Transcript The Age of Anxiety

THE AGE OF
ANXIETY
1900-1940
THE SCREAM
EDWARD MUNCH
UNCERTAINTY IN MODERN
THOUGHT
Modern Philosophy
• Nietzsche – emptiness of
social convention,
meaninglessness of
individual life
• Ubermench –
“superman” goes against
society without wanting
followers.
• All that matters is selfdefined personal
integrity.
• Existentialism – each
person creates their own
truth based on
experiences
EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE
EUROPEAN CONTINENT EXISTENTIALISM
Atheists who sought morals in a world of terror and uncertainty
Jean-Paul Sarte defined life by purposeful choices
Albert Camus (The Stranger)
• Only constant is human absurdity
Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers attracted Germans to Existentialism
English Speaking
Countries’
Philosophies
Logical Postivism
• Human life must be based upon rational
facts and direct observation.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized the
logical relationship between propositions
and the world.
• If something cannot be empirically or
logically proven (like God or morality) it
was not valid.
• (Later, he rejected many of his earlier
beliefs and argued that we are limited by
our language – symbol for meanings that
limits actual meanings)
REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY
Also in despair, some turned to
God as the only answer to
loneliness and anxiety after the
Great War
•Kierkegaard: “leap of faith” to
reach an unknowable God
•Barth: neo-Lutheran. Truth
known only by God’s grace.
•Aldus Huxley Brave New
World
THE NEW PHYSICS
•Marie Curie (1867-1934) and Max Planck (1858-1947) new
atomic theory
– No longer unbreakable blocks of life
•Albert Einstein (1879-1955) changed Newtonian physics
– Space and time are relative to the viewpoint of the observer
– Matter and energy are interchangeable
– Unifies infinite universe with subatomic world (just like?)
•Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) atom could be split
•Big Idea: Newtonian physics = rational world
New Physics = tendencies and probabilities
RELATIVITY
FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939) was first
to rationally explain
human behavior
• Became popular in
US and Europe
around 1918
20TH CENTURY LITERATURE
19 TH CENTURY AUTHORS
20 TH CENTURY AUTHORS
All –knowing narrators
describing characters
and relationships
Point of view of single,
confused individual or
people
Marcel Proust, Virginia
Woolf, William Faulkner,
and James Joyce
ART
MOVIES
Replaced traditional arts and amusement – weekly entertainment
RADIO
Commercially available in 1920
Most households in Britain and Germany had inexpensive sets by late
1930s
Political propaganda tool
MUSIC
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) emotional intensity of expressionism
• The Rite of Spring
Alban Berg (1885-1935) Expressionism into opera
Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951) atonal music
EUROPEAN POLITICS
1922 France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr
American Dawes Plan (1924) cut reparations and funded European
recovery with American loans
Weimar Republic (democracy) in Germany
• Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929)
Britain – Labour Party passed welfare measures guaranteeing social
peace and class equality
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Economic Crisis caused by speculation and inflation
Classical economics did not account for deficit spending as a way to
stimulate the economy (John Maynard Keynes)
• The New Deal – USA
Swedish Social Democratic Party stabilized economy with social
welfare and deficit spending (like New Deal)
Depression in Germany…