Chapter 27: The Age of Anxiety

Click here to download Chapter 27 Study Guide

Ch 27. The Age of Anxiety 1900-1940

Uncertainty in Modern Thought

·      Decades surrounding WWI 1880s to 1930s brought intense cultural and intellectual experimentation

o   Philosophy, science, literature

·      New ideas spread rapidly after war

·      Began to question and abandon many cherished values and beliefs since the ENLT and the 19^th c scientific/industrial triumphs

·      Ordinary ppl found many revolutionary ideas unsettling

o   Many turned to Christianity, which experienced a remarkable revival

Modern philosophy

·      Before 1914, ppl still believed in ENLT philosophies of progress, reason, and individ rights

·      Supporters of ENLT view saw Polit rights spreading to women/workers, rising standard of living, taming of the city, and growth of state supported social programs as improvement

o   Encouraged faith in the ability of a rational human mind to understand the universe through intellectual investigation

o   Laws of society that rational humans could discover and act on

·      As 19^th c drew to an end, small group of serious thinkers and creative writers mounted a “determined attack” on the well worn optimistic ideas

o   Rejected general faith in progress and the rational human mind

o   Friedrich Nietzsche: Never a sympathetic philosopher, wrote as a prophet in a provocative and poetic style

§  Argued the West overemphasized rationality and stifled the authentic passions and animal instincts that drive human activity and true creativity

§  Believed reason, democracy, progress, and respectability were outworn social and psychological constructs whose influence was suffocating self-realization and excellence

§  Rejected religion: Christianity embodied a “slave morality” that glorified weakness, envy, and mediocrity

§  “God is dead” murdered by modern Christians who no longer really believed in him

§  Painted a dark world

§  West was in decline; false values had triumphed

§  Death of God left ppl disoriented and depressed

§  Only hope for individ was to accept the meaninglessness of human existence and then make that very meaningless a source of self defined personal integrity and hence liberation

§  That way, at least a few superior individuals could free themselves from the humdrum thinking of the masses and become true heroes

·      Little read during his active years, Nietzsche’s work attracted gorwign attention in the early 20^th c

·      Artists and writers experimented with his ideas, which were fundamental to the rise fo the philosophy of existentialism in the 1920s

·      Subsequent generations have remade Neitzsche to suit their own needs, and his influence remainds today

·      Growign dissatisfaction with established ideas was apparent in other important thinkers

o   Henri Bergson: Immediate experience and intuition were as important as rational and scientific thinking for understanding reality

§  A religious experience or a mystical poem was often more accessible to human comprehension than was a scientific law or math equation

o   Georges Sorel: Marxian socialism was an insprin gbut unprovable religion, rather than a scientific truth as Marx had argued

§  Socialism would shatter capitalist society through a great general strike of all working ppl inspired bya myth of revolution

§  Rejected democracy and believed that the masses of the new socialist society would have to be tightly controlled by a small revolutionary elite

·      WWI accelerated revolt against established certainties in philosophy, but went in 2 directions

o   English speaking countries: acceptance of logical positism

o   Continental countries: existentialism

·      Logial positivism was revolutionary

o   Aruged that what we know about human life must be based on rational facts and direct observation

o   Theology and most of traditional philosophy was meaningless because even the most cherished ideas about God were impossible to prove using logic

·      Ludwig Wittgenstein: Logical positivism; philosophy is ony the logical clarification of thoughts, and therefore it should concentrate on the study of language, which expresses throughts

o   Great philosophical issues of the ages – God, freedom, morality – are quite literally senseless, a great waste of time

o   Neither scientific experiments nore logic of math could demostrate their validity

o   Statements about such matters reflected only the personal preferences of a given individual

o   “Of what one cannot speak, of that one must keep silent”

·      Logical positivism, dominant in England and US today, drastically reduced the scope of philosophical inquiry and offered little solace to ordinary ppl

·      On the continent: existentialism

o   Loosely united diverse/contradictory thinkers in a search for usable moral values ina world of anxiety and uncertainty

·      Heidegger and Jaspers: emphasis on the loneliness and meaningless of human existence in a godless world and the individual’s  need to come to tersm with the fear caused by this situation

·      Most existentialism thinkers were atheists

o   Inspired by Nietzsche, did not believe that a supreme being had established huanity’s fundamental nature and viven life its meaning

·      Jean-Paul Satre: No God given, timeless trutsh outside of individual existence

o   Only after they are born do ppl struggle to defin their essence

o   Existence is absurd

o   Humans are alone, there is no God to help them

o   Left to confront arrival of dead and are hounded by despair

o   Shattering of belifs in God, reason, and progress

·      Recognized that humans must act int eh world

·      Because life in meaningless, individs are forced to creat their own meaning and defin themselves through their actions

·      Most ppl try to escape their unwanted freedom by structuring their lives around conventional social norms

·      To escape is to live “bad faith”, to hide from the truths of existence

·      TO live authentically, individs must beome “engaged” and choose their won actiosn in full awareness of their inescapable responsibility for their own behavior

·      Power ethical component: placed stress on individual responsibility and choice

o   “Being in the world” in the right way

·      WWII

o   Terrible conditions reinforced meaningless of life

o   Choose between Hitler or resisting Hitler – Good vs. evil, significance of choice

The Revival of Christianity

·      Decades after WWI witnessed revival of Christian thought

·      Before 1914, science was used to defend religion

o   Christ seen as great moral teacher

·      Some theologians turned  away from unscientific aspects of Christianity

·      Esp after WWI, thinkers and theologians began to revitalize fundamentals of Chritianty

o   Sometimes described as Christina existentials: shared loneliness and despair of eatheistic existentialisted, stressed humans’ sinful nature, need for faith, myster of God’s forginvess

·      Soren Kierkegaard: fundamental Christian belief

o   Impossible for ordinary individs to prove existence of God, but rejected notion that Christinaity was an empty practice

o   Suggested that ppl must take a leap of faith and accept existence of unknown but awesome and majestic God

·      Karl Barth: Humans were imperfect, sinful creatures whose reason and will are flawed

o   Religious truth is made known to humans only throughGod’s grace, not through reason

o   Ppl have to accept God’s word and the supernatural revelation of Jesus Chrit with awe, trust, and obedience, not reason or logic

·      Catholics: Catholocism and religion was answer to postwar “broken” world

·      After 1914, religion became more relevant and meainful to thinking ppl than it had before

o   1920-1950

o   converted to religion or attracted to it

·      Religion was a meaningful answer to uncertainty and anxiety

o   “One began to believe in heaven because one believed in hell”

The New Physics

·      Science unlike religion was based on hard facts

·      Scientific advances influenced beliefs of thinking ppl

·      By late 1800s, became one of the main pillars supporting Western society’s optimistic and rationalistic worldview

·      Unchanging natural laws seemed to determine physical processes and permit useful solutions to more and more problems

·      Comforting to ppl who were no longer part of religion

·      Challenged by  new physics

o   Discovery that atoms were not hard and permanent

o   Marie Curie: Radium constantly emits particles, and does not have a constant weight

o   Max Planck: Energy emitted in uneven spurts called “quanta”

·      Called to question old distinction between matter and energy: implication ws that matter and energy might be diff forms of the same thing

·      Old view of atoms of stable basic building blocks of nature was shaken

·      Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity: time and space are relative to viewpoint of obserer, and only the spped of light is constant for all frames of reference in the unverse

o   Challenged supposedly immutable theories of Newton

·      1920s: Heroic age of physics

o   Breakthrough after breakthrough

o   Rutherford: atom can be split

o   Neutron found

·      Few nonscientists understood revolution in physics, but implications of new theories and discoveries were disturbing to millions of men and women in 1920 and 1930s

o   Heisenberg: uncertainty principle: nature is unknowable and unpredictable

§  Universe lacked absolute objective reality

§  Everything was “relative” that depended on observers frame of reference

·      Ideas of uncertainty caught on among ordinary ppl who found unstable relativistic world strange and troubling

o   Not dependable and rational

o   Only tendencies and probabilities in the complex and uncertain universe

o   Physics no longer provided comforting truths about natural laws or optimistic answers about humanity’s place in an understandable world

Freudian Psychology

·      Questions regarding power and potential of human mind

·      Before Freud, most professional psychologist assumed that conscious mind processed sense experienced in a rational and logical way, thus human behavior was the result of rational calculation

·      Sigmund Freud, 1880s

o   Human behavior was irrational, governed by the unconscious, a sort of mental reservoir that contained vital instinctual drives and powerful memories

o   Unconscious was unknowable to the conscious mind, but it deploy influenced people’s behavior, so that they were unaware of the source or meaning of thei actions

o   Three structure of the self, the id, ego, and super ego that were at war with one another

§  Primitive, irrational id was unconscious: source of sexual, aggressive, pleasure seeking instictincts it sought immediate fulfillment of all desires and was totally amoral

§  Id was kept in check by superego, the conscience of internalized voice of  parental or social control

§  Superego was also irrational: overly strict and puritan, and was constantly in conflict with pleasure seeking id

§  Ego: rational self that was mostly conscious and worked to negotiate between the demands of the id and superego

o   Healthy individual possessed strong ego that balanced id and superego

o   Mental illness from three structure were out of balance

o   Danger of society when unacknowledged drives might overwhelm the control mechanisms of the ego in a violent, distorted way

§  Talking cure of speaking of problems to solve unconscious tensions

o   Mechanisms of rational thinking and traditional moral values could be too strong: civilization was possible ony when individs renounced irrational instincts to live peaceably

o   Renunciation made communal life possible, but left instincts unfulfilled and led to widespread unhappiness

o   Western civilization was inescapably neurotic

·      Only after 1919 died Freudian psychology receive popular attention

·      Some interpreted Freud as saying requirement for mental health was an uninhibited sex life

·      For others, it undermined old easy optimism about the rational and progressive nature of the human mind

Twentieth Century Literature

·      Western lit influenced by pessimism, relativism, and alienation

·      19^th c writers wrote as all knowing narrators describing realistic characters

·      New techniques to express new realities

·      Limited, confused viewpoint of single individ

·      Focused attention on complexity and irrationality of human mind where feelings, memories, and desires are forever scrambled

·      Stream of consciousness technique: reliance on internal monologues to explore psyche

o   Virginia Woolf

o   William Faulkner

o   James Joyce: Mirror modern life: gigantic riddle waiting to be unraveled

·      Turned focus from society to individual and from realism to psychological relativity

·      Rejected idea of progress: “anti-utopias” of things to come

o   Western culture was in its old age and would soon be overtaken by East Asia

Modernism in Architecture, Art, and Music

·      Creative artists rejected old forms and values

·      Modernism in architecture/art/music meant constant experimentation and a search for new kinds of expression

Architecture and Design

·      Architects in late 19^th c begun to transform physical framework of urban society

·      US: rapid urban growth and lack of rigid building traditions, pioneered new architecture

o   1890s Chicago school of architects used cheap steel, reinforced concrete, and electric elevators to build skyscrapers and office buildings lacking exterior ornamentation

o   Frank Lloyd Wright:  series of modern houses featuring low lines, open interiors, and mass produced building materials

·      ERPNs were inspired by Am examples of functional construction

·      Promoters of modern architecture argued that buildings and living spaces should be build according to functionalism: Buildings, like industrial products, should be useful and functional – they should serve the purpose for which they were made

o   A house is a machine for living in

o   Architects should adopt latest tech in construction

o   No longer decorate buildings, but find beauty in clean straight lines of practical construction and efficient machinery

o   Symmetrical rectangles of steel, concrete, glass

·      In ERP, architectural leadership centered in German speaking countries

o   Bauhaus: brought together leading modern architects, designers, and theatrical innovators, 1920s

o   Effective, inspired team, combined study of fine art with applied art in crafts of printing, weaving, and furniture making

o   Stress on functionalism and good design for everyday life

o   Attracted students all over the world”

New Artistic Movements

·      Decades surrounding WWI, visual arts experienced radical change and experimentation

o   New artistic way to challenge assumption of ppl trying to paint reality

o   Became increasingly abstract

o   Turned backs on figurative representation and began to form its constituent parts: lines, shapes, colors

·      Widely popular: ppl flocked to centers to train

·      Impressionsim: Blossomed in Paris in 1870s: Monet, Degas

o   Tried to portray their sensory impression in their work

o   Looked at orld for subject matter

o   Turned backs on traditional themes such as battles, religious scenes,

·      1890s: Postimpressionists Van Gogh added psychological element to search within self and express deep feelings on canvas

·      Picasso and Cubism

o   Representation of mood, not objects

·      WWI encouraged radicalism