Age of Anxiety

1. Chap 28 Age of Anxiety

2. WWI = Crisis of Faith in Reason • The masses of dead and wounded led to a questioning of progress, reason, rights of individuals and the logical (Newtonian) universe • Laws of science and society were no longer viewed optimistically

3. Roots of Modern Philosophy • Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) • Rejected Christianity, “God is Dead and we have killed him.” Blamed a crisis of faith on the modern Christian, who, to Nietzsche had forgotten what it meant to BE Christian • Overemphasis on the rationality of humankind since ancient Athens needed to be questions • Prophetic about the direction the Western world was headed • Believed that self-actualization would only happen if superior individuals rose above the humdrum masses.

4. Nietzsche’s own words • “Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.”

5. French Thinkers Henri Bergson (1859-1941) Paul Valery (1871- 1945) Crisis of mind in Europe Future was dark and foreboding for this continent “I said that to invite minds to concern themselves with Mind and its destiny was a sign and symptom of the times. Would that idea have occurred to me, had not a whole body of impressions been sufficiently significant and powerful to reflect themselves in me, and for that reflection to become action? And that action, which consists of expressing it in your presence, would not perhaps have been accomplished had I not felt that my impressions were those of many other people, that the sensation of a diminution of mind, of a menace to culture, of a twilight of the most pure gods was a sensation which imposed itself with increasing strength on all those who are capable of feeling something in the order of superior values of which we are speaking.” • French philosopher that proposed that immediate experience and intuition as valuable as rationality • Poetry or religious experience was more accessible to human experience than the laws of math or science Georges Sorel (1847-1922) Inspiring but not rational Rejected democracy for a ruling elite Thought a general strike could topple capitalism

6. Logical Empiricism The philosophy Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) His Essay on Logical Philosophy was arguing that philosophy was the logical arrangement of thoughts and that language usage must be considered Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem... • Rejection of traditional philosophy and God • Philosophical issues were somewhat of a waste of time • Personal preferences not provable by math and science

7. Existentialism • Moral search in an era of anxiety and uncertainty inspired by atheists and Nietzsche • Began in France • A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

8. Existentialist Minds Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) Albert Camus (1913-1960) Powerful responder to the profound moral views of our contemporary crisis Saw life as inherently absurd (Absurdism) – we need to create our own meaning We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink. • Human beings simply exist. we’re alone, there is no God to help and we are bound by despair. Meaninglessness of life is real “Main is condemned to be free.” Can either commit suicide or make something of their lives Choose your own actions courageously in the full knowledge that you’re responsible for your own actions.

9. Revival of Christianity • Moralistic aspects played up; supernatural aspects played down • Existentialist Christians – stressing similar concerns as existentialist atheists • Rediscovery of SØren Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher) – total commitment to a remote and majestic God to reconcile the crisis of existence • Modernized by Karl Barth – Protestant theologian. Reason and will hopelessly flawed. Needed to use religion to achieve stability

10. New Physics • Discovery of the atomic design throws Newtonian physics out the window • Marie Curie and her husband Pierre researched radium, radiation and realized the instability of certain elements. • Max Planck – subatomic particles emitted energy called quanta. Matter and energy – different forms of the same? • Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – Theory of Relativity, building on the new ideas of instability • Closed framework of Newtonian physics was limited

11. “Heroic Age” of Physics – 1920s • Ernest Rutherford – split atom apart in 1919 • By 1944, subatomic particles indentified • Neutrons capacity to pass through other atoms- chain reaction of unbelievable force • Heisenberg – principle of uncertainty, impossible to predict electron’s behavior • No more easy, predictable answers from the “Queen of the sciences”

12. Surfing the Mind - Psychology • Sigmund Freud – human behavior is basically irrational • Unconscious “id”- primitive, irrational (sex, aggression and pleasure drives) • Rationalizing consciousness or “ego” – what a person CAN do • Ingrained moral values or “superego” – what we SHOULD do • Instinctual drives are very strong – can destroy the rational and ingrained moral drives • Too much repression could also lead to irrational fears and psychoses

13. It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. Sometimes a cigar is JUST a cigar… It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

14. 20th Century Literature • Adoption of a 1st person, limited, confusing narrator • Complexity and irrationality of the human mind • Memories, feelings, desires • Stream of consciousness technique • Distopian – future was disturbing

15. Famous authors • Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, TS Eliot, WH Auden, Aldous Huxley, CS Lewis

16. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. – Kafka • In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her. - Proust • History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. – James Joyce • Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death. - Huxley

17. Modern Architecture • Constant experimentation • Revolutionary design • Even in architecture – functionalism that had purpose AND beauty • Frank Lloyd Wright • Walter Gropius • Bauhaus

19. Painting Prior to WW1 Post-ww1 Surrealism and Dadaism – 1920s -30s Attacked all accepted standards of art and behavior Dadaism – intentionally Non-sensical Surrealism - Fantastic world of dreams • Impressionism of the 1880s – superrealism to capture the overall feelings of an experience • Post-impressionism/expressionism – abstract and non-representational • Fascination with form • Complicated psychological view of reality

22. New Media • Movies • Radio • Used by fascist leaders to promote their own agenda