Eighteen American philosophers, including John Dewey, A.N. Whitehead, H.A. Overstreet and Alexander Meiklejohn, have spurned an invitation to attend the German Philosophical Association’s 13th session in Berlin, next week.
In a letter to Dr. Bruno Bauch, professor in the University of Jena and president of the society, the eighteen declared;
“No individual participating in your meeting would be free to discuss the present situation of philosophy inside of Germany, or would be permitted to seek and find for himself an insight into the spiritual and material character of the German scene of 1936.”
The German bid offered as inducements refunding of the philosophers’ second-class traveling expenses within the borders of the Reich, special privileges to be provided for delegates and relief from any need to cope with stringent currency regulations. It also stated that by attending the meeting the Americans would “secure a personal independent insight into the contemporary spiritual and general situation of Germany.”
The reply termed such an offer as “high-powered propaganda” and asserted:
“The German government has formulated and imposed an orthodoxy in the social and philosophical disciplines from which individuals may differ within the borders of Germany only at their peril…
“We could not honorably be present, and by our presence condone, a philosophical conference whose conferees are de facto deprived of that freedom of thought and speech without which philosophy is but an apologetic for the ruling powers, and falls therefore under the contempt of the free minds of our own and of all future generations.”
Other signers of the statement were Horace M. Kallen, Sidney Hook, T.V.Smith, Irwin Edman, Ralph Barton Perry, W.E. Hocking, H.M.Sheffer, Wendell T. Bush, W.P. Montague, Ernest Nagel, W.A. Sheldon, A.L. Locke, M.C. Otto and J.A. Irving.
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