Behind the faCade of unity, the French intelligentsia was riven by the same fundamental divisions that had characterized it before the war. For example, the Republican Left argued that German nationalism and militarism began after Kant, with Fichte or Hegel, while the Catholic and nationalistic reactionary Right denounced Kant as the evil inspiration of France's liberal democracy and public school system. The heated rhetoric of the war and the unbearable loss of young lives, says Hanna, lent weight to a redefinition of French culture in national terms--and this, ironically, ended in the...
Behind the faCade of unity, the French intelligentsia was riven by the same fundamental divisions that had characterized it before the war. For exa...
The outbreak of World War I saw the collapse of socialist notions of class solidarity and reaffirmed the enduring strength of nationalism. The workers of the world did not unite, but turned on one another and slaughtered their fellows in what was then the bloodiest war in history. There have been many efforts to explain the outbreak of war in 1914, but few from so intimate a perspective as LeBon's. He examines such questions as why German scholars tried to deny Germany's obvious guilt in the war, and what explained the remarkable resolve of the French army to persevere in the face of...
The outbreak of World War I saw the collapse of socialist notions of class solidarity and reaffirmed the enduring strength of nationalism. The work...
Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 through 1919, they were forced to conduct their marriage mostly by correspondence. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war.
Civilians and combatants alike maintained bonds of emotional commitment and suffered the inevitable miseries of extended absence. While under direct fire at Verdun, Paul wrote with equal intensity and poetic clarity of...
Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 thro...
Synopsis: In light of the contemporary struggle between science and faith, Kathleen Mulhern's timely exploration of late nineteenth-century neo-Pascalian thought both recovers a lost perspective on the "war between science and religion" and offers a fruitful angle of study for twenty-first-century reflection. As the science vs. religion rancor reached its early fury at the turn of the century, many devout French Catholic intellectuals struggled with the increasingly dogmatic spirit in both the Roman Catholic Church and the scientific community. The dominant ideology of scientism within the...
Synopsis: In light of the contemporary struggle between science and faith, Kathleen Mulhern's timely exploration of late nineteenth-century neo-Pascal...