Featured Image: Professor Louis B. Sohn in his office at Harvard University Law School, as it appears in the book Harvard Law School 1965. By Murray Tarr, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
By Dr. Rene Wadlow.
Professor Louis B. Sohn was a great international legal scholar whose teachings continue to contribute to the development of world law. Louis B. Sohn whose birth anniversary we note on 1 March was born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1914. Lwów was a strategic point in east-west trade, industry, and history. Possession of the city had shifted from Poland to Austria in 1772, to Poland in 1919, to the U.S.S.R. just after Sohn escaped in 1939, to Poland again after 1945, and finally since 1991 to Ukraine.
Young Sohn received diplomacy and law degrees from John Casimir University in 1935. He continued research in the library, but as a Jew, his movements were restricted. Later, both his parents, Isaak and Fredericka, who were medical doctors, perished in the Holocaust. A Harvard professor saw one of Sohn’s papers and invited him to study in America. Sohn caught the last boat out of Poland two weeks before the Nazi invasion. These formative experiences contributed to his hatred of war and racism and to his determination to extend the rule of law from within States to relations among States.
The University was founded on January 20, 1661, when the King John II Casimir of Poland issued the diploma-granting the city’s Jesuit Collegium, founded in 1608, “the honor of the Academy and the title of the University”. By MARELBU, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sociological Jurisprudence.
At Harvard, Sohn learned that the professor who had invited him died. But the dean helped the young, multilingual Pole, found him a room and a job in the cafeteria. Soon Sohn began to work with Prof. Manley O. Hudson, a former American judge on the World Court, even though the U.S.A. was not officially a member. Harvard Law was then much under the influence of former dean Roscoe Pound, whose “sociological jurisprudence” emphasized adapting the law to new social circumstances. Sohn applied this doctrine to the customary and treaty law among States in the current age.
Description: Meeting the Permanent Court of International Justice. Last session before the abolition led by President Guerrero. fltr. Hudson (USA), Jhr W. van Eysinga (Holland) Sir Cecil Hurst (England), Erich (Finland), Guerrero (El Salvador, president), Negulesco (Romania, ), Cheng (China), De Visscher (Belgium), Olivan (Spain) Members of the International Court of Justice. Standing the three secretaries. By Meijer, […] / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sohn earned his LL.M master’s degree at Harvard in 1940. He accompanied Judge Hudson to the San Francisco conference on the United Nations Organization, where they worked on the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which is part of the U.N. Charter. Sohn began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1947, publishing case books first on “World Law” (1950) and then on “United Nations Law” (1956). He won his S.J.D. doctorate in law and succeeded Hudson as Bemis Professor of International Law in 1961. He taught there for twenty years. He then accepted an offer from former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk to teach at the University of Georgia Law School, where Sohn became a Woodruff professor.
Dean Rusk, Secretary of State of the United States 1961–1969. By U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sohn was a close consultant to the negotiations for the Third Law of the Sea Convention, which was signed in 1982, and he proposed its elaborate provisions for binding arbitration of complex maritime disputes. It was during the decade-long negotiations on the Law of the Sea that I worked with Sohn as I was an NGO observer for the World Citizens, and he was an official member of the U.S. delegation.
Today, with the conflicting claims over the South China Sea as well as other delimitation conflicts as well as fisheries, pollution, and deep-sea mining issues, I appreciate the vision of Sohn on creating an institution for arbitration for the Law of the Sea.
“An authoritative and generally binding methods of establishing procedures are needed, and only an international body with sufficient trust might be able to do it”. He explained.
Sohn was troubled by the guarded avoidance of international law by national policymakers toward the end of the violent 20th century. He died in 2006 near Washington, D.C., at age 92. Our continuing efforts to develop world law for a fast-changing world society owe much to the knowledge and vision of Louis Sohn.
The USS John S. McCain conducts a routine patrol in the South China Sea, Jan. 22, 2017. The guided-missile destroyer is supporting security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Navy photo by Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class James Vazquez. By Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class James Vazquez, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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Featured Image: Photo of Roberto Assaglioli, M.D. – Taken from the book ‘ Psychosynthesis (1965) By U3195247, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
By Rene Wadlow.
Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) set out a path to the Higher Self with the power of the will. Roberto Assagioli, whose birth anniversary we mark on 27 February was a close co-worker of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustave Jung. In 1910, he broke from the Freudian approach and began to develop his own psycho-spiritual model which he called psychosynthesis He was closer in approach to Jung, but as the first translator of Freud’s writings into Italian, he is often cited as the introducer of Freudian thought into Italy.
Roberto Assagioli was an Italian psychiatrist, humanist and Theosophical student of the world’s spiritual traditions. (His mother and wife were members of the Theosophical Society).
Colorized painting of Sigmund Freud. By Photocolorization, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
I am what I will to be.
A short presentation of Assagioli’s view is that “I am what I will to be”. In a sense, the individual does not have a will: rather he is a will, a directing energy, that has taken human form as an individual. The individual will-force is in some way identical to the universal will-force. Assagioli who had studied Asian thought highlighted the Chinese sage becoming one with the universal energy – the Tao (1)
As the individual will starts on its path toward the Higher Self, it must drop off images of its earlier self formed by experiences, memories, feelings and images of the past. Some of these self-images and experiences have been repressed and stored in the subconscious. Thus in many cases, there is a first task of self-discovery of past experiences and emotions stored in the sub-conscious. Only when this is done, can one deal with the current self-images and emotions which make up the current personality.
Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961). By ETH Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Disidentification.
The process of dropping off current self-images Assagioli calls “disidentification”. Disidentification is needed so that a new identity emerges, one that is capable of accepting and integrating in a harmonious synthesis all the earlier emotions, thoughts and experiences. This is why Assagioli called his approach “psychosynthesis.” It is this fresh, new personality, which Assagioli termed the “I” that can set out on the road to develop the Higher Self. This inner journey is not always easy. There is a progressive examination of the contents of the field of consciousness and the functions of the psyche. This involves a progressive movement through the preconscious, the subconscious and culminating with the higher concious. Assagioli writes:
“Spiritual development is a long and arduous journey, an adventure through strange lands full of surprises, difficulties and even dangers. It involves a drastic transmutation of the ‘normal’ elements of the personality, an awakening of potentialities hitherto dormant, a raising of consciousness to new realms, and a functioning along a new inner dimension.”
Along the way to the Higher Self, the will can be strengthened by what Assagioli calls “transpersonal experiences” and what A. Maslow calls “Peak Experiences”. Such experiences help to stimulate the drive toward the Higher Self. However, some of these transpersonal experiences can be short-lived and ephemeral unless they are grounded through meditation and techniques of visualization of oneself as already functioning as the Higher Self.
These techniques of creating an identity as being the Higher Self is one of the outstanding features of psychosynthesis. However, after 1936, his work became increasingly difficult both because of the growing antisemitism under Nazi German pressure on Italy and because his humanitarian activities aroused hostility from the Italian Fascist government. In 1940 he was arreested and kept in solitary confinement for a month and then kept under strict police surveillance. In 1943, he was again actively persecuted and forced to hide in remote mountain villages. He narrowly escaped twice from the Nazi soldiers who had destroyed his family’s home with dynamite.
After 1945, he increased his contacts with a wide group of spiritual thinkers from different traditions. However, his aim remained finding approaches to wholeness, realizing the full human potential, transcending contradictions and achieving enlightenment.
Notes.
1) See the chapter “The Universal Will” in his major book: Roberto Assagioli. The Act of Will (London: Wildwood House, 1974)
2) See Jean Hardy.A Psychology with a Soul (London: Routledge and Kegan Pail, 1987)
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The human race must be converted to a fresh mental attitude if it is not to suffer extinction…A new renaissance, much greater than that in which we emerged from the Middle Ages, is absolutely essential. Are we going to draw from the spirit enough strength to create new conditions and turn our faces once again to civilization, or are we going to draw our inspiration from our surroundings and go down with them to ruin?
Albert Schweitzer.
As the world citizen Norman Cousins has noted:
“the main point about Schweitzer is that he helped make it possible for a twentieth-century man to unblock his moral vision. There is a tendency in a relativistic age for a man to pursue all sides of a question as an end in itself, finding relief and even refuge in the difficulty of defining good and evil. The result is a clogging of the moral sense, a certain feeling of self-consciousness, or even discomfort when questions with ethical content are raised. Schweitzer furnished the nourishing evidence that nothing is more natural in life than a moral response, which exists independently of precise definition, its use leading not to exhaustion but to new energy.”
The moral response for Schweitzer was “reverence for life”. Schweitzer had come to Lambaréné in April 1913, already well known for his theological reflections on the eschatological background of Jesus’ thought as well as his study of Bach. As an Alsatian, he was concerned with the lack of mutual understanding, the endless succession of hatred and fear, between France and Germany that led to war a year later.
Since Alsace was part of Germany at the time, Schweitzer was considered an enemy alien in the French colony of Gabon. When war broke out he was first restricted to the missionary station, where he had started his hospital and later was deported and interned in France. He returned to Gabon after the First World War, even more, convinced of the need to infuse thought with a strong ethical impulse. His reflections in The Decay and Restoration of Civilisation trace in a fundamental way the decay. He saw clearly that “the future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaningless and hopelessness which characterizes the thoughts and convictions of men today, and reaching a state of fresh hope and fresh determination.”
This picture of en:Norman Cousins was taken from http://history.nasa.gov/EP-125/part2.htm And was probably created by NASA at the time of the panel it was taken from (1976). By See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
He was looking for a basic principle that would provide the basis of the needed renewal. That principle arose from a mystical experience. He recounts how he was going downriver to Ngomo, a missionary station with a small clinic. In those days there were steamboats on the Ogowé and seated on the deck, he had been trying to write all day. After a while, he stopped writing and only watched the equatorial forest as the boat moved slowly on. Then the words “reverence for life” came into his mind, and his reflections had found their core: life must be both affirmed and revered. Ethics, by its very nature, is linked to the affirmation of the good.
Schweitzer saw that he was:
“life which wants to live, surrounded by the life which wants to live. Being will-to-life, I feel the obligation to respect all will-to-life about me as equal to my own. The fundamental idea of good is thus that it consists in preserving life, in favoring it, in wanting to being it to its highest value, and evil consists in destroying life, doing it injury, hindering its development.”
Erfurt fur das Leben, – reverence for life – was the key concept for Schweitzer – all life longs for fullness and development as I do myself. However, the will to live is not static; there is an inner energy that pushes on to a higher state – a will to self-realization. Basically, this energy can be called spiritual. As Dr. Schweitzer wrote:
“One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.”
The use of Schweitzer’s principle of Reverence for Life can have a profound impact on how humans treat the environment. Reverence for Life rejects the notion that humans can use the environment for their own purposes without any consideration of its consequences for other living things. It accepts the view that there is a reciprocal relationship among living things. Each species is linked to many others.
” Aldo Leopold in his early statement of a deep ecology ethic, A Sand County Almanac, makes the same point. “All ethics so far evolved rest on a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts…The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soil, water, plants, and animals, or collectively, the land.”
War and the potential of the use of nuclear weapons are the obvious opposite of reverence for life. Thus, in the mid-1950s, when the political focus was on the testing in the atmosphere of nuclear weapons, Schweitzer came out strongly for the abolition of nuclear tests. Some had warned him that such a position could decrease his support among those who admired his medical work in Africa; but who wanted to support continued nuclear tests.
However, for Schweitzer, an ethic that is not presented publicly is no ethic at all. His statements on the nuclear weapons issue are collected in his Peace or atomic war? (1958). The statements had an impact on many, touched by the ethical appeal when they had not been moved to action by political reasoning. These protests led to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which bans tests in the atmosphere – an important first step.
Aldo Leopold (left) and Olaus Muire sitting together outdoors, annual meeting of The Wilderness Society Council, Old Rag, Virginia, 1946. By Howard Zahniser, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Schweitzer was confident that an ethical impulse was in all people and would manifest itself if given the proper opportunity.
“Just as the rivers are much less numerous than underground streams, so the idealism that is visible is minor compared to what men and women carry in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released. Mankind is waiting and longing for those who can accomplish the task of untying what is knotted and bringing the underground waters to the surface.”
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Featured Image: Portrait of Herbert George Wells by George Charles Beresford. Black and white glossy print. 150 mm x 108 mm (1920). By George Charles Beresford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
“Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and order exists and grows.”
H. G. Wells in A Short History of the World, 1943
Herbert George Wells, an active world citizen is usually known as just H.G. Wells. (1) From the publication of The Time Machine in 1895 to his death in 1946, Wells ‘bestrode his world like a colossus. He was a creator of modern science fiction, a pioneer of women’s rights (though he treated some badly in his many love affairs), a journalist, historian, and novelist. Above all, he was a social thinker devoted to peace and stable world order. (2)
The first page of The Time Machine was published by Heinemann (1 January 1895). By Published by Heinemann in 1895, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Wells first studied biology under Thomas H. Huxley, the leading Darwinian of Victorian times, and came to see the ethical principles underlying humanity’s social systems as being rooted in the evolutionary process and therefore have the potential for onward development. Just as there was one major factor in biological progress − natural selection − so in social progress, there was one major factor − the quality of enlightened thought. As he wrote “However urgent things may seem, a great mental renascence must precede any effectual reorganization of the world.
Systematic development and a systematic application of the sciences of human relationship, of personal and group psychology, of financial and economic sciences, and of education − sciences still in their infancy − is required. Narrow and obsolete, dead and dying moral and political ideas have to be replaced by a clearer and simpler conception of the common origins and destinies of our kind.”
Caricature of T H Huxley. Caption read “A great Med’cine-Man among the Inqui-ring Redskins”. circa 1870 (published 28 January 1871). By Carlo Pellegrini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Open Conspiracy.
Wells was critical of democracy as being too slow and always tending toward the middle of the road on important issues. In 1928, he tried to alert to new dangers and possibilities by proposing an “open conspiracy” − an elite group of pioneer world citizens who would organize to move humanity forward. (3). The Open Conspiracywas his organizing manual for the diverse constituencies of globally-minded citizens to bring sanity to the organizing of human affairs.
Wells clearly foresaw the need for a re-organization of the economic affairs of humanity.
“Certain things, the ocean, the air, rare wild animals must be the collective property of all humankind and cannot be altogether safe until they are so regarded and until some concrete body exists to exercise these proprietary rights…the raw material of the earth should be for all.”
Some
progress has been made in the identification of endangered species, and a
variety of international conventions have at least slowed the despoliation of
an amount of our natural heritage. Yet
the ongoing destruction of forests, over-exploitation of the oceans as well as
other signs of the environmental crisis are constant reminders of how much
distance is left to travel.
Wells was harshly critical of Marxist theory and of the Communist rule of Stalin in the USSR. Thus he contrasts his “open conspiracy” with the closed conspiracies and vanguard approach of Lenin whom he had met in 1920. He was also highly opposed to Fascism and its closed conspiracies. The “open conspiracy” is a project for every manner of the person once an individual has developed a ‘world consciousness’, though Wells was himself very Eurocentric in his world outlook.
He summed up his views as a race between education for world citizenship and catastrophe − a task of bold and creative minds.
Notes.
For a detailed biography see: David Lodge A
Man of Parts (New York, Viking, 436pp.)
For an overview of his political thinking
see: John S. Partington. Building Cosmopolis: The Political thought of H.G.
Wells Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003)
The Open Conspiracy was first published in 1928 and slightly revised
published in 1933. The 1933 edition is
republished much more recently with a strong introduction and notes in W.Warren
Wagar. The Open Conspiracy/H.G. Wells on World Revolution (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 151pp.).
Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.
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Featured Image: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Former President of India. By White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
If we claim to be civilized, if we love justice, if we cherish mercy, if we are not ashamed to own the reality of the inward light, we must affirm that we are first and foremost Citizens of the World…Our planet has grown too small for parochial patriotism.
S. Radhakrishnan, Philosopher and President of India (1962-1967).
“The present crisis in human affairs is due to a profound crisis in human consciousness, a lapse from the organic wholeness of life. Today, there is a crisis of perception, a widespread sense of unease concerning old forms of thinking which require that we must recreate and re-enact a vision of the world based on the elements of reverence, order, and human dignity, without which no society can be held together.”
Philosophic Consciousness.
As Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan pointed out, the next stage of human evolution is in the human psyche:
“in his mind and spirit, in the emergencies of a larger understanding and awareness, in the development of a new integration of character adequate to the new age. When he gains a philosophic consciousness and an intensity of understanding, a profound apprehension of the meaning of the whole, there will result in a more adequate social order which will influence not only individuals but peoples and nations. We have to fight for this order first in our souls, then in the world outside.”
SarvepalliRadhakrishnan repeatedly stressed the close interdependence between the need to recover the visions of the Higher Self in each person and the need to move beyond a narrow, nationalistic view of the world.
The Human Heart and the New World.
“If we are to help the present society to grow organically into a world order, we must make it depend on the universal and enduring values which are implanted in the human heart that each individual is sacred, that we are born for love and not hate…We have learned to live peacefully in larger and larger units”.
The concept of a community has grown from a narrow tribal basis to the Nation-State. There is no stopping short of a world community…Thus we rejoice that there is an institution like the United Nations, for it is the symbol and hope of the new world, of the light dawning beyond the clouds, clouds piled up by our past patterns of behavior, past ways of speaking, judging, and acting which do not answer to the deep desire of the peoples of the world for peace and progress. We owe it to ourselves to find out why the light does not spread and disperse the darkness, why the sky is still clouded by fear and suspicion, hate and bitterness.”
It is rare for aworld citizen to become president of a State and even rarer to find a professional philosopher as head of State outside Plato’s Republic. Radhakrishnan was a rare individual who played an important intellectual role in three crucial periods:
The revival of Indian thought in the 1920s—1930s after a long period of marginalization.
The Second World War period when a new world society was being planned and when India was on the eve of becoming a fully independent State.
The first years of Indian independence and the start of the Cold War, the Korean conflict and the need to help reduce Soviet-American Cold War tensions.
SarvepalliRadhakrishnan was born into a middle-class Brahman family in south India near Madras. His family valued education, and he attended Christian-sponsored secondary schools and did his higher education at Madras Christian College. During his education, he came to study classical Greek and Western thought, especially Plato, Aristotle and came to know Christian religious views.
The Hinduism.
He was confronted with Western teachers who held a low opinion of the Hinduism they saw around them but who were active in promoting Christian social action, especially in the fields of health, education, and poverty reduction.
Madras was also the headquarters of the worldwide Theosophical Society; which agreed with the Christians that Hinduism was asleep but who felt that it could be awakened from within by its deeper values and did not have to copy the West. This was the avenue which Radhakrishnan followed, a recognition of the stagnant state of much of Indian religious thought and practice but a confidence that the answer lay in a revitalization of the best of Indian thought such as the Upanisads and the Bhagavad Gita.
This folio samples a part of verse 20, and the beginning of verse 21 from the opening chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, which is on the topic of Arjuna’s distress. By British Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Status of Indian.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan cited the status of Indian thought described by the religious reformer Sri Aurobindo; “If an ancient Indian of the time of the Upanisads, of the Buddha, or the later classical age was to be set down in modern India, he would see his race clinging to forms and shells and rags of the past and missing nine-tenths of its nobler meaning…he would be amazed by the extent of the mental poverty, the immobility, the static repetition, the cessation of science, the long sterility of art, the comparative feebleness of the creative intuition.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) around the turn of the century, 1900. By Rudolf 1922, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918).
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was aware of the then status quo. As he wrote “Stagnant systems, like pools, breed obnoxious growths, while flowing rivers constantly renew their waters from fresh springs of inspiration. There is nothing wrong with absorbing the culture of other peoples; only we must enhance, raise and purify the elements we take over, fuse them with the best in our own. Indian philosophy acquires a meaning and a justification for the present only if it advances and ennobles life.”
For Radhakrishnan, it was Rabindranath Tagore who best represented this new, flowing river, and his first book was The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918). Tagore remained his ideal. While teaching philosophy at the University of Calcutta, he saw the impact of Tagore’s thought in the cultural revival of Bengal.
Radhakrishnan’s reputation for his analysis and presentation of Indian philosophy grew, especially since many of his essays were published in Western journals. Thus in 1929, he was called to teach in one of the colleges of Oxford University, and in 1936 he was appointed to a newly created chair of Indian thought at Oxford University.
Rabindranath Tagore By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Thus it was in England that the second phase of his intellectual contribution began. As the clouds of the Second World War were gathering in the late 1930s, he stressed the need for a world vision, freed from the aggressive nationalism of the times. He joined the English branch of the recently formed Association of World Citizensand started meeting with thinkers who would be the creators of UNESCO such as Julian Huxley. Radhakrishnan was to play an important role as the 1948 chairman of the Executive Council of UNESCO and in developing the UNESCO emphasis on the study of Asian culture.
As he said “If we are to shape a community of spirit among the people of the world which is essential for truly human society and lasting peace, we must forge bonds of international understanding. This can be achieved by an acquaintance with the masterpieces of literature, art, and science produced in different countries.
When we are in contact with them, we are lifted from the present and immediate passions and interests and move on the mountain tops where we breathe a larger air…For out of the anguish of our times is being born a new unity of all mankind in which the free spirit of man can find peace and safety.
It is in our power to end the fears which afflict humanity and save the world from the disaster that impends. Only we should be men of a universal cast of mind, capable of interpreting peoples to one another and developing a faith that is the only antidote to fear. The threat to our civilization can be met only on the deeper levels of consciousness. If we fail to overcome the discord between power and spirit, we will be destroyed by the forces which we had the knowledge to create but not the wisdom to control.”
The Independence of India.
With the independence of India came the third and most public of Radhakrishnan’s roles. In 1948, he was named as the first Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union then headed by Stalin (1948-1952). While he had little personal sympathy for Marxist thought, he realized that he was in a key post at a crucial time, as the Cold War was turning hot with the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950 and the possibility of war spreading to other parts of Asia. He had written a book on the relations between India and Chinese philosophy and so had a particular interest in events in China.
SarvepalliRadhakrishnan was among the few in India who studied deeply Buddhist philosophy and tried to place the Buddha in the context of Indian thought. Thus events of Southeast Asia and the French war in Indochina were of particular concern.
The Indian Political System.
In 1952, he returned to India to become Vice-President and in 1962 became the President of India for a five-year term. In the Indian political system, executive power is in the office of the Prime Minister rather than the President. During Radhakrishnan’s political life the Prime Minister was Jawaharlal Nehru who shared many common interests but who kept a close hold on political decision making.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan put his political energy into the area he knew best, the improvement of university education and the development of culture. As a man of South India in a government dominated by people of the north, he was a symbol of national unity. As a person with deep knowledge of both Indian and Western philosophical thought, he was the model of the “meeting of East and West.” He set out his challenge to world citizens clearly “We live in an age of tensions, danger, and opportunity. We are aware of our insufficiencies, and can remove them if we have the vision to see the goal and the courage to work for it.”
Jawaharlal Nehru, the main campaigner of the Indian National Congress, 1951-52 elections. The poster reads ‘for a stable, secular, progressive state; VOTE CONGRESS’. By Indian National Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Notes.
For a useful overview of his philosophical
thinking see Paul A. Schilpp (Ed). The Philosophy of Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan (1952)
For a good picture of his bridge-building role, see S.J. Samartha Introduction to Radhakrishnan: The Man and His Thought. Dr. Samartha was Director of the program Dialogue among Living Faiths at the World Council of Churches in Geneva
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Featured Image: Alfred Adler By Isidoricaaa7, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
By Rene Wadlow.
Alfred Adler; whose birth anniversary we mark on 7 February; believed that there were two decisive forces at work in world history and in the life of each individual: a striving for power and a social feeling. Both forces stemmed from man’s upward striving from inferiority to perfection.
Individual Psychology.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937); a Vienna psychotherapist and medical doctor; was part of the early circle of Sigmund Freud. However; the two men disagreed on what each felt to be fundamental positions. In 1911; Adler left the Freud circle and founded his own approach; which he called “individual psychology”.
For Adler; there are similarities between the evolution of man within history; and the evolution of each individual. In history, man; a physical dwarf in comparison with the animals around him and the forces of Nature; must compensate for this weakness by developing a pattern of cooperation with other humans around him. Likewise; each child is born; a dwarf in comparison to the adults around him.
Thus; each child must develop a sense of self-es time. If this development is hindered in some way; as the result of brutal parents or a hostile milieu; the search for self-es time can become neurotic. There can be over-compensation as well as a closing in on oneself.
Sigmund Freud colorized portrait. By Photocolorization, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
Over-Compensation.
Over-compensation can result in a quest for power. Striving for self-es time and power is a natural process; but with over-compensation; the search for power can become the dominant aspect of the personality. Adler had read and been influenced by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche; who glorified the will-to-power. For Adler; an over-development of the will-to-power can become a deep seated neurosis. Only a health balance between the forces of cooperation and the individual will -to-power; can make for a harmonious individual and a harmonious society.
In 1897; he married Raissa Epstein; a Russian who was also a student at the University of Vienna. She was part of Russian Marxist circles living in Austria; and a friend of Leon Trotsky and his milieu. Through her; Adler joined socialist circles and became convinced that society helped to create the personality of the individual. Therefore; for a health personality, there needs to be a health society; free from domination. Adler also saw the need for a society based on equality between men and women; so that the personality of both men and women could develop fully. He was an early feminist and champion of the equality of women and men.
Friedrich Nietzsche, circa 1875. By Friedrich Hartmann, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Power Dominated The Sense of Social.
His work as a psychotherapist and writer was halted by the start of the 1914-1918 World War. As a medical doctor; he was incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Army; where he was able to contemplate man’s neurotic striving for power. At the end of the war; both by his observations and the Marxist analysis of his wife; he felt that the will-to-power dominated the sense of social-feeling and cooperation. In fact; power-hungary leaders and groups debased mass social feeling by using it as a thirst for dominance. The social feeling of soldiers during the war; was used for battlefield goals with efforts to exclude any social feeling for the enemy.
He wrote that when violence is to be committed; it is frequently done by “appealing to justice, custom, freedom, the welfare of the oppressed and in the name of culture.” Power-seekers transform social feeling “from an end into a means, and it is pressed into the service of nationalism and imperialism.”
Nationalism, Racism and Imperialism.
The only way to counter this neurotic sense of power-seeking; is to develop preventive methods by developing social feeling and cooperation. During the 1920s; Adler stressed the need for the development of social feeling by developing new, cooperative forms of childhood education within the family and schools. Adler stressed the profound experience of togetherness; an intense connection extending across the largest reaches of history and societies.
However, by 1934; he saw that the sense of togetherness in Germany and Austria; was going to be used again to create togetherness among a small circle; and subverting the use of social feeling by making it a facade for nationalism, racism and imperialism. Adler was considered a Jew by the Nazis because his parents were Hungarian Jews; although Judaism as a religion played little role in his intellectual life. He left to teach in New York City and died in 1937; on a lecture tour in Scotland. He did not see the events of the Second World War; but there would have been little to make him alter his views; on how the power principle can be utilized by antisocial leaders.
Memorial plaque for Alfred Adler (Vienna, Czerningasse 7). By GuentherZ, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
Notes.
For an overview of Adler’s views of psychology see: Henry L. Ansbacher and Rowena R. Amsbacher (eds). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (New York: Harper and Row, 1964)
For the late views of Adler on the need for a society based on social feeling see his book published shortly after his death: Alfred Adler. Social Interest; A Challenge to Mankind (London, Faber and Faber, 1938)
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Featured Image: Quincy Wright, Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, from the 1940 MacMurray College Yearbook, where he was one of the speakers on “The Essential Elements of a Durable Peace” at the MacMurray Institute. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Contemporary movements that stressed the need for world citizenship started on the eve of World War II when the spirit of aggressive nationalism was at its height in the policies of Germany, Italy and Japan. There was a need to develop balance by stressing the unity of humanity and the interdependence of the world. These concepts of world citizenship were articulated by a leading professor of international law, Quincy Wright (1890-1970) of the University of Chicago who felt that States must shape their domestic laws and foreign policies in such a way as to be compatible with the tenets of international law.
A Study of War
Quincy Wright spent most of his teaching life at the University of Chicago. He was active in debates among international relations specialists on the place of law – and thus of universal norms – in the conduct of States. In 1942 he published his massive A Study of Warwhich combined a philosophical-legal approach with a more statistical-quantitative one. He was very concerned with the quality of university teaching on war and peace. His 1955 The Study of International Relations remains an outstanding multi-disciplinary approach to the study of world politics. (1)
World Citizens Association
He served as a bridge between professors of international relations and the growing ranks of peace researchers and the world citizens movement. Quincy Wright was a leader of a first World Citizens Association founded in 1939 serving as its Secretary with Anita McCormick Blaine as Chairman. (2)
Unfortunately, the strength of the nationalist tide was too great, and a balance by stressing world unity could not be created in time. The Second World War broke out in Europe shortly after the creation of the World Citizens Association. Japanese nationalism had already brought violence to China, but too few people reacted. Japanese nationalism continued in an unbalanced way, leading to the attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor, which provoked U.S. entry into the war.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A small boat rescues a seaman from the 31,800 ton USS West Virginia burning in the foreground. Smoke rolling out amidships shows where the most extensive damage occurred. Note the two men in the superstructure. The USS Tennessee is inboard (7 December 1941). By Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
“In the modern world, the security and prosperity of all individuals and all groups are closely bound together. The preservation of civilization depends upon the ability of national states and diverse peoples to live together happily and successfully in this rapidly shrinking world. Since all individuals today suffer or benefit by conditions the World over, every man has interests and responsibilities as a world citizen.”
Second World War and The Cold War.
Even though the Allies won the Second World War, the start of the Cold War presented many of the same issues as had been present in 1939. In his 1949 address as President of the American Political Science Association, Wright posted a dark picture.
“While inventions in the fields of communications and transport and interdependence in commerce and security make for one world, the actual sentiments of people have been moving toward more exclusive loyalty to their nations, more insistence that their governments exercise totalitarian control over law, defense, economy, and even opinion. Materially the world community steadily becomes more integrated, but morally each nation gains in solidarity and the split in the world community becomes wider. Under these conditions, people await with a blind fatalism the approach of war. Disaster seems as inevitable as in a Greek tragedy.”
Wright sets out three steps which remain the framework for world citizen action today. As a first step, world citizens must provide a process of systematic observation: what new political conflicts are likely to develop? What methods are likely to be used? What goals are likely to be striven for? In short, what is the nature of current tensions, struggles and conflicts?
System of world law
The second essential step is to provide proposals for negotiated resolutions to these struggles and conflicts within the framework of a system of world law.
“What arrangements will assure that world politics operates with reasonable respect for human personality, for civilization, for justice, for welfare – all values which most men will recognize? How do we work so that the political struggles going on in the world will utilize only methods consistent with human dignity and human progress? World citizens are willing to take one step at a time anticipating that if one step in the right direction is taken, it will be easier to win sufficient consent for the next steps.”
The third step which Wright proposed was longer term but essential: education for world citizenship. If men must be world citizens as well as national citizens, what picture of the world can command some of their loyalties however diverse their cultures, economies and government?
“The primary function of education – developing in the individual attitudes appropriate to the values of the society in which he is to live – and, in progressive societies of adapting those values to changing conditions – all citizens need to feel themselves citizens of the world.”
Today,
the Association of World Citizens is proud to build on the steps outlined by
Quincy Wright. We face the challenges of
our time as he faced the challenges of his time.
Notes:
1) See Quincy Wright. The Study of International
Relations (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955)
See also
Quincy Wright. The World Community (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1949)
2) For biographies of Anita Blaine, see! Gilbert A.
Harrison. A Timeless Affair. The Life of Anita McCormick Blaine (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1979) and
Jacqueline Castledine. Cold War Progressives.
Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2012)
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Featured Image: The Spanish writer Salvador de Madariaga and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina José María Cantilo talk during a session of the League of Nations (1936).
By Dr. Rene Wadlow.
The first two organizations using world citizen in its title “World Citizens Association” date from 1939, the eve of the Second World War when the dangers of aggressive nationalism became evident. Both organizations, one in the USA, the other in England, owe much to two friends who had worked together in the League of Nations: Henri Bonnet, a Frenchman living in 1939 in the USA and the better known Salvador De Madariaga of Spain living in England after General Franco came to power in Spain.
Salvador De Madariaga (1886-1978) was called, half ironically, half seriously, ‘the conscience of the League of Nations’; by Sir John Simon, the chief UK delegate to the League of Nations Council and Foreign Secretary. De Madariaga was chairing the Council at the time of the Japanese attack on Manchuria, and he was convinced that this attack, the first major violation of the Covenant by a Council member, Japan, was a key test for the League. He later chaired the League efforts to deal with this Manchurian crisis, as he did with the League efforts to deal with the Italian attack on Ethiopia (Abyssinia, as it was then called). Salvador De Madariaga had a free hand as chief delegate of Spain during the Republican years (1931-1936); before the Civil War and General Franco‘s victory ended Spanish influence in the League. Spain was not considered a ‘Great Power’; it was not a permanent member of the League Council, but it was large enough and had friends in South America (Spanish America as De Madariaga calls it), so that Spain was often chosen to lead League efforts when a ‘neutral’ state was needed.
Portrait of John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, no later than 1922. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Morning Without Noon.
From the memoirs of De Madariaga, Morning Without Noon (London: Saxon House, 1974) written when he was 80 and recalling the period from 1921 to 1936; one gets a good view of the inner workings and the spirit of the League of Nations. They are memories rather than documented research as most of his personal papers were destroyed when Franco took control of Madrid; where De Madariaga had a house and office. Nevertheless, they are a vivid picture of the period and the early functioning of a world institution of which the UN is the continuation in the same buildings. The main League of Nations building for most of its Geneva history is now the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Palais des Nations, finished just as the League was ending its life, is now the UN’s main European headquarters.
Salvador De Madariaga had a first-hand knowledge of the League, having joined its Secretariat in 1921 when it was being created as the first world civil service by Sir Eric Drummond and Jean Monnet. De Madariaga come from a distinguished Spanish family. His father was a military officer who believed that Spain had lost the Spanish-American war to the USA because of a lack of technology. Thus he encouraged his son to have an international technical education, and Salvador De Madariaga went to the elite Ecole Politecnique and the Ecole des Mines, both in Paris and ended with an mining degree which he never used.
Portrait of Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth. By Harris & Ewing, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
However, it gave him a certain image of having technical knowledge and so he was chosen to head the Disarmament Department of the League in 1922 as some people mistakingly thought disarmament was a technical problem. As De Madariaga argues in his book Disarmament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929) written just after leaving the League Secretariat:
” disarmament is an irrelevant issue; the true issue being the organization of the government of the world on a co-operative basis.”
Jean Monnet à Londres en 1952. By AnonymousUnknown author (Keystone France), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
De Madariaga left the League Secretariat in 1928, largely because the League had accepted to fire Bernardo Attolico as Under Secretary-General and replace him by Paulucci di Calvoli Barone, a chief assistant of B. Mussolini. There were always persons from the Great Powers in influential League posts; but they were usually intellectuals who believed in the values of the League and not national civil servants. De Madariaga had met Mussolini twice in Rome during disarmament talks. It was De Madariaga’s habit of making quick instinctive judgements of people, and he did not like Mussolini from the start.
De Madariaga became a ‘premature’ anti-Fascist. The fact that the League would place a Fascist civil servant in a key position was for De Madariaga a step backward for a real world civil service. As he writes:
“Here began the downfall of the Secretariat. The Fascist Under-secretary’s room became a kind of Italian Embassy at the League (Save that the Ambassador’s salary was paid by the League), linked directly with Mussolini and openly accepting orders and instructions from him. Paulucci in himself an attractive and friendly person, was nevertheless zealous enough to go about even during official League gatherings sporting the Fascist badge on his lapel.”
As luck would have it, just as he was thinking about leaving the League Secretariat, Oxford University was looking for a professor of Spanish literature for a newly-created chair. Although he had never taught, through League friends, he was named Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies at Oxford. Once when asked when he had studied Spanish literature, he replied:
“I didn’t need it before, so I shall study it now in order to teach it.”
He held this chair until King Alfonso XIII, who had nothing to do with the chair, was pushed from power.
In 1931 the Spanish Republic was born. The new Spanish Republic leaders, divided among themselves along political lines, were united in wanting the Republic to be represented by intellectuals so that they could explain the aims and values of the Republic. De Madariaga was named Ambassador to France but also asked to represent Spain at the League of Nations since League duties were not considered as a ‘full time job’, and he had League Secretariat experience.
Thus De Madariaga returned to Geneva, one of the few government delegates who knew the workings of the League Secretariat. De Madariaga, when he had been in the Secretariat, because he spoke Spanish, English, and French and was an excellent speaker, had become the chief ‘lay preacher’ for the League and had travelled throughout Europe and the USA giving talks to present the work and the ideals of the League.
Alfonso XIII of Spain on Time magazine cover, 1928. By Time Magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Geneva was a smaller city at the time and much of the intellectual life related to the League. The League had created the Committee for Intellectual Co-operation as an effort to build an intellectual network of support for the League. De Madariaga gives interesting pen portraits of people he had met in the League effort of intellectual cooperation: Paul Valery, R. Tagore, Albert Einstein, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and others. Knowing leading intellectuals also opened doors to political figures in many countries. De Madariaga’s knowledge of a country’s politics went beyond his contacts with the delegates to the League.
Rabindranath Tagore. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The highlights of De Madariaga’s League efforts were the complicated entry into League membership of Mexico which had been barred by Woodrow Wilson who had bad memories of the Mexican Revolution. Although the USA was not a League member, Mexico had been barred by an annex to the Covenant. De Madariaga had to work so that Mexico would accept League membership without asking for it – such is the craft of diplomacy!. His two most crucial roles were the League efforts at the time of the Japanese attack on Manchuria and the Italian attack on Ethiopia. His detailed accounts merit reading as to the difficulties of multilateral responses to crisis situations.
De Madariaga resigned as Spain’s chief delegate to the League as the Republic disintegrated, and Franco took power. From 1936 on, he lived outside of Spain, mostly in England and Switzerland and only returned to Spain to visit after the death of Franco. He devoted himself to countering those forces of aggressive nationalism which had destroyed the effectiveness of the League. As he wrote:
“If peace and the spirit of Europe are to remain alive, we shall need more world citizens and more Europeans such as I tried to be.”
De Madariaga encouraged Henri Bonnet, who had been the League Secretariat member in charge of the Committee for Intellectual Co-operation and who was then living in the USA to create in 1939 the World Citizens Association which he did with the young lawyer Adlai Stevenson and Quincy Wright, a leading professor of international relations at the University of Chicago. De Madariaga helped to create a World Citizens Association in London, also in 1939 – both efforts were too late to block the tide of war. After the Second World War, De Madariaga helped create the College d’Europe in Bruges as a training field for Europeans, especially for those thinking of working in European institutions.
Quincy Wright, Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, from the 1940 MacMurray College Yearbook, where he was one of the speakers on “The Essential Elements of a Durable Peace” at the MacMurray Institute. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
He continued his literary and historical interests, writing especially on the founders of ‘Spanish America’. He did some teaching, and in 1955 spent a year at Princeton University in the USA where a new “Special Program in European Civilization” had just been created. His lectures covered the literary analysis of his Portrait de l’Europe (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1952). As his student that year, I was also interested in disarmament and the functioning of the League of Nations so we had many interesting talks. His was a witty and perceptive mind.
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Featured Image: Stanley Bruce chairing the League of Nations Council in 1936. Joachim von Ribbentrop is addressing the council. By Commonwealth of Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Rene Wadlow.
28 April 1919 can be considered as the birth of the League of Nations. The creation of the League had been on the agenda of the Peace Conference at Versailles, just outside of Paris, from its start in January 1919.
The U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was the chief champion of the League. The creation of such an organization was discussed from the start in January, along with discussions as to where the headquarters of the League would be set. On 28 April, there was a unanimous decision to create a League of Nations and at the same time Geneva was chosen for its headquarters.
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America. By Harris & Ewing, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The First decade of the League’s life.
Some of the later failings of the League were visible from the start. Defeated Germany and revolutionary USSR were not invited to join, and the U.S. Senate turned down the invitation. Nevertheless, the first decade of the League’s life saw a good deal in international cooperation, especially in the fields of labor conditions, health, social welfare, intellectual cooperation, and agriculture – all areas that would later be continued and developed within the U.N. system.
The first decade saw the settlement of a number of conflicts that could have led to war. There was a wide-spread feeling that a new era in international relations had been born. However, the 1930s began with the conflicts which led to the end of the League.
Mukden Incident.
On 18 September 1931 Japan accused China of blowing up a Manchurian railway line over which Japan had treaty rights. This “Mukden Incident” as it became known was followed by the Japanese seizure of the city of Mukden and the invasion of Manchuria. Military occupation of the region followed, and on 18 February 1932 Japan established the puppet state of Manchukin.
Further hostilities between Japan and China were a real possibility. The League tried to mediate the conflict under the leadership of Salvador De Madariaga, the Ambassador of Republican Spain to the League. In practice, none of the Western governments wanted to get involved in Asian conflicts, especially not at a time when they were facing an economic depression.
The Spanish writer Salvador de Madariaga and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina José María Cantilo talked during a session of the League of Nations (1936). By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Non-govermental organization cooperation.
Non-govermental organization cooperation with the League of Nations was not as structured as it would be by the U.N. Charter. There were a few peace groups in Geneva which did interact informally with the League delegations – the Women’s International League for Peace and Fredom, the International Peace Bureau, and the British Quakers were active but were unable to speak directly in League meetings. They could only send written appeals to the League secretariat and contact informally certain delegations.
In reaction to the Japan-China tensions, Dr Maude Revden, a former suffragist, one of England’s first women pastors, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi whom she had visited in India proposed “shock troops of peace” who would volunteer to place themselves between the Japanese and Chinese combatants. The proposal for the interposition of an unarmed body of civilians of both sexes between the opposing armies was proposed to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond.
Drummond replied that it was not in his constitutional power to bring the proposal before the League’s Assembly. Only government could bring agenda items to the Assembly. Nevertheless, he released the letter to the many journalists then in Geneva as the Assembly was in session. The letter was widely reported.
An unarmed shock troop of the League never developed, and China and much of Asia became the scene of a Japanese-led war.
Sir Eric Drummond circa 1918. By Bain, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The United Nations by World Citizens.
The idea of an unarmed interposition force was again presented this time to the United Nations by world citizens shortly after the U.N.’s creation at the time of the 1947-48 creation of the State of Israel and the resulting armed conflict. The proposal was presented by Henry Usborn a British MP, active in the world federalist and world citizen movement. Usborn was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (a soul force) and proposed that a volunteer corps of some 10,000 unarmed people hold a two kilometre-wide demilitarized zone between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Somewhat later, in 1960, Salvador De Madariaga, who had ceased being the Spanish Ambassador to the League when General Franco came to power, created in 1938 the World Citizens Association from his exile in England.
The Gandhian Indian Socialist.
He developed a proposal with the Gandhian Indian Socialist Party leader Jayapeakash Narayan for a U.N. Peace Guards, an unarmed international peace force that would be an alternative to the armed U.N. forces. (1) De Maderiaga and Narayan held that a body of regular Peace Guards intervening with no weapons whatever, between two forces in combat or about to fight might have considerable effect. The Peace Guards would be authorized by the U.N. Member States to intervene in any conflict of any nature when asked by one of the parties or by the Secretary General.
Dag Hammarskjold who was having enough problems with armed U.N. troops in the former Belgium Congo and understanding the realpolitik of the U.N. did not act on the proposal. Thus for the moment, there are only armed U.N. troops drawn from national armies and able to act only on a resolution of the Security Council.
Photograph of Dag Hammarskjöld(1953). By Caj Bremer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
1) A good portrait of Jayaprakash Narayan, a world citizen, is set out in Bimal Prasad. Gandhi, Nehru and J.P. Studies in Leadership (Delhi, Chamakya Publications, 1985)
Narayan was also one of the Indian leaders met by the student world federalist leaders in their 1949 stay in India. See Clare and Harris Wofford, Jr. India Afire (New York: John Day Company, 1951).
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Robert M. Hutchins much of our current work for a more just and peaceful world builds on the thinking and efforts of earlier foundations. An important foundation is the leading role of Robert M. Hutchins, long-time President of the University of Chicago (l929 -1951).
University of Chicago.
Robert M. Hutchins’ father, William, was President of Berea, a small but important liberal arts college, so Robert M. Hutchins (1899-1977) was set to follow the family pattern. He went to Yale Law School and stayed on to teach. He quickly became the Dean of the Law School and was spotted as a rising star of US education. When he was 30 years old, he was asked to become President of the University of Chicago, a leading institution. Hutchins was then the youngest president of a US university.
In the first decade in his post as president, the 1930s, his ideas concerning undergraduate education − compulsory survey courses, early admission after two years of secondary school for bright and motivated students, a concentration on “Great Books” – an examination of seminal works of philosophy in particular Plato and Aristotle − divided the University of Chicago faculty.
There were strong and outspoken pro and anti Hutchins faculty groups. Moreover Hutchins’ abolition of varsity football and ending the University’s participation in the “Big Ten” university football league distressed some alumni whose link to the university was largely limited to attending football games. For Hutchins, a university was for learning and discussion, not for playing sports. As he famously said:
“When I feel like exercising, I sit down until the feeling goes away.”
Committee to Frame a World Constitution in 1945.
It is Hutchins’ creation and leadership of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution in 1945 which makes him one of the intellectual founders of the movement for world federation and world citizenship. After the coming to power of Hitler in Germany in 1933 and his quick decision to ban Jewish professors from teaching in German universities, many Jewish scientists and professors left Germany and came to the USA. Some of the leading natural scientists joined the University of Chicago. Thus began the “Metallurgy Project” as the work on atomic research was officially called. The University of Chicago team did much of the theoretical research which led to the Atom Bomb. While Hutchins was not directly involved in the atomic project, he understood quickly the nature of atomic energy and its military uses. He saw that the world would never return to a “pre-atomic” condition and that new forms of world organization were needed.
Atomic Force: Its Meaning for Mankind .
On 12 August 1945, a few days after the use of the atom bombs, Hutchins made a radio address “Atomic Force: Its Meaning for Mankind” in which he outlined the need for strong world institutions, stronger than the UN Charter, whose drafters earlier in the year did not know of the destructive power of atomic energy.
Several professors of the University of Chicago were already active in peace work such as Mortimer Adler, G.A. Borgese, and Richard McKeon, Dean of the undergraduate college. The three approached Hutchins saying that as the University of Chicago had taken a lead in the development of atomic research, so likewise, the university should take the lead in research on adequate world institutions. By November 1945, a 12-person Committee to Frame a World Constitution was created under Hutchins’ chairmanship.
The Committee drew largely on existing faculty of the University of Chicago − Wilber Katz, Dean of the Law School and Rexford Tugwell who taught political science but who had been a leading administrator of the Roosevelt New Deal and Governor of Puerto Rico. Two retired professors from outside Chicago were added − Charles McIlwain of Harvard, a specialist on constitutions, and Albert Guerard of Stanford, a French refugee who was concerned about the structure of post-war Europe.
From 1947 to 1951, the Committee published a monthly journal Common Cause many of whose articles still merit reading today as fundamental questions concerning the philosophical basis of government, human rights, distribution of power, and the role of regions are discussed. The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution was published in 1948 and reprinted in the Saturday Review of Literature edited by Norman Cousins and in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists some of whom were in the original “Metallurgy Project”. The Preliminary Draft raised a good deal of discussion, reflected in the issues of Common Cause. There was no second draft. The Preliminary Draft was as G.A. Borgese said, quoting Dante “…of the True City at least the Tower.”
In 1951, Hutchins retired from the presidency of the University of Chicago for the Ford Foundation and then created the Ford Foundation-funded Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions where he gathered together some of his co-workers from the University of Chicago.
Norman Cousins Picture: Apurva Madia, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
Two ideas from The Preliminary
Draft are still part of intellectual and political life for those concerned
with a stronger UN. The first is the
strong role of regional organizations.
When The Preliminary Draft was written the European Union was
still just an idea and most of the States now part of the African Union were
European colonies. The Preliminary
Draft saw that regional groups were institutions of the future and should
be integrated as such in the world institution.
Today, the representatives of States belonging to regional groupings
meet together at the UN to try to reach a common position, but regional groups
are not part of the official UN structure. However, they may be in the future.
The other lasting aspect of The Preliminary Draft is the crucial role that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should play. The then recently drafted UN Charter had created a “consultative status” for NGOs, but few of the UN Charter drafters foresaw the important role that NGOs would play as the UN developed. The Preliminary Draft had envisaged a Syndical Senate to represent occupational associations on the lines of the International Labour Organization where trade unions and employer associations have equal standing with government delegates. In 1946, few people saw the important role that the NGOs would later play in UN activities. While there is no “Syndical Senate”, today NGOs represent an important part of the UN process.
Reflections.
Robert M. Hutchins, however, was also a reflection of his time. There were no women as members of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, and when he created the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions with a large number of “fellows”, consultants, and staff, women are also largely absent.
The effort to envisage the structures and processes among the different structures was an innovative contribution to global institution building at the time, and many of the debates and reflections are still crucial for today. Looking at back issues of Common Cause, the journal of the World Constitution Drafting Committee, if they are available in a university library, still has discussions of important questions on the structures of governance.
Notes.
For an understanding of the thinking of those involved in writing The Preliminary Draft see:
Mortimor Adler. How to think about War and Peace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944)
Rexford Tugwell. Chronicle of Jeopardy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
G.A. Borgese. Foundations of the World Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953)
Scott Buchanan. Essay in Politics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953)
For a life of Hutchens written by a co-worker in the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions:
Harry Ashmore. Unreasonable Truths: the Life of Robert Maynard Hutchens (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1989)
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Rapprochement of Cultures.
Colorized painting of Sigmund Freud. By Photocolorization, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
