Industrial RevolutionRenaissanceEnlightenment

RomanticismVictorian

Modernism

Copernican RevolutionFrench Revolution1848

Das KapitalLeviathan

The Descent of Man

Hegel

SchopenhauerNietzscheDecadencePostmodernPost-War/Post-Holocaust/Postcolonial

Part One

From Ideas to IdeologyThe perversion of philosophy and art in the pursuit of power

Stalinist Purges: 1933-1958Soviet-engineered “drought”—

Ukraine: 1932-1933

How did it come to this?

Holocaust, 1933-1945

The U.S. drops atomic bomb: Hiroshima, 1945

The Renaissance

Scientific explanations of natural phenomena

Weakening of the Church’s authority

Creation of nation-states with stable monarchies

The EnlightenmentGreater secularization of education

Standardization of written vernaculars and grammars

Stress on formation of enlightened societies based on Greco-Roman models of governance

Limitless human potential

The Romantic MovementCelebration of the individual

Highly introspective

Stressed the role emotions play in perceiving and acting with the world (not always reasonable)

Essentially conceived of nature as a force without reason

The Victorian AgeLiterature as social criticism;

Addressed the problems that come with rapid industrialization

Representative of the middle-class since most of the writers were middle class

The emergence of Realism as a working- and middle-class reaction to the Romanticism of the landed and leisure classes

Fin de Siecle Europe and the Decadent Movement

Moved away from Victorian model of art and literature as vehicles for social change (“Art for art’s sake”—Oscar Wilde)

Saw themselves as the culmination of the history and culture of the last two thousand years

Stressed the tedium and malaise of modern, industrial life

Celebrated the artificial

Symbolists (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, etc.) wrote poetry as if it were visual art or music in an attempt to stress the aesthetics of language rather than its meaning

ModernistsAttempted to rejuvenate Western art and literature

Introduced the “psychological novel” based on Freud’s and William James’s models of the psyche

Challenged neoclassical aesthetics

Worked to create a “Modern” mythos to replace the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian

Concerned with origins and sources as a result of creating new mythos

Believed in an “essentialism” in terms of the individual, meaning there was something innate that makes an individual an individual and that something cannot be altered

Preoccupied with the decline of Western Civilization typified in the politics behind World War I

Literature and National Identity

Antiquarian movement began in the late 18th century to preserve folk tales and other cultural artifacts existing in nations before the adoption of neoclassical aesthetic principles and values

The language of literature becomes far more vernacular (less standardized) in response to the increasing standardization of languages and grammars

Increasing interest in the cultures that existed before the Roman Empire and, later, the Church dominated Europe

Nietzsche was not a Nazi

His sister was;

He was dead before the Nazis came to power;

He was an elitist jerk, but he did not propagate murdering people for the sake of murdering people;

His ubermensch (“Overman”) is the ideal individual who shapes his own destiny and dares to be different;

The Nazis stressed uniformity to the point of murdering those whom they deemed “different”;

When Nietzsche writes about Jews, he is speaking of anyone who practices a religion derived from the Hebraic tradition; this includes the three major Western religions;

He believed in meritocracies ruled by the best and brightest, preferably aristocratic, but in no way espoused forcing evolution’s hand through pseudo-sciences like Eugenics.

Darwin and Eugenics

Charles Darwin’s theories of sexual selection and evolution gave rise to the pseudo-science of Eugenics;

Eugenicists believed humanity could be perfected by ridding the gene pool of those who did not meet their standards of the “fittest”;

They also believed that humans, like dogs and cats, were made up of different “species”/“races”;

Each race had different abilities, and these “racial” attributes should be taken into consideration in social and political hierarchies; some races were more fit to rule while others were more fit to be ruled;

Darwin makes no mention of using his theories to promote misguided political aims, nor to genetically engineer the human race.

Totalizing VisionsThe tendency of Western thought to reduce human experience to models meant to be applied across the board regardless of individual circumstances;

Example: Freud

Everything tends to go back to the Oedipal complex;

Would often shoe-horn individual experiences into Oedipal complex;

Denied differences in gender or cultural background when applying his psychoanalytical models;

Denied any evidence to contradict his primary theory (Oedipal complex).

Nazi Ideology and the Abuse of Philosophy and Art

Could deny God due to dominance of science over religion

Believed certain men had limitless potential

Celebration of the abstract “individual” (every human being) transformed into an excuse for megalomania

Used the rhetoric of the middle and working classes to gain support

Saw themselves as the culmination of history

Claimed to have the solution to their definition of European decadence (excess instead of malaise; political instead of aesthetic)

Used Germanic (Norse) myths to create the mythos of the Third Reich

Misused Nietzsche’s concept of the Overman (representative of radical individuality) and applied it solely to Nazi officials to justify their rank and power

Took advantage of Eugenics to further bastardize Darwin’s theories of evolution to advance a racist agenda

Borrowed racist ideology from European aristocrats and imperialist officials to organize the state

Reduced all of humanity to race and, consequently, their notions of “good” and “evil” based on racist assumptions

A Convenient “Truth”:Capitalism, imperialism, and the rights of man

Comte de Gobineau: The Father of Racism

French nobleman (though he may have been an impostor) who feared for the fate of the French aristocracy;

Believed the bourgeois French were descendants of Gallic-Roman slaves, and the nobility were descended from Germanic stock;

Went so far as to claim he himself was descended from Odin, a Scandinavian pirate;

Believed the decline of the aristocracy and, by extension, civilization was the result of mixing “noble” blood with that of “lesser” individuals.

European ImperialismRevealed the limited definition of “man” used by authors and governments during the formation of democracies;

Used the myths of the “noble savage” and the “white man’s burden” to further imperial aims;

A result of surplus capital and surplus labor (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism);

Created and/or perpetuated race-based governing structures;

Worked to alienate indigenous populations and imperial officials alike.

Effects of Imperialism

A confusion of economy and state that persists to this day;

Imperialism furthers the interests of capitalism, not democracy;

Imperialism motivated by private business interests, not the state;

State aids private business interests in imperial efforts because it may help the economy.

Capitalism and Imperialism

Capitalism works according to a “boom and bust” cycle;

Too much capital creates a “bust” due to “over-saving”;

Imperialism preserves the boom a bit longer or makes the bust less painful because investors may “spend” their money in a foreign market, syphoning the surplus capital out of the economy;

Also uses colonialism to export labor to other nations to curb unemployment.

Totalitarianism in EuropeBad conscience, willful ignorance, and opportunism

“An idea is always a generalization, and a generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.”

— Hegel

“In the eyes of dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for all times, nothing is absolute or sacred.”

— Marx

“Madness is something rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule.”

— Nietzsche

While Britain remained relatively stable, which is a fact Hannah Arendt attributes to the nation’s two-party political system, nations on the continent were in political turmoil;

Many practiced a multiparty system that served private interests rather than the welfare of the general public (imagine if all of our lobbyists decided to create their own parties instead of trying to influence the leaders of our two parties, and you will have some idea of the chaos);

Due to way too many competing private interests, the majority of Europeans on the continent became disillusioned with, if not downright hostile, to democracy as they experienced it;

With the bloated party system, people began to mistrust and despise all of them—even those that might claim to be working in their interests;

Certain politically savvy folks took advantage of the situation and began marketing themselves to the people as “movements” instead of parties;

As “movements,” they claimed to be “above the fray” and the state—looking out for the interests of the common man and the national population as a whole instead of representing one class or sector of society;

Thus, by the 1933 election in Germany, the country had split over ideologies (what’s best for the nation and “humanity” as a whole) rather than specific, tangible interests related to one group or another;

While these ideologies were, in part, based upon philosophy, the members of each “movement” in Germany (barring the conservative party that still championed the wealthy) had to reach the masses and gain popular support;

As a result, they took universal and abstract principles and applied them as if they were courses of action to be assigned to specific groups of individuals.

The Political Climate in Europe after World War I

From philosophy to ideologyHegelian and Marxist dialectics, which may be visualized as follows:

Encourages the study something in order to arrive at a general idea that culminates in a tentative agreement regarding just action or the “truth,” but continues to evolve until all human thought ceases to exist. In other words, there will be no utopia, no human perfection, no “final solution.”

Thesis

Anti-Thesis

Anti-Thesis

Thesis

Object under study

Synthesis SynthesisSynthesis

Observation

Observation

Observation

Observation

ThesisObservation

Anti-ThesisObservation

ThesisObservation

Anti-ThesisObservation

Philosophy

Pursues truth, doesn’t attain it;Concerned with questions, not answers;Based on evidence and logic;Dynamic, not static;Reviews and revises what went before;Expects its own review and revision in the future;Abstract and general;The personal becomes the ethical or political;Is not tied to identity;A person does not practice a philosophy;The goal is the acquisition of knowledge and creating new knowledge.

Totalitarianism

Secular

Professes to be the only truth;Answers morally fundamental questions;Considered to be infallible;Based on faith, which requires neither evidence nor logic, only divine sanction;Those who question it will be punished for all eternity;Concrete and specific;The moral and political become the personal;A person must practice a religion since it is tied to identity;The goal is attainable, tangible, and self-centered: personal salvation.

Western Religions

SacredSecular as Sacred

The ideology supporting it is the only truth;Answers politically fundamental questions;Considered to be infallible;Based on falsified evidence and specious logic;Tied to identity;Those who question it will be ostracized;Concrete and specific;Adherents to the ideology idolize its creator;Appeals to an individual’s desire for a “higher purpose”;The goal is attainable, tangible, and self-centered: power.

Benefit: decreased individual and global suffering through knowledge

Benefit: the end of internal, social, and global conflict Benefit: heaven and, eventually,

heaven on earthCost: accepting ambiguity and uncertainty

Costs:• human suffering on a global scale• self and individual identity• permanent suspension of reason

Cost: suspension of reason in matters of faith

Genocide, Darfur: 2003-2009

Genocide, Cambodia: 1975-1975

Genocide, Northern Iraq: 1988

Genocide, Bosnia:1992-1995

Genocide, Rwanda:1994

“What we learn from history is that we

never learn from

history.”—

Hegel

Genocide, Syria: 2012-Present