The paper provides an overview of a special issue of
the Journal of Classical Sociology (2024, N 4) devoted to the impact of
World War I on the life trajectories and intellectual legacy of the
classics of sociology. It shows how Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim,
Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Ferdinand Tönnies, W.E.B. Du Bois,
George Herbert Mead, Thorstein Veblen, Robert Park, Marcel Mauss,
Alfred Schütz, and Antonio Gramsci experienced and interpreted this
international conflict. It is noted that the war became a challenge and a
test for their theories, as they had to revise some key points of their
research.
Keywords
World War I; classical sociology; social theory; intellectual history; conflict; nationalism; postwar order.
