potential, reaching the optimistic prediction that trade would eliminate the wars as costly and futile⁵². This idea had already been advocated by Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689–1755) in De l’esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws) in the mid-18th century. In this regard, Montesquieu observed: “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations that differ from each other become reciprocally dependent; if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities”⁵³. This reflection would find concrete expression a century later when John Stuart Mill wrote in the Principles of Political Economy: “It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it”⁵⁴.

In contrast, Romain Rolland (1866–1944) evoked a highly idealistic and humanitarian form of pacifism⁵⁵; in his extensive literary production, he promulgated a creed of peace and brotherhood, drawing inspiration from the Russian Revolution and Eastern philosophy (Tolstoy, Gandhi, Gorky). When he took shelter in Switzerland during the First World War, Rolland became a point of reference for the international peace movement; his tireless efforts earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature (1915). Moreover, in Switzerland he wrote “Au-dessus de la mêlée” (Above the Fray, 1915), published in the Journal de Genève on 22–23 September 1914. Despite his strong aspiration to place himself “above the fray” in order to maintain true impartiality towards the belligerent countries, Rolland also expressed deep empathy and moral indignation in the face of the huge tragedy. He believed that war did not represent a fatality, and therefore an inevitable phenomenon – a thesis supported by Hegel, for example – but was the result of people’s weakness and folly. More precisely, in an incisive and metaphorical language, he defined the armed conflict that had just begun as a “sacrilegious melee offering the spectacle of a crazy Europe on the stake like Hercules mangling his own body with his own hands”⁵⁶. Faced with the tragedy of a war on such a large scale unleashed by the “three rapacious eagles” – the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires – it was necessary to promote the creation of a High Moral Court, namely a kind of Tribunal of Consciences that could judge the crimes perpetrated. As proof of the noble humanitarian ideal of peace and brotherhood that distinguished his thought, he wrote that there was a need to elevate the human spirit “above the storms”, removing “the clouds that can obscure it”. In almost utopian undertones, he finally hoped for the construction of an “[ideal] city where the fraternal and free souls will gather from all over the world”⁵⁷ to defeat national hatred and injustice.