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Notes on video lecture:
Eucken's Interpretation of Fichte
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on March 26, 2016 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
sons, population, peculiar, Library, Medieval, Luther, Befestigung, forgotten, symbol, legitimizes, Prussian, metaphysical, Harvard, Columbia, defend, embody, nationhood, trenches, books, Leuven, weaponized, 1914, Volk, Kriegsphilosophie, backpacks, Träger, Innerlichkeit, Opfer, Nation, Knossos, outrage, Platonic, educator, Thirty, philosophy, barbaric, Fichte, interpretation, Eucken, sacrifice, spirit, lectures, reputation, 1908, wartime, unify, Addresses, Belgium, eternal, mission, support, Ashquith, Evans, Verkörperung, doubling, economic, German
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August 25th, 1914
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three weeks after the Germans invaded               
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German troops set fire to the city of             
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destroyed the University               
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including collection of over 300,000 books and manuscripts dating back to                  times
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provoked international indignation and               
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British Prime Minister                 
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"The burning of Leuven is the worst thing the Germans have yet done. It reminds one of the              Years War."
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British archaeologist Sir Arthur           
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who had excavated palace at                in Crete
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"May I be allowed to voice horror and profound indignation at the                  holocaust of Leuven."
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the destruction of the library became a              of the war
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between civilization and its                  opponent: the German culture
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a damning judgment against Germany given its superlative achievements in                     , arts, and literature in the 19th century
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German intellectuals mobilized to articulate and              the German cause
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on the even of the First World War, German philosophy and German philosophers enjoyed an unprecedented international                     
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Rudolf              (1846-1926)
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in his day a very well known philosopher
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today                   
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had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in         
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till today the only              philosopher to be awarded this honor
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1911 invited to lecture at London, Oxford, Harvard, and                 
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1912-1913 remained in U.S. at professor of               
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traveled on East Coast giving                 
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there were Eucken associations and Eucken reading clubs
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The Idea of 1914
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a distinctive interpretation of the war in favor of a German conception of freedom and                     
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"Die                        des deutschen Idealismus" (1915)
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with expressed purpose of bolstering the moral of German soldiers in the                 
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became the principal exponent of a type of philosophical engagement in the war called                                   
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the mobilization of philosophical discourse, the way it becomes                      as the pursuit of war by other means
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the way it tries to understand the deeper philosophical or                          meaning of the War
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Eucken and the intellectual atmosphere at the beginning of the war
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1. the idea of         
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2. the symbol of the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb              (1762-1814)
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in 1913, a special painting was commissioned to represent the legendary "Addresses to the German             ", Fichte's speeches he gave a few years after the catastrophic defeat of the Prussian army at the hands of Napoleon in 1806
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we see Fichte, his arm raised high, giving his speeches to the full spectrum of the German                     
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speeches are meant to realize and            the German nation in time of war
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in 1813 and once again in 1914
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Fichte was seen as the philosopher of the German nation
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this symbol became increasingly important over the course of the First World War
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in 1908, Fichte had issues a new addition of Fichte's                    to the German Nation
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he underlying Fichte as the                  of the German nation
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it was precisely this formation of a national              through a philosophical act of speech that was first instituted by Fichte in the Napoleonic Wars that becomes repeated by Eucken in his own speeches and his own                writings
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Eucken during the war
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built upon Fichte's popular Kriegsphilosophie
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gave lectures at university and town halls throughout Germany
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wrote a number of            during the war
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1915 "Die Träger des deutschen Idealismus"
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dedicated to his          who are both serving in the field
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writes the book as a narrative of German philosophy with its pinnacle in German idealism
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the centerpiece will be an                              of Fichte
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as a way to bolster the moral of the troops in the trenches, book is a paperback and meant to be portable
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one can imagine soldiers in the field putting it in their                    and going to the front clear about what they are fighting for which is nothing less than the spirit of the German nation
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three central ideas in Eucken's war philosophy
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1. reconstruction and endorsement of the main conception of the German nation as proposed by Fichte in his Addresses to the German Nation
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argument centers on establishing the notion of nation as the German people, "das         "
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the German people is in turn defined in terms of its faith or love for a "world historical mission"
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a kind of special mission that the German people have the realize
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the realization of this mission is the idea of the German nation
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based on the idea that human existence cannot be authentic without having some authentic love or belief in something, and the object of this belief has to be something that's               
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so it takes up a                  idea that the object of true love is something that doesn't pass in time, but that is eternal
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the mission of the German people is to realize something eternal
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two terms to describe this:
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1.                                   
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to give body, to physically or materially realize something, an incarnation, which has also a religious connotation
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the mission of the German nation is the incarnation of the eternal
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2.                       
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a clear military term
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entrenchment or citadel
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has its origins in             : "the Befestigung of God"
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so the mission of the German nation is also to defend the eternal
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2. the important of                    for the nation
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German vocabulary has only one word ("          ")to be the victim of something, as well as to the object of sacrifice
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the ambiguity of the German term is that it can mean someone who a victim of something as well a someone who may even voluntarily want to be the sacrifice of something
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what Eucken empasizes is that in order to realize the German nation, which itself realizes a certain notion of the eternal, individuals have to sacrifice their individuality to this               , that is become victims to it.
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this gives a special meaning to the experience of death
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the death of the individual is needed in order to              an idea of the nation which itself has eternal existence
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give meaning to his book: "Die Träger des deutschen Idealismus", to carry and                it
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the death of individuals on the battlefield will itself be the support through which something like the "German nation" will enter into existence and be eternal
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the death of the individual is a kind of gift that he gives to the nation so that the nation can find its fulfillment
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"the                  of the German spirit"
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a                  idea of Eucken's
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if the German nation is going to realize eternity
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and if this eternity gives substance to the German people
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then the German spirit operates to what we might call a double rotation
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1. the realization of the German nation allows for the eternal to enter into history
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and this requires an expansion of Germany into history which                        the expansion of Germany into the world
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2. this is not only a shaping of the world, but a deepening of the German spirit itself, "                           zu bilden"
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3. the notion of the existential conception of war
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for Eucken, Germany is not fighting for political or                  causes, but for an eternal cause

Ideas and Concepts:

Economic theory of the day via tonight's WWI and Modern Philosophy class: "ordoliberalism, n. the German variant of social liberalism which emphasizes the need for the state to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential. Ordoliberal ideals drove the creation of the post-World War II German social market economy and its attendant Wirtschaftswunder and were especially influential on forming a firm competition law in Germany. Ordoliberalism in Germany became known as the Social Market Economy. The Ordoliberal model implemented in Germany was started by the government of Konrad Adenauer. His government's Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, was a known Ordoliberal and adherent of the Freiburg School. Under Adenauer's government, some, but not all, price controls were lifted, and taxes on small businesses and corporations were lowered. Furthermore, social security and pensions were increased to provide a social basis. The ordoliberal theory was developed from about 1920–1950 by German economists and legal scholars from the Freiburg School such as Walter Eucken and Franz Böhm although the term ordoliberalism was coined in 1950 by Hero Moeller, and refers to the academic journal ORDO (Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft) which is still printed today and provides a forum of debate for scholars of diverse disciplines such as economics, law, political science, sociology, and philosophy."
Insightful ambiguity of the day via this morning's WWI and Modern Philosophy class: "The German language has only one word "Opfer" which means both victim and sacrifice. The ambiguity of this term is that it can mean someone who is exploited by something external and foreign to them, but also someone who voluntarily desires to give themselves up to something they desire to be a part of. What Eucken emphasizes in his wartime writings is that in order to realize the German nation, which itself realizes a certain notion of the eternal, individuals must sacrifice their individuality to this mission, which also carries the meaning that they will become victims to it."
Carl von Clausewitz: On War
The Nature of Colonialism Wars
1916 Zurich and Perspectives on the Great War
The Necessity of War in Politics
Eucken's Interpretation of Fichte
Husserl, the Great War, and the Meaning of Death
Henri Bergson on WWI Germany and France
Hermann Cohen on Judentum and Deutschtum during WWI
Hodgson and Reinach on Foreboding