Need some help for school...

[OnlyPantherFaninMaine]

It's that time of year again... when colleges feel like crushing their students under an enormous amount of work and nonsense assignments. Anyways, if anyone could provide me with some help I would be greatly thankful. For my Western Civilization class I have to write an essay and am having some trouble understanding the question. Here it is:

1. Many historians identify the First World War as the moment when the nineteenth-century notion of historical progress (derived in part from Hegel) came to a bloody and abrupt end. How does All Quiet on the Western Front reflect this disillusionment? Does our present-day society still share this disillusionment, or have we moved on? Use examples from the text to support your argument.

I have read the text thoroughly but am just confused with the term "disillusionment." I know its meaning, but in this context are they asking me to argue/write that the text supports the argument that WWI was an end to historical progress? Or asking to argue that it was not an end to historical progress? Disillusionment is a horrible word to use in this context. Its left me miserable and helpless and was just curious to see if any history minded people or someone could help me in general.

Thank you!

[Squirrel]

Moving to the lounge to get more eyes.

[Squirrel]

What is the class?

[OnlyPantherFaninMaine]

Western Civilization. The book was an easy read and the field is interesting me I just am lost when it comes to answering what they are asking me to do because of how the question was worded. Any help?

[Squirrel]

Cant help form my end never did college. But you read up on Hegel? That looks like the key.

[theyhateme45]

Not knowing your text and class discussions I can only make a assumption based on what you typed... The first part of the question is asking you for examples to prove the statement "How does All Quiet on the Western Front reflect this disillusionment?". The disillusionment being the historical progress coming to an end... It sounds like that is a conclusion that can be made from reading "Hegel"

The second part of the question is asking you to choose a side and make points to justify your position. So choose a side, construct at least three main points to support your stance, and then construct your essay.

[Delhommey]

Real quick two points:

WWI saw a disillusionment with technical progess in the sense that technology, in a major way, meant more death than life. Machine guns and poison gas took lives. It didn't save them. It also dehuminized war in a way not before seen. Herioc charges meant instant death in the face of overwhelming firepower and trench warfare meant you didn't have the first clue what the guy the guy you were killing looked like. No Man's Land meant you couldn't even collect your dead.

Also, on a political scale, war had meant something before. In the 19th century, causes were championed during war or, more likely, territory was won. With WWI, millions of lives were lost for a few acres of gained ground that would be quickly lost.

No one left WWI thinking they were better off. No one even felt human.

[Razzy]

Read (or find usable quotes from and source) Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. I think (but don't trust me, I'm not too familiar with Hegel's view) what the question is getting at is the motif of the relationship between the older generation and the younger generation in All Quiet, where the older generation represents Hegel's view that constant advancements in technology or ideology would "modernize" countries and create progress and the younger generation doesn't trust them. Re-read the classroom scene early in the book. In reality it created a European arms race and led to a early 20th century 'Age of Empires' so to speak.

[charlotte49er]

A ll Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichés. They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.

When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook doesn’t want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men but eventually agrees to do so; the men thus enjoy a large meal. Paul and his friends visit Kemmerich, a former classmate who has recently had a leg amputated after contracting gangrene. Kemmerich is slowly dying, and Müller, another former classmate, wants Kemmerich’s boots for himself. Paul doesn’t consider Müller insensitive; like the other soldiers, Müller simply realizes pragmatically that Kemmerich no longer needs his boots. Surviving the agony of war, Paul observes, forces one to learn to disconnect oneself from emotions like grief, sympathy, and fear. Not long after this encounter, Paul returns to Kemmerich’s bedside just as the young man dies. At Kemmerich’s request, Paul takes his boots to Müller.

A group of new recruits comes to reinforce the company, and Paul’s friend Kat produces a beef and bean stew that impresses them. Kat says that if all the men in an army, including the officers, were paid the same wage and given the same food, wars would be over immediately. Kropp, another of Paul’s former classmates, says that there should be no armies; he argues that a nation’s leaders should instead fight out their disagreements with clubs. They discuss the fact that petty, insignificant people become powerful and arrogant during war, and Tjaden, a member of Paul’s company, announces that the cruel Corporal Himmelstoss has come to fight at the front.

At night, the men go on a harrowing mission to lay barbed wire at the front. Pounded by artillery, they hide in a graveyard, where the force of the shelling causes the buried corpses to emerge from their graves, as groups of living men fall dead around them. After this gruesome event, the surviving soldiers return to their camp, where they kill lice and think about what they will do at the end of the war. Some of the men have tentative plans, but all of them seem to feel that the war will never end. Paul fears that if the war did end, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Himmelstoss arrives at the front; when the men see him, Tjaden insults him. The men’s lieutenant gives them light punishment but also lectures Himmelstoss about the futility of saluting at the front. Paul and Kat find a house with a goose and roast the goose for supper, enjoying a rare good meal.

The company is caught in a bloody battle with a charging group of Allied infantrymen. Men are blown apart, limbs are severed from torsos, and giant rats pick at the dead and the wounded. Paul feels that he must become an animal in battle, trusting only his instincts to keep him alive. After the battle, only thirty-two of eighty men are still alive. The men are given a short reprieve at a field depot. Paul and some of his friends go for a swim, which ends in a rendezvous with a group of French girls. Paul desperately wishes to recapture his innocence with a girl, but he feels that it is impossible to do so.

Paul receives seventeen days of leave and goes home to see his family. He feels awkward and oppressed in his hometown, unable to discuss his traumatic experiences with anyone. He learns that his mother is dying of cancer and that Kantorek has been conscripted as a soldier, from which he derives a certain cold satisfaction. He visits Kemmerich’s mother and tells her, untruthfully, that her son’s death was instant and painless. At the end of his leave, Paul spends some time at a training camp near a group of Russian prisoners-of-war. Paul feels that the Russians are people just like him, not subhuman enemies, and wonders how war can make enemies of people who have no grudge against one another.

Paul is sent back to his company and is reunited with his friends. The kaiser, the German emperor, pays a visit to the front, and the men are disappointed to see that he is merely a short man with a weak voice. In battle, Paul is separated from his company and forced to hide in a shell hole. A French soldier jumps into the shell hole with him, and Paul instinctively stabs him. As the man dies a slow, painful death, Paul is overcome with remorse for having hurt him. He feels again that this enemy soldier is no enemy at all but rather a victim of war just like himself. Paul looks through the soldier’s things and finds that his name was Gérard Duval and learns that Duval had a wife and child at home. When he returns to his company, Paul recounts the incident to his friends, who try to console him.

Paul and his friends are given an easy assignment: for three weeks, they are to guard a supply depot away from the fighting. When the next battle takes place, Paul and Kropp are wounded and forced to bribe a sergeant-major with cigars in order to be placed on the hospital train together. At the hospital, Paul undergoes surgery. Kropp’s leg is amputated, and he becomes extremely depressed. After his surgery, Paul has a short leave at home before he returns to his company.

As the German army begins to give in to the unrelenting pressure of the Allied forces, Paul’s friends are killed in combat one by one. Detering, one of Paul’s close friends, attempts to desert but is caught and court-martialed. Kat is killed when a piece of shrapnel slices his head open while Paul is carrying him to safety. By the fall of 1918, Paul is the only one of his circle of friends who is still alive. Soldiers everywhere whisper that the Germans will soon surrender and that peace will come. Paul is poisoned in a gas attack and given a short leave. He reflects that, when the war ends, he will be ruined for peacetime; all he knows is the war. In October 1918, on a day with very little fighting, Paul is killed. The army report for that day reads simply: “All quiet on the Western Front.” Paul’s corpse wears a calm expression, as though relieved that the end has come at last.

Paul Bäumer - A young German soldier fighting in the trenches during World War I. Paul is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is, at heart, a kind, compas-sionate, and sensitive young man, but the brutal expe-rience of warfare teaches him to detach himself from his feelings. His account of the war is a bitter invective against sentimental, romantic ideals of warfare.

Read an in-depth analysis of Paul Bäumer.

Stanislaus Katczinsky - A soldier belonging to Paul’s company and Paul’s best friend in the army. Kat, as he is known, is forty years old at the beginning of the novel and has a family at home. He is a resourceful, inventive man and always finds food, clothing, and blankets whenever he and his friends need them.

Albert Kropp - One of Paul’s classmates who serves with Paul in the Second Company. An intelligent, speculative young man, Kropp is one of Paul’s closest friends during the war. His interest in analyzing the causes of the war leads to many of the most critical antiwar sentiments in the novel.

Müller - One of Paul’s classmates. Müller is a hardheaded, practical young man, and he plies his friends in the Second Company with questions about their postwar plans.

Tjaden - One of Paul’s friends in the Second Company. Tjaden is a wiry young man with a voracious appetite. He bears a deep grudge against Corporal Himmelstoss.

Kantorek - A pompous, ignorant, authoritarian schoolmaster in Paul’s high school during the years before the war. Kantorek places intense pressure on Paul and his classmates to fulfill their “patriotic duty” by enlisting in the army.

[charlotte49er]

Kantorek

Though he is not central to the novel’s plot, Kantorek is an important figure as a focus of Remarque’s bitter critique of the ideals of patriotism and nationalism that drove nations into the catastrophe of World War I. Kantorek, the teacher who filled his students’ heads with passionate rhetoric about duty and glory, serves as a punching bag as Remarque argues against those ideals. Though a modern context is essential to the indictment of Kantorek’s patriotism and nationalism, Kantorek’s physical description groups him with premodern evil characters. The fierce and pompous Kantorek is a small man described as “energetic and uncompromising,” characteristics that recall the worried Caesar’s remarks about Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. / He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous” (I.ii.195–196). Napoleon also springs to mind as a historical model for Kantorek.

The inclusion of a seemingly anachronistic literary type—the scheming or dangerous diminutive man—may seem out of place in a modern novel. Yet this quality of Kantorek arguably reflects the espousal of dated ideas by an older generation of leaders who betray their followers with manipulations, ignorance, and lies. “While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing,” Paul writes in Chapter One, “we already knew that death-throes are stronger.” As schoolboys, Paul and his friends believed that Kantorek was an enlightened man whose authority derived from his wisdom; as soldiers, they quickly learn to see through Kantorek’s rhetoric and grow to despise him, especially after the death of Joseph Behm. That Kantorek is eventually drafted and makes a terrible soldier reflects the uselessness of the ideals that he touts.

[edit] Hegel

Hegel is another German philosopher whose dialectical system has been called idealistic. In his Science of Logic (1812-1814) Hegel argued that finite qualities are not fully "real," because they depend on other finite qualities to determine them. Qualitative infinity, on the other hand, would be more self-determining, and hence would have a better claim to be called fully real. Similarly, finite natural things are less "real"--because they're less self-determining—than spiritual things like morally responsible people, ethical communities, and God. So any doctrine, such as materialism, that asserts that finite qualities or merely natural objects are fully real, is mistaken. Hegel called his philosophy absolute idealism, in contrast to the "subjective idealism" of Berkeley and the "transcendental idealism" of Kant and Fichte, philosophies which were not based (like Hegel's idealism) on a critique of the finite, and a dialectical philosophy of history. Some commentators have maintained that Hegel's dialectical system most closely resembles that of Plato and Plotinus, however, there is an exact historical difference between ancient and modern thought, at least in the history of philosophy. One might say that none of these three thinkers associate their idealism with the so-called epistemological thesis that what we know are ideas in our minds.[4]

It is perhaps a noteworthy fact that some commentators of Hegel fail to distinguish Hegelian idealism from either the philosophy of Berkeley or Kant.[5] Hegel certainly intends to preserve what he takes to be true of German idealism, in particular Kant's insistence that ethical reason can and does go beyond finite inclinations.[6] However, some commentators hold that Hegel does not endorse Kant's conception of the thing-in-itself, or the type of epistemological perplexities that led Kant to that view. Still less does Hegel endorse Berkeley's doctrine that to be is to perceive or to be perceived—in the purely Berkeleyian sense. The guiding ideal behind Hegel's absolute idealism is the scientific thought, which he shares with Plato and other great idealist thinkers, that the exercise of reason and intellect enables the philosopher to know ultimate historical reality, which in the Hegelian system is the phenomenological constitution of self-determination,--the dialectical development of self-awareness and personality in the realm of History. By giving this Ideal a central role in his philosophy, Hegel made a lasting contribution to that part of the Western mindset, beginning in earnest with Plato and his Pre-Socratic predecessors, which makes Idealism the basis of civilization and progress in the world.

[OnlyPantherFaninMaine]

Hahaha I knew I could count on the huddle! All of your post have helped a lot.

I appreciate it, thank you all and keep the advice coming!

[Delhommey]

Basically:

Can't trust technological advancements/education, it kills us.

Can't trust our leaders, they send us to die for nothing.

Can't trust our historic heroic ideals, leads to meaningless death.

[charlotte49er]

"So many wars have been fought and men died as a result of ideals and Idealisms." Allan Quatermain.

1.5. Didn't Hegel glorify War?

No.

Nowhere in Hegel's philosophy can we trace a glorification of war as such. Hegel deals with war as an undeniable "fact" that characterise human history and reality; instead of simply dismissing this phenomenon as "evil", he tries to explain it and to incorporate it in his conception of the "universal". The major feature of Hegel's philosophy in general is movement. War, for all its tragical consequences and its sufferences (and Hegel describes them without any kind of romantic pathos or exaltation, but just for how terrible they are), brings movement to history and sometimes allows the progress in the consciousness of freedom.

Let's take the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, for instance: instead of simply condemning these events as violent expression of human rage, Hegel locates them in their own context, acknowledges the role violence has played in these events and the fact that without violence the principles of the French Revolution wouldn't have spread. Let's not forget that "Perpetual Peace" was not only a concept brought forward by the Abbot of Saint-Pierre and Kant; it was also the self-confessed ideal that inspired the 'Holy Alliance'. Eternal stability benefits the privileged with respect to the underprivileged.

Finally, it would be a gross mistake to project back on Hegel our own experience with contemporary wars. When writing in the early XIXth century, Hegel was not aware of the destructive potential of modern weapons. It is obvious, but it has to be repeated: during Hegel's lifetime, war was violent, of course, but was also very different. Civilians were rarely involved in direct attacks; the powers at war always envisaged the possibility of peace. There were no weapons capable of destroying entire nations and endanger the very survival of human life on Earth.

1.6. Didn't Hegel say that the State is Divine, or even that the State is God?

No.

There is a famous sentence in Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History that has been badly translated into English, so that it fits with the old prejudice that Hegel identified the State with God. The bad translation is: "The State is the march of God through history". The actual correct translation, corresponding to the German text, is: "That the State exists, is like the march of God through history". From the surrounding text, it is clear that Hegel is not affirming that the State is God. He is just using a theological metaphor to explain that the State represents the incarnation of human freedom in a set of institutions, just like Christ represent the incarnation of God in our human history.

It is true that Hegel attributes to the State an important function in his political philosophy. He considers the State to be the highest incarnation of the "objective spirit", the highest form of institutionalised freedom ever reached by man. It is important to note that Hegel considers a State to be rational, insofar it is also free: the more a particular State is free, the more it is closer to the concept of State itself.

The fact that State is so important to Hegel does not diminish the crucial function of the previous moments of the objective spirit, i.e. family and civil society. Hegel never proposes to "swallow" and annihilate them in the State. The existence of civil society as such is an essential feature of modern times. As far as international politics is concerned, Hegel was well aware that any given State was limited by its self-interests, and that those interests were at odds with those of other nations.

Finally, Hegel's system cannot be reduced to the section of the "objective spirit". There is a higher reality than the one represented by the State, and it is constituted by the three moments of the "absolute spirit": Art, Religion and Philosophy. While creating the material conditions that enable artists, theologians and philosophers to operate, the State can't impose itself on these crucial aspects of the freedom of consciousness.

1.7. Doesn't Hegel's dictum, "Reality is Rational," oblige us to accept War, Atrocity and Injustice?

No.

Hegel's dictum actually reads: "What is rational is actual, what is actual is rational". It is important to notice the succession of moments in this famous sentence: first comes "the rational is actual", then comes "the actual is rational".

A correct interpretation of the dictum relies on the correct understanding of the word "actual". As Hegel himself explained, "actuality" does not correspond to mere existence. "Actual" is what has to happen, because of the implications already contained in itself. In other terms - to take an example - in a situation where an underprivileged class is blatantly exploited by a privileged one, there are already the germs of revolt and violent change. That revolt is then "actual". The contingent and terrible consequences of exploitation and revolt (such as death, injustice, revenge) accompany the realisation of the actual, but are not "actual" themselves. They are awful "accidents".

According to Hegel, what is "rational", i.e. what corresponds to the progress in the consciousness of freedom, must happen, because rationality - according to the lesson taught by the old ontological argument - presupposes its own existence. Therefore, what is rational is also actual in the sense explained above. As a consequence, the reverse is also correct: what is actual is rational, i.e. it corresponds to the progress in the consciousness of freedom.

It is important to realise that this result is not always cautioned in Hegel's philosophy, nor history is a "straightforward march to the Reign of the Free". Hegel's philosophy does not make forecast for the future: as Hegel said, philosophy arrives too late. While Hegel's vantage point is that the consciousness of freedom will ultimately progress, this is not an assured result, but it is the result of history as such: and history is not only made of "actual" events, but also of "contingent" elements, whose strength has to be measured.

Therefore, to come back to the main question, the concept of the "actuality of the rational" only explains that what we see around us is not the irrational result of a plot or of violence and brute force; instead, it is the result of the becoming rational of the actual. Hence the rationality of the actual prompts us to fight against injustice and oppression, which are the irrational components of human history.

I hope all this helps.

War has always been good for the economy. It has proven to get a nation out of a depression/recession (true, allows a nation to spend it way out.). That War is glorias and honerable (No war is gloria or honable.). War breeds inovatiuon (true).

[mmmbeans]

Basically:

Can't trust technological advancements/education, it kills us.

Can't trust our leaders, they send us to die for nothing.

Can't trust our historic heroic ideals, leads to meaningless death.

technology keeps us alive yet strips us of our humanity. ala dadaism.