German Philosophy and Politics

German Philosophy and Politics is by John Dewey. The preface says the will of John Calvin McNair established a Foundation at the University of North Carolina upon which public lectures are to be given from time to time to the members of the University. The book contains lectures which were given in February of this year upon this Foundation, according to the preface. The contents list names German Philosophy: The Two Worlds and German Moral and Political Philosophy, among others.

The business of eating and drinking, buying and selling, making war and peace gets somehow carried on along with any and every system of ideas, the text says, but how, when, where and for what men do even these things is tremendously affected by the abstract ideas which get into circulation. Fichte's doctrine demanded an acceleration of the process, according to the text, and men who have attained to a consciousness of the absolute freedom and self-activity must necessarily desire to see around them similar free beings.