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Modern European Thought

Modern European Thought. Chapter 24. Overview. Blending of past movements Enlightenment Rationalism, toleration, cosmopolitanism, and appreciation of science Romanticism Feelings, imagination, national identity, and autonomy of the artistic experience Disappearance of other ideas

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Modern European Thought

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  1. Modern European Thought Chapter 24

  2. Overview • Blending of past movements • Enlightenment • Rationalism, toleration, cosmopolitanism, and appreciation of science • Romanticism • Feelings, imagination, national identity, and autonomy of the artistic experience • Disappearance of other ideas • Christianity • Modification of the physical world (Newton) • Darwin and Freud • Rationality; liberalism and socialism gave way to nationalism

  3. The New Reading Public • School • Improved literacy (compulsory education) • Government financed • Curriculum • Basic skills: reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic • Necessary for orderly political behavior and more productive labor force • Right knowledge leads to right action • Growth of the teaching profession • Employment for women • Further attention to secondary education by WWI

  4. The New Reading Public • Reading material • Mass-circulation newspapers • Le Petit Journal; the Daily Mail; Daily Express • Carried advertising • Political and religious journals • Families, women, and intellectuals • Sensationalism and scandals; denominational rivalry; pornography; editorials • Government censorship

  5. Scientific Growth • Newton’s science • The world is rational, mechanical, and dependable • Auguste Comte, positivism • Charles Darwin • On the Origin of Species • Not the originator of evolution • Formulated the principal of “natural selection” • Struggle for existence • Survival of the fittest • Could not explain the chance variations • Gregor Mendel levels of classification • World in constant state of mechanical flux • The Descent of Man • Applied evolution by natural selection to human beings • God need not exist for human development • Natural selection not really accepted until 1920s and 1930s combined with genetics • Social Darwinism • New significance to social thought and ethics • Struggle of survival applied to human relationships

  6. Church Under Siege • Organized religion gives way to secular state in the 20th century • The Enlightenment challenged historical credibility, scientific accuracy, and morality • New Issues • Intellectual Skepticism • Questioned whether the bible provided any genuine historical evidence about Jesus • Claimed human authors wrote and revised the Bible with problems of Jewish society and politics in mind • History • 1835 David Friedrich Strauss The Life of Jesus • Julius Wellhausen (Germany), Ernst Renan (France), and Matthew Arnold (Great Britain)

  7. Church Under Siege • New Issues (continued) • Science • William Paley, Natural Theology 1802 • Led Christians to believe that science supported religion • Charles Lyell (geology) • The earth was older than the biblical records contended • Natural causes of floods, mountains, and valleys • Charles Darwin • Moral nature of humans can be explained without appeal to God • Anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists • Religious sentiments are just more natural phenomena

  8. Church Under Siege • New Issues (continued) • Morality • Biblical stories • God cruel and unpredictable; sacrifice of Jesus • Frederich Nietzsche (Germany) • Christianity glorified weakness rather than strength; required sacrifice of flesh and spirit instead of heroic living and daring • Christianity lost intellectual respectability

  9. Church Under Siege • Conflict between Church and State • State financed education without religious teachings • Great Britain • Education Act of 1870 • Education Act of 1902 • France • Dual system of Catholic and public schools • Falloux Law 1850 • 1878-1886 series of educational laws • 1905 Napoleonic Concordat terminated • Germany • Kulturkampf • Catholic church and Catholic Party • 1870-71: put schools under state direction • 1873 the “May Laws” • Bismarck’s attack ultimately failed

  10. Church Under Siege • Religious revival • German Catholics resented German state • Great Britain raised money and expanded the church • Ireland had Catholic devotional revival • France, priests organized pilgrimages for penitents • Miracle of Lourdes • Churches paid more attention to urban poor

  11. Church Under Siege • Roman Catholic Church and Modern World • Resilience of the papacy • Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors • 1869, First Vatican Council • Papal infallibility • 1870, territory limited to Vatican City • Pope is spiritual authority • Leo XIII • Rerum Novarum 1891 • See “Leo XIII Considers the Social Question in European Politics” p. 763 • Pius X • Restoration of traditional devotional life • truggle between Church and modern thought resumed

  12. Islam and the Modern World • Applied same scholarly methods • Ernest Renan and Max Weber • Jamal al-din Al Afghani • Contested European thought • Racial and cultural outlooks • Christian Missionaries • Anti-Islamic attitudes • Established schools and hospitals • Ottoman Empire • Continued to champion Western scientific education • Responses • Salafiyya movement (Salafi) • Outright rejection of the West and modern thought

  13. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Revolution in Physics • Conceptual Science • 1883 Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics • Henri Poincaré and Hans Vaihinger • X Rays and Radiation • Wilhelm Roentgen; discovery of X rays • Henri Becquerel; discovered the power of uranium • J.J. Thomson: theory of the electron • 1902 Ernest Rutherford; explained the cause of radiation • Marie and Pierre Curie; discovery of radium • 1911 Marie Curie awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry

  14. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Quantum Energy, Relativity, and Uncertainty • 1900 Max Planck; quantum theory of energy • 1905 Albert Einstein; theory of relativity • 1927 Werner Heisenberg; uncertainty principle • Results • Science affected daily living • Scientists most successful groups of Western intellectuals in pursuit of research • Related success of science to economic progress, military security, and health of their nations

  15. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Literature: Realism and Naturalism • Brought scientific objectivity and observation to their work • Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac • Cruelty of industrial life and a society based on money • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) • Create a better society through humane values • Emile Zola • Turned realism into a movement • Ibsen, (playwright) and Shaw (writer) • Realists thought it was their duty to portray reality and the commonplace • Helped change moral perception of the good life

  16. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Modernism • Critical of middle-class society and morality • Not deeply concerned with social issues • Walter Pater: all art “constantly aspires to the condition of music.” • Bloomsbury Group • Virginia Woolf • Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse • John Maynard Keynes • Challenged much of the structure of 19th c. economic theory • Marcel Proust, In Search of Time Past 1913 • Stream of consciousness format • Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain • James Joyce, Ulysses • Started before the war, but flourished after WWI

  17. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Art • Impressionism • Portrayed modern life • Fascinated with light, color, and “fleeting” moments • Édouard Manet; Claude Monet; Camille Pissaro; Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Edgar Degas

  18. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Art • Postimpressionism • Drew on impressionist technique but attempted to relate earlier artistic traditions • Form and structure • Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin

  19. 20th Century Frame of Mind • Cubism • Autonomous realm of art with no purpose beyond itself • Form and color • Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque

  20. Revolution in Thought • Friedrich Nietzsche • Questioned the adequacy of rational thinking to the human situation • Attacked Christianity, democracy, nationalism, rationality, science, and progress • Wanted to probe their sources in human character • 1872 The Birth of Tragedy • To limit human activity to rational behavior was to impoverish human life • 1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra; criticized Christianity and democracy • Death of God and coming of Overman • Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and The Genealogy of Morals (1887) • Questioned whether morality itself was valuable • Philosophy was an ever-changing flux; nothing by change is permanent

  21. Sigmund Freud • Austrian doctor with new ideas about the mind • Claims that human behavior is not based on reason • Hypnosis • Free association • Theory of infantile sexuality; challenged childhood innocence • Dreams and subconscious • The Interpretation of Dreams 1900* • Id, ego, super-ego • Dissenters • Carl Jung • Questioned primacy of sexual drive; put less faith in reason

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