The article shows, first, how Sociology has approached the concepts of “hope” and “war” and how throughout the history of the discipline these terms have gone from being neglected to arousing considerable interest. Second, the paper analyzes how and why avant-garde artists understood the First World War as a motif of utopian hope to annihilate a civilization in crisis and to transform it through its aesthetic formalization. Third, the essay tries to find out whether that hope was preserved over time or, on the contrary, was soon dissolved as a result of the drama of the events. It is shown here that the savagery of the fighting dissolved all European values of modernity and progress, including artistic ones. In fact, theoretical and stylistic conceptions, aesthetic categories, ethical postulates, and artists’ aspirations for conscience to rule the world were blurred. For the artistic avant-garde, utopian promises of a better world broke down. Consequently, this obliges sociologists to pay more attention to both phenomena—that of the war and that of the avant-garde—and to seek a more objective and critical interpretation of modernity, calling for its actualization, and of Sociology itself.

文章首先展示了社会学如何处理“希望”和“战争”的概念，以及在该学科的整个历史中，这些术语如何从被忽视到引起相当大的兴趣。其次，本文分析了前卫艺术家如何以及为何将第一次世界大战理解为乌托邦希望的主题，即消灭危机中的文明并通过其美学形式化来改造它。第三，本文试图找出这种希望是否随着时间的推移而得以保留，或者相反，由于事件的戏剧性而很快就消失了。这里表明，野蛮的战斗消解了欧洲所有现代性和进步的价值观，包括艺术价值观。事实上，理论和风格观念、审美范畴、伦理假设以及艺术家统治世界的良心愿望都是模糊的。对于艺术先锋派来说，美好世界的乌托邦承诺破灭了。因此，这迫使社会学家更加关注战争和前卫这两种现象，并寻求对现代性和社会学本身的更客观和批判性的解释，呼吁其实现。