Although violence was not among the central topics of phenomenology in its initial phase, the outbreak of the First World War impacted greatly the self-understanding of many German philosophers affiliated to this movement. There is a rich material available (De Warren and Vongehr 2017) documenting the often-enthusiastic militarist stance assumed by many phenomenologists at the beginning of the war, Husserl included (Bruyéron 2014: 79–106), leaning toward bitter disappointment and pacifism by its end. Thus, at least a figure of historical mass violence, namely war, became an unavoidable problem for phenomenologists, equally on their personal and intellectual involvement with this event. The most striking example of this Kriegsphilosophie on the “phenomenological front” is Scheler’s ideological book Der Genius des Krieges und der deutsche Krieg, written during the autumn of 1914, in which he stated that war is not only natural, but also serves to increase and renew the cultural and…
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