ABSTRACT
On the evening of 7 December 1941, very shortly after the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour had reached the audience which had assembled to hear him speak in New York City’s Cooper Union auditorium, the American philosopher John Dewey declared, ‘I have nothing, had nothing, and have nothing now, to say directly about the war’.2 Although the topic he proposed to address that winter evening was ‘Lessons from the War in Philosophy’, Dewey intended to speak about the 1914-18 conflict. On the global contest of arms that had now engulfed his own country, Dewey had, in his own estimation, nothing to say.
