THE FIRST WORLD WAR, PHILOSOPHY, AND EUROPE

This essay proposes a general re-framing of the question of whether the First World War induced any significant change in philosophical thought. A central aim is to outline an original approach to this question based on the claim that the question of the war's impact on philosophy does not have one general 'meaning' and thus does not admit one kind of answer. Rather than propose a comprehensive view, this essay sketches different angles of approach that range over different philosophical traditions (phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, Vienna Circle, etc.), problems (ethics, the problem of language, the legacy of Europe, etc), and thinkers (Bergson, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Heidegger, etc.).