Randolph Silliman Bourne (May 30, 1886 – December 22, 1918) was a progressive writer and public intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University. Bourne is best known for his essays, especially "War is the Health of the State," which remained unfinished when found after his death. May 30 is the 150th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (151st in leap years). ... 1886 (MDCCCLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Friday (click on link to calendar) // Events January 18 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. ... December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... Progressivism is a political philosophy whose adherents promote public policies that they believe would lead to positive social change. ... Map of Bloomfield Township in Essex County Bloomfield is a Township located in Essex County, New Jersey. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. ...

Bourne's articles appeared in the magazine, The Seven Arts and The New Republic, among other journals of the day. For other uses, see the disambiguation section. ...

During World War I, American progressives, Bourne included, found themselves split and pitted against each other. The two factions that emerged were the pro-war faction, led by John Dewey, and the anti-war faction, of which both Bourne and other famous progressives like Jane Addams were a part. Bourne was a student of the educational theorist John Dewey at Columbia, but he took issue with Dewey's idea of using the war as a tool with which to spread democracy, and in his pointedly-titled 1918 essay "Twilight of Idols", while invoking the progressive pragmatism of Dewey's contemporary William James, Bourne argued that America was using democracy as an ends to justify the war, but that democracy itself was never examined. While he was a follower of Dewey originally, he felt that Dewey had betrayed his democratic ideals by focusing only on the facade of a democratic government, rather than on the ideas behind democracy that Dewey had professed to respect. Combatants Allies: Serbia, Russia, France, Romania, Belgium, British Empire, United States, Italy, and others Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire Casualties Military dead: 5 million Civilian deaths: 3 million Total of dead: 8 million Military dead: 4 million Civilian deaths: 3 million Total dead: 7 million The First... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thought has been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Jane Addams Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was an American social worker, sociologist, philosopher and reformer. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thought has been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. ...

Bourne was also a follower of American intellectual Horace Kallen, and argued, like Kallen, that Americanism ought not to be associated with Anglo-Saxonism. In his 1916 article "Trans-National America," Bourne argued that the US should accommodate immigrant cultures into a "cosmopolitan America," instead of forcing immigrants to assimilate to Anglophilic culture. Horace Meyer Kallen (1882-1974) was a Jewish-American philosopher. ... The Anglo-Saxons refers collectively to the groups of Germanic tribes who achieved dominance in southern Britain from the mid-5th century, forming the basis for the modern English nation. ...

Bourne died in the Spanish flu epidemic shortly after the Armistice of World War I. His ideas have been influential in the shaping of postmodern ideas of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, and recent intellectuals such as David Hollinger have written extensively on Bourne's ideology. The Spanish Flu Pandemic, also known as , , or the 1918 flu, was a pandemic caused by an unusually severe and deadly strain of the subtype H1N1 of the species Influenza A virus. ... The armistice treaty between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway carriage in woods near Compiègne on November 11th, 1918, and marked the end of the First World War on the Western Front. ...

Quote

"One keeps healthy in wartime not by a series of religious and political consolations that something good is coming out of it all, but by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part."

Bibliography

• Abrahams, Edward (1986). The Lyrical Left: Randolph Bourne, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Origins of Cultural Radicalism in America. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN 0813910803.
• Blake, Casey Nelson (1990). Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807819352.
• Hansen, Olaf (ed.) (1977). Randolph Bourne: The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911-1918. New York: Urizen Books. ISBN 0916354008.
• Hollinger, David A. (1995). Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 0465059910.
• Lasch, Christopher (1986, 1965). The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type, paperback, New York: Norton. ISBN 0393303195.
• Paul, Sherman (1966). Randolph Bourne. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Sandeen, Eric J. (ed.) (1981). The Letters of Randolph Bourne: A Comprehensive Edition. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co.. ISBN 0878751904.
• Bourne, Randolph (1964). War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays 1915-1919. NY: Harper Torchbook.

Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932, Omaha, Nebraska - February 14, 1994, Pittsford, New York) a well-known American historian and social critic. ...

External links

• Randolph Bourne 1886-1918 includes links to writings by and about Bourne
• The Randolph Bourne Institute
• Randolph Bourne Page from the Anarchist Encyclopedia
• "Bourne Yet Again: Errors of Geneaology," by Christopher Phelps