Chapter 28 Flashcards
What was the status of the Age of Anxiety before WWI?
A complex revolution of thought and ideas was underway, but only small, unusual groups of people were aware of it
How could the Age of Anxiety be described?
Question and even abandon many cherished values that had guided it since the 18th century Enlightenment and the 19th century Industrial Revolution
What did people believe in before and after WWI?
Pre WWI-
-Progress, reason, and the rights of the individual
-Progress is a daily reality
-Rising Standard of Living, Taming the city, and education
-Faith in Newton physics, human minds, intellectual investigation, laws of science and society
-Overall- optimistic view of life and individual rights
Post WWI-
-Expanding chorus of these pessimistic thinkers
-Suggested that human beings were a wild pack of violent, irrational animals quite capable of tearing both rights and individuals to shreds
Who was Paul Valery?
He was a French poet in the early 1920s who spoke of the “crisis of the mind” and of a dark and foreboding European future. He also spoke of the “cruelly injured mind” besieged by doubts and suffering from anxiety.
What did modern philosophy aim to do?
Challenge the belief in progress and general faith in the rational human mind
Late-19th century
Who was Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900)?
BEFORE AGE OF ANXIETY
Influential German philosopher
Rejected Christianity
Professor of classical languages
Said- Ever since Athens- West overemphasized rationality and stifled the creative passion and instinct
Questioned all values
Christianity is the “Slave morality”- glorify weakness, envy, and mediocrity
Painted a dark world that painted a picture of his later loss of sanity
Who said, “A wise fool proclaims that God is dead, dead because he has been murdered by lackadaisical modern Christians who no longer really believe in him”?
Nietzsche
Who was Henri Bergson?
French
Appeal/convincing to many young people
Immediate experience and intuition were as important as rational/scientific thinking in reality
Religious experience or mythical poem id more accessible to human comprehension
Who was Georges Sorel?
French
Marx Socialism- inspiring but unprovable
Socialism would happen- great general strike of all working people
Reject democracy
Socialist society controlled by a small revolutionary elite
When were Nietzsche, Bergson, and Sorel?
Late 1800s to early 1900s- pre-WWI
What effect did WWI have on philosophy?
Accelerated the revolt against established certainties
TWO VERY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
What did philosophy turn into in English countries? What was it?
Logical empiricism (logical positivism)
Truly revolutionary
Rejected most of the concerns of traditional philosophy- god and the meaning of happiness are nonsense and reduced the scope of philosophical inquiry drastically
Who began Logical Empiricism and what did he do?
Austria- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Came to England and trained disciples
Philosophy is the only logical study of thoughts and therefor becomes the study of language
Philosophical issues of nonsense/cannot be proved- God, freedom, and morality
“Of what one cannot speak, of that one must keep silent”
What is existentialism?
The branch of philosophy that developed on Continental Europe during the Age of Anxiety
Highly diverse- thinkers were loosely united by a courageous search for moral values in a world of terror and uncertainty
True voices of the Age of Anxiety
Most- atheist- inspired by Nietzsche
But did recognize that human beings must act and that there is a possibility of giving meaning to human life through actions and defining oneself through choices
Who is Sartre?
French existentialist
Human beings simply exist- honest human beings are terribly alone and hounded by the despair and meaninglessness of life
“Man is condemned to be free”
Where did Existentialism first appear?
Germany in the 1920s
Heigegger and Jaspers appealed to students
When did existentialism hit France?
During/after WWII
Needed to choose sides
Sartre and Camus
What was an interesting twist in philosophy for the religious people?
Religious existentialism- revitalizes the fundamentals of Christianity. Combined the loneliness of the existentialists and stressed humans sins, the need for faith, and the mystery of god’s forgiveness
What were physics based on before the Age of Anxiety?
Comfort in the unchanging natural laws- Newton
How did the Atom change in physics in the Age of Anxiety?
Not a hard, permanent ball- composed of many smaller, faster particles such as electrons and protons
Marie Curie and Planck
