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| Uncertainty in Modern Thought : Uncertainty in Modern Thought | | Nietzsche : Nietzsche Before World War I Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that the optimistic Christian order of the West was obsolete, and that it stifled creativity and excellence.
He called for superior individuals to recognize the emptiness of social convention and the meaninglessness of individual life. A work by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885. It famously declares that "God is dead", elaborates Nietzsche's conception of the will to power, and serves as an introduction to his doctrine of eternal return.
Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written", the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized Zarathustra. The text encompasses passages of poetry and song, often mocking Judaeo-Christian morality and tradition. "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
"Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"
– Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann Takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, replacing that work's sunny and life-affirming character with a highly critical, polemical approach.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attacks past philosophers for their alleged lack of critical sense and their blind acceptance of Christian premises in their consideration of morality.
The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual. | | Bergson : Bergson Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor. Its chief landmarks were the publication of his four principal works:
in 1889, Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience);
in 1896, Matter and Memory (Matière et mémoire);
**in 1907, Creative Evolution (L'Evolution créatrice);
and in 1932, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion).
The Frenchman Henri Bergson argued that immediate experience and intuition were at least as important as rational thinking and science. Evolution is motivated by an élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse.
Creative Evolution | | Georges Sorel : Georges Sorel Described Marxian socialism as an inspiring religion, not a scientific truth.
He believed that after the workers’ revolution a small revolutionary elite would have to run society. Sorel's Antiscience
As Berlin has demonstrated, the French philosopher, Georges Sorel was clearly a holder of antiscience views.
Science is not reality
He dismissed science as "a system of idealised entities: atoms, electric charges, mass, energy and the like–fictions compounded out of observed uniformities…deliberately adapted to mathematical treatment that enable men to identify some of the furniture of the universe, and to predict and…control parts of it." [1; 301] He regarded science more as "an achievement of the creative imagination, not an accurate reproduction of the structure of reality, not a map, still less a picture, of what there was. Outside of this set of formulas, of imaginary entities and mathematical relationships in terms of which the system was constructed, there was ‘natural’ nature–the real thing…" [1; 302] He regarded such a view as "an odious insult to human dignity, a mockery of the proper ends of men," [1; 300] and ultimately constructed by "fanatical pedants," [1; 303] out of "abstractions into which men escape to avoid facing the chaos of reality." [1; 302]
Science is not nature
As far as Sorel was concerned, "nature is not a perfect machine, nor an exquisite organism, nor a rational system." [1; 302] He rejected the view that "the methods of natural science can explain and explain away ideas and values…or explain human conduct in mechanistic or biological terms, as the…blinkered adherents of la petite science believe." [1; 310] He also maintained that the categories we impose upon the world, "alter what we call reality…they do not establish timeless truths as the positivists maintained," [1; 302] and to "confuse our own constructions with eternal laws or divine decrees is one of the most fatal delusions of men." [1; 303] It is "ideological patter…bureaucracy, la petite science…the Tree of Knowledge has killed the Tree of Life…human life [has been reduced] to rules that seem to be based on objective truths." [1; 303] Such to Sorel, is the appalling arrogance of science, a vast deceit of the imagination, a view that conspires to "stifle the sense of common humanity and destroy human dignity." [1; 304]
Science is not a recipe
Science, he maintained, "is not a ‘mill’ into which you can drop any problem facing you, and which yields solutions," [1; 311] that are automatically true and authentic. Yet, this is precisely how too many people seem to regard it.
To Sorel, that is way "too much of a conceptual, ideological construction," [1; 312] smothering our perception of truth through the "stifling oppression of remorselessly tidy rational organisation." [1; 321] For Sorel, the inevitable "consequence of the modern scientific movement and the application of scientific categories and methods to the behaviour of men," [1; 323] is an outburst of interest in irrational forces, religions, social unrest, criminality and deviance - resulting directly from an overzealous and monistic obsession with scientific rationalism.
And what science confers, "a moral grandeur, bureaucratic organisation of human lives in the light of…la petite science, positivist application of quasi-scientific rules to society–all this Sorel despised and hated," [1; 328] as so much self-delusion and nonsense that generates no good and nothing of lasting value. In essence, something of a Romantic like Blake, Sorel would say, "the artist creates as the bird sings on the bough, as the lily bursts into flower, to all appearance for no ulterior purpose." [2; 196]
Above quotations from:
[1] Sir Isaiah Berlin, Against The Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, London: Pimlico, 1997
[2] Sir Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality - Studies in Ideas and Their History, London: Pimlico, 1996
| | World War I accelerated change in philosophical thought : World War I accelerated change in philosophical thought Change took two main directions. | | In English-speaking countries logical empiricism dominated : In English-speaking countries logical empiricism dominated Logical empiricism (aka logical positivism or neopositivism) was an early 20th century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Some of the key figures in this movement were
Otto Neurath,
Moritz Schlick
and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with
A.J. Ayer,
Rudolf Carnap
and Hans Reichenbach.
Ludwig Wittgenstein reduced philosophy to the study of language, arguing that philosophers could not make meaningful statements about God, freedom, morality, and so on. Wikipedia Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
It sets forth on an ambitious project to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of philosophy by articulating “…the conditions for a logically perfect language.” (Russell, p. 8 in the C. K. Ogden Translation)
The goal was a philosophical system that would complete Bertrand Russell's early philosophy of "logical atomism." Wikipedia | | Disillusionment after WW I : Disillusionment after WW I Pessimism over idea of human progress
Spengler, Decline of the West
Decline was conceived and begun before the outbreak of World War I, and deliberately looks beyond the fate of Germany to include the fate of the West as a whole.
Oswald Spengler spent over a decade writing the two volumes.
His worldview also took a dim view of democracy as the type of government of the declining civilization. He argued that democracy is driven by money and therefore corrupt.
The acceptance of this attitude by many readers hastened the failure of the Weimar democratic system and gave credence to the rise of Hitler as a dictator.
Spengler initially supported the rise of a strong-willed leader type of government as the next phase after democracy fails.
Impact
Spengler presented a worldview that resonated with post-WWI German culture. His grim view of an inexorable doom for western civilization implied acceptance of fate, but also offered a sense of freedom from the past.
"Plato and Goethe stand for the philosophy of Becoming, Aristotle and Kant the philosophy of Being.
[This saying of Goethe] must be regarded as the expression of a perfectly definite metaphysical doctrine.
I would not have a single word changed of this: “The Godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and the set-fast; and therefore, similarly, the reason is concerned only to strive towards the divine through the becoming and the living, and the understanding only to make use of the become and the set-fast.”
This sentence comprises my entire philosophy."
| | Loss of a Moral Compass : Loss of a Moral Compass “weakness” of democracy
Religion discredited
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Existentialism
Formative years of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Albert Camus (1913-1960) | | On the Continent existentialism dominated : On the Continent existentialism dominated
Existentialists generally were atheists, but they sought moral values in a world of terror and uncertainty.
Jean-Paul Sartre argued that human beings are forced to define themselves by their choices. If they do so consciously, they can overcome life’s meaninglessness.
Existentialism first gained popularity in Germany in the 1920s as Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers attracted followers.
Existentialism flowered during and right after World War II. The existentialists Sartre and Albert Camus were both active in the French resistance against Hitler. The philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though neither used the term "existentialism", are considered fundamental to the existentialist movement. Jean-Paul Sartre Albert Camus | | Sartrean existentialism : Sartrean existentialism Some of the tenets associated with the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre include:
Existence precedes essnce
This is a reversal of the Aristotlean premise that essence precedes existence, where man exists to fulfill some purpose. Sartrean existentialism argues that man has no predefined purpose or meaning; rather, humans define themselves in terms of who they become as their individual lives are played out in response to the challenges posed by existence in the world.
Values are subjective
Sartre accepts the premise that something in the "Facticity" (i.e., the properties of an object or person as traditionally conceived and experienced) of an individual is valuable because the individual consciousness chooses to value it. Sartre denies that there are any objective standards on which to base values. However, this should not be confused with post-modernism. Sartre clearly believed that systems of consciousness followed clear and solid rules.
Bad Faith
Sartre believed that people lie to themselves and, underneath these lies, people negate their own being through patterns. The preceperi is similar to what today is called insight. It is necessary to get rid of bad faith.
The Gaze
Sartre believed that beings possess the power to look at themselves and at another or an object, which is to use one's mind to look at the person in static. This concept of "looking" and the power to look, is referred to as The Gaze. This destroys an object's subjectivity. The thing becomes an "in itself" or an object. Sartre stated that this form of consciousness was used quite often in inter-personal relationships. People place meaning onto what other people think of them rather than what they think of themselves. This process of radically re-aligning this meaning from The Gaze onto one's own being is what leads to periods of existential angst.
Being for others
Sartre believed that people who cannot embrace their freedom seek to be "looked at," that is, to be made an object of another's subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A's being (or sense of identity) is controlled by what person B's thoughts about him are.
Responsibility for choices
The individual consciousness is responsible for all the choices it makes, regardless of the consequences. Condemned to be free because man's actions and choices are his and his alone, he is condemned to be responsible for his free choices. Wikipedia
| | The Revival of Christianity : The Revival of Christianity
Loss of faith in human reason and progress led to renewed interest in Christianity.
Among the theologians and thinkers who turned toward faith in God as the only answer to the loneliness and anxiety of the world after the Great War were:
Karl Barth,
Gabriel Marcel,
T. S. Eliot,
W. H. Auden,
Evelyn Waugh,
Aldous Huxley,
Max Planck,
and many others. Karl Barth
“Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.“
"The best theology would need no advocates: it would prove itself.“
"Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it."
“There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost a canonical status in Protestant theology. But now, we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. ” (Church Dogmatics 1:2, 469)
"The center is not something which is under our control, but something that controls us. ” (Church Dogmatics)
Max Planck The God in which Max Planck believed was an almighty, all-knowing, benevolent but unintelligible God that permeated everything, manifest by symbols, including physical laws.
Planck was interested in truth and Universe beyond observation, and so objected against atheism as an obsession with symbols.
Planck regarded the scientist as a man of imagination and faith, "faith" interpreted as being similar to "having a working hypothesis".
For example the causality principle isn't true or false, it is an act of faith. Thereby Planck may have indicated a view that points toward Imre Lakatos' research programs process descriptions, where falsification is mostly tolerable, in faith of its future removal. T. S. Eliot | | The New Physics : The New Physics | | Slide14 : The research of Marie Curie and Max Planck showed that atoms were not simple hard balls. Curie studied radioactive materials, particularly pitchblende — the ore from which uranium was extracted — which had the curious property of being more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it.
By 1898 they had deduced that the pitchblende must contain traces of an unknown radioactive substance far more radioactive than uranium. On December 26, 1898, Skłodowska-Curie announced the existence of this substance.
Through several years' unceasing work in the most difficult physical conditions, they processed several tons of pitchblende, progressively concentrating the radioactive substances and eventually isolating the chloride salts (refining radium chloride on April 20, 1902) and identifying two previously unknown chemical elements.
The first, they named "polonium," in honor of Skłodowska-Curie's native country, Poland, then still partitioned among three empires, and the other "radium," for its intense "radioactivity" — a word coined by Skłodowska-Curie. Wikipedia German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and therefore one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Marie Curie Max Planck | | Albert Einstein : Albert Einstein GR
Undermined Newtonian physics by postulating the equivalence of mass and energy and by demonstrating that space and time are relative to the viewpoint of the observer. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2.
Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics:
"for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.“
Einstein's many contributions to physics include his special theory of relativity, which reconciled mechanics with electromagnetism, and his general theory of relativity which extended the principle of relativity to non-uniform motion, creating a new theory of gravitation.
His other contributions include:
relativistic cosmology,
capillary action,
critical opalescence,
classical problems of statistical mechanics and their application to quantum theory,
an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules,
atomic transition probabilities,
the quantum theory of a monatomic gas,
thermal properties of light with low radiation density (which laid the foundation for the photon theory),
a theory of radiation including stimulated emission,
the conception of a unified field theory, and the geometrization of physics. Wikipedia General relativity (GR) (aka general theory of relativity (GTR)) is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915/16.
It unifies special relativity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, and the insight that gravitational acceleration can be described by the curvature of space and time. General relativity further calls for the curvature of space-time to be produced by the mass-energy and momentum content of the matter in space-time.
General relativity is distinguished from other metric theories of gravitation by its use of the Einstein field equations to relate space-time content and space-time curvature. wikipedia | | Werner Heisenberg : Werner Heisenberg A celebrated German physicist and Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, and acknowledged to be one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.
He was born in Würzburg, Germany and died in Munich. Heisenberg was the head of German nuclear energy project, though the nature of this project, and his work in this capacity, has been heavily debated.
He is most well-known for discovering one of the central principles of modern physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Hypothesized that it was impossible to know precisely the position and speed of an individual electron.
The stable, rational world of Newtonian physics dissolved into a universe of tendencies and probabilities. | | Freudian Psychology : Freudian Psychology
An Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.
Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind, especially involving the mechanism of repression; his redefinition of sexual desire as mobile and directed towards a wide variety of objects; and his therapeutic techniques, especially his understanding of transference in the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.
He is commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis" and his work has been highly influential — popularizing such notions as the unconscious, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism
Prior to Freud most professional psychologists believed that human behavior was the result of rational calculation by the conscious mind.
Beginning in the late 1880s, Sigmund Freud argued that unconscious and instinctual drives were important factors in determining human behavior.
After 1918 Freudian psychology was popularized in the U.S. and Europe.
The life of the subconscious mind
Repression of sexual desires, fears
Interpretation of Dreams
Free Association
Application to mythology, religion, literature, art, etc.
At the beginning of Chapter One, Freud describes his work thus:
In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams.
| | Twentieth-Century Literature : Twentieth-Century Literature Nineteenth-century authors had written typically as all-knowing narrators describing characters and their relationships. | | “The lost generation” : “The lost generation”
"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." (Sacred Emily, Geography and Plays)
"Do we suppose that all she knows is that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." (Operas and Plays)
"... she would carve on the tree Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose until it went all the way around." (The World is Round)
"A rose tree may be a rose tree may be a rosy rose tree if watered." (Alphabets and Birthdays)
"Indeed a rose is a rose makes a pretty plate...." (Stanzas in Meditation)
"When I said.
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun." (Lectures in America)
"Civilization begins with a rose. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. It continues with blooming and it fastens clearly upon excellent examples." (As Fine as Melanctha)
"Lifting belly can please me because it is an occupation I enjoy.
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
In print on top." (Bee Time Vine)
Gertrude Stein Lost Generation refers to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression.
Significant members included:
Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ezra Pound,
Sherwood Anderson,
Waldo Peirce,
John Dos Pasos,
and T. S Eliot. | | T.S. Eliot : T.S. Eliot A poet, dramatist and literary critic.
He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
He wrote the poems
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock",
The Waste Land,
"The Hollow Men",
"Ash Wednesday",
and Four Quartets;
the plays
Murder in the Cathedral
and The Cocktail Party;
and the essay
"Tradition and the Individual Talent". From The Wasteland
E. P. hopeless and unhelped
Enthroned in the marmorean skies
His verse omits realities,
Angelic hands with mother of pearl
Retouch the strapping servant girl,
...
Balls and balls and balls again
Can not touch his fellow men.
His foaming and abundant cream
Has coated his world. The coat of a dream;
Or say that the upjut of sperm
Has rendered his sense pachyderm.
| | Marcel Proust : Marcel Proust A French intellectual, novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of In Search of Lost Time (in French À la recherche du temps perdu, also titled Remembrance of Things Past in its initial English translation), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven volumes from 1913 to 1927.
Wikipedia In Search of Lost Time
Considered the definitive modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomburg group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922.
More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century."
The role of memory is central to the novel, hence the famous episode with the madeleine in the first volume. When the narrator's grandmother dies, her agony is depicted as her seeming to fall apart; particularly, as her memories seem to flow out of her, she loses contact with it.
In the last volume, Time Regained, a flashbacksimilar to the madeleines episode is the beginning of the resolution of the story.
The narrator is transported back to an earlier time by sensory experiences of memory, triggered by smells, sights, sounds, or touch.
A large part of the novel has to do with the nature of art. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we all are capable of producing art, if by art we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity.
Music is also discussed at great length. Morel, the violinist, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character.
The artistic value of Wagner's music is also discussed. Wikipedia | | Virginia Woolf : Virginia Woolf An English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsburg Group.
Her most famous works include the novels:
Mrs Dalloway (1925),
To the Lighthouse (1927),
and Orlando (1928),
and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum,
"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".
Wikipedia The essay examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare, amongst other topics.
In one section, Woolf invented a fictional "Shakespeare's Sister", Judith, to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women.
A Room of One's Own is written with supreme irony and sarcasm over the power-balance between men and women. | | William Faulkner : William Faulkner An American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Faulkner's writing is often criticized as being dense, meandering and difficult to understand due to his heavy use of such literary techniques as symbolism, allegory, multiple narrators and points of view, non-linear narrative, and especially stream of consciousness
Faulkner is sometimes lauded as the inventor of the "stream-of-consciousness" technique in fiction, although this is misleading; other writers, specifically the French novelists of the nineteenth century, probably used this tecnique first, although Faulkner, once he had discovered this way of writing, used it on a regular basis for the rest of his career, and is by far the most acclaimed American writer in this area. Wikipedia The novel takes place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and is split into four sections. The first is from the viewpoint of Benjy Compson, a thirty-three year old man with mental retardation. The second segment is from the point of view of Quentin Compson, the Harvard-educated student who commits suicide after a series of events involving his sister Caddy. The third is from the point of view of their cynical, embittered brother, Jason, and the fourth is from a third person limited narrative point-of-view focused on Dilsey, the Compson family's black servant, and her unbiased point of view, which allows the reader to make his or her own assumptions from the actions of the other characters. The story overall summarizes the lives of people in the Compson family that has by now fallen into ruin. Many passages are written in a stream of consciousness. Wikipedia The book is told in stream of consciousness style by 15 different narrators in 59 chapters.
It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest - noble or selfish - to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson.
The title derives from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades". Faulkner often recited this quotation from memory.
The novel is known for its stream of consciousness writing technique, multiple narrators, and varying chapter lengths; the shortest chapter in the book consists of just five words: "My mother is a fish". Wikipedia | | James Joyce : James Joyce An Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its highly controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin, providing the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. In particular, his tempestuous early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church is reflected through a similar inner conflict in his recurrent alter ego Stephen Dedalus.
As the result of his minute attentiveness to a personal locale and his self-imposed exile and influence throughout Europe, Joyce became simultaneously one of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great English language writers. Wikipedia Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904.
The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus).
Ulysses is an excellent example of stream of consciousness.
June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce's fans worldwide as Bloomsday. | | Modern Art and Music : Modern Art and Music | | Architecture and Design : Architecture and Design From the 1890s onward, architects in Europe and the U.S. pioneered new building styles that stressed functionalism and efficiency of design and used cheap steel and reinforced concrete.
In Germany the Bauhaus school of architecture developed this trend in the 1920s and 1930s.
Form follows function
Square, lifeless, but efficient
Skyscrapers
“glass boxes”
“International Style” Loved by business, government
| | Slide28 : Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper, Berlin-Mitte, Germany. Project, 1921. | | Slide29 : The Villa Cavrois at Croix, near Roubaix, in the North of France
By
Robert Mallet-Stevens | | Modern Painting : Modern Painting Modern painting developed as a reaction to the “super realism” of Impressionism.
After 1905 art became increasingly nonrepresentational/abstract.
Modern art began by painting real objects but with primary attention to the arrangement of color, line, and form (Cézanne, Picasso).
It developed toward the representation of pure form without reference to real objects (Kandinsky) and to attacks on all accepted conventions of art and behavior (the surrealists and the Dadaists). | | Art Nouveau Movement : Art Nouveau Movement Aubrey Beardsley 1872-1898 British Illustrator | | Slide32 : “No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.” Expressionism | | Surrealism : Surrealism Surrealism’s “philosophical” father was Andre Breton.
Surrealism emphasizes the unconscious, the importance of dreams, and the physiological aspect of the arts.
Some important people in the art movement of Surrealism are Salvador Dali, the Italian Giorgio de Chirico and the Russian Marc Chagall. | | Cubism : Cubism “Cubism was initiated by the Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the Frenchman Georges Braques in Paris before World War I.”
It is said that cubism has strong African tribal roots. It is also said that cubism paved the way for Abstract art. | | Slide35 : Pablo Picasso,
A Woman Sitting in a Chair, 1910, Fernand Léger,
The Wedding, 1911, | | Abstract Art : Abstract Art Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky is said to be the father of abstract art.
An abstract painting is one that implies nothing recognizable or even tries to look like something.
Instead, the colors and form is the subject and focus of the painting. | | Art Deco Movement : Art Deco Movement This movement quickly followed the Art Nouveau movement.
It was mainly popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
The Art Deco movement was dominant in fashion, furniture, jewelry, architecture, and interior decoration.
The Chrysler building in New York is an example of Art Deco.
| | Slide38 : This is an example of a architecture in the
Art Deco Movement. Chrysler Building
New York
1938 | | Modern Music : Modern Music Composers moved in the direction of dissonance and entirely atonal music without recognizable harmonies (Schönberg). Schoenberg is best known as the innovator of the twelve-tone technique, a compositional technique involving tone rows. He was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition.
He saw the development of music accelerating through the works of Wagner, Strauss and Mahler to a state of saturation. If music was to regain a genuine and valid simplicity of expression, as in the music of his beloved Mozart and Schubert, the language must be renewed "Had times been 'normal' (before and after 1914) then the music of our time would have been very different.“ A.S. His Drei Klavierstucke Op. 11, No. 1 | | Movies : Movies
Movies became a form of mass entertainment that replaced traditional arts and amusement for rural people.
By the 1930s, movies were weekly entertainment for much of the population in Europe and North America. Sergei Eisenstein F. W. Murnau. D. W. Griffith | | Radio : Radio In 1896, Marconi was awarded the British patent 12039, Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for, for radio.
In 1897 he established the world's first radio station on the Isle of Wight, England. Marconi opened the world's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50 people.
Radio became commercially viable in the 1920s.
By the late 1930s, most households in Britain and Germany had inexpensive individual sets.
Radio was an extremely powerful outlet for political propaganda. Tesla demonstrating wireless transmissions during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891. After continued research, Tesla gave the fundementals of radio in 1893. Marconi Tesla | | The Search for Peace and Political Stability : The Search for Peace and Political Stability | | Germany and the Western Powers : Germany and the Western Powers
After Versailles the British were ready for conciliation with Germany, while the French took a hard line.
In April 1921 the Allied reparations commission ordered Germany to pay huge reparations.
In 1922 the German (Weimar) Republic refused to pay, prompting Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. As the German government printed money to pay striking Ruhr workers unemployment benefits, runaway inflation destroyed the savings of retirees and the middle class.
The Dawes Plan stabilized the situation, cutting reparations and providing private American loans to pay for what remained. | | Slide46 : Europe in 1919 | | Slide47 : The Weimar Republic: 1924-1933 | | Slide48 : The “Stabbed-in-the-Back” Theory Disgruntled German WWI veterans | | Slide49 : The Spartacist League Rosa Luxemburg [1870-1919] | | Hope in Democratic Government : Hope in Democratic Government
After 1923, democracy seemed to take root in Weimar Germany.
In Britain, the rise of the Labour party and passage of welfare measures guaranteed social peace and maintained relative equality among the classes. | | Slide51 : Friedrich Ebert: First President of the Weimar Republic | | Slide52 : The German Government: 1919-1920 | | Slide53 : The German Mark | | Slide54 : The German Mark | | Slide55 : The French in the Ruhr: 1923 | | Slide56 : The Beer Hall Putsch: 1923 | | Slide57 : The Beer Hall Putsch Idealized | | Slide58 : Hitler in Landesberg Prison | | Slide59 : Mein Kampf [My Struggle] Written in 1924 while Hitler was in Landsburg Prison for attempting to overthrow the elected government by force, Mein Kampf is a loosely structured patchwork of autobiographical narratives, historical and political analyses, and disquisitions on a wide range of topics such as international finance, democracy, trade unions, the role of propaganda, etc.
Hitler's views on any topic are usually found scattered in various sections of the book, sometimes as part of an extended treatment, sometimes in incidental remarks.
Overall, it provides an outline of Nazi (National Socialist) ideology.
The book was dictated to Rudolf Hess, and the oral style is very apparent, with its emphasis on rhetoric, generalizations, repetition, emotionalism and scarcity of details and factual support.
Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be 'discovered' by an election.
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is man's right to have the earth to till with his own hands, the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.
Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
The Jew's life as a parasite in the body of other nations and states explains a characteristic which once caused Schopenhauer, as has already been mentioned, to call him the 'great master in lying.
The adherents of our Movements must always remember this, whenever they may have misgivings lest the greatness of the sacrifices demanded of them may not be justified by the possibilities of success. | | Slide61 : Weimar Germany: Political Representation [1920-1933] | | Slide62 : Ramsay MacDonald: 1924, 1929 Labour Party | | Slide63 : Stanley Baldwin Conservative Party | | Slide64 : 1926 General Strike Trades Disputes Act (1927):
All general or sympathy strikes were illegal.
It forbade unions from raising money for political purposes. | | Slide65 : Raymond Poincaré & the Conservative Right He sent French troops into the Ruhr in 1923.
Pushed for large-scale infrastructure reconstruction programs [counting on German reparations to pay for them].
After 1926-29:
New taxes & tightened tax collections.
Drastic decline in gvt. spending that stabilized the franc [the threat of runaway inflation was avoided!] | | Slide66 : Edouard Herriot & the French Socialists 1924-1926.
Progressive social reform.
Spoke for the lower classes, small businessmen, and farmers.
Committed to private enterprise and private property.
Fervently anti-clerical. | | Hope in Foreign Affairs, 1924–1929 : Hope in Foreign Affairs, 1924–1929 Seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland on October – 16 1925 and formally signed in London on December 1, in which the World War I Western European Allied powers and the new states of central and Easter Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return normalizing relations with defeated Germany (which was, by this time, the Weimer Republic Wikipedia The Locarno Treaties were regarded as the keystone of the improved western European diplomatic climate of 1924-1930, introducing a hope for international peace, typically called the "spirit of Locarno".
This spirit was seen in Germany's September 1926 admission to the League of Nations, the international organization established under the Versailles treaty to promote world peace and co-operation, and in the subsequent withdrawal (completed in June 1930) of Allied troops from Germany's western Rhineland.
One notable exception from the Locarno arrangements was, however, the Soviet Union, which saw western détente as potentially deepening its own political isolation in Europe, in particular by detaching Germany from her own understanding with Moscow under the April 1922 Treaty of Rapallo.
Political tensions also continued throughout the period in eastern Europe.
The Locarno spirit did not survive the revival of German nationalism from 1930.
Proposals in 1934 for an "eastern Locarno" pact securing Germany's eastern frontiers foundered on German opposition and on Poland's insistence that her 1920 territorial gains from the Soviets should be covered by any western guarantee of her borders. Germany formally repudiated her Locarno undertakings in sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland on March 7, 1936. Wikipedia | | Slide69 : Locarno Pact: 1925 Gustave Stresemann (Ger.) Aristide Briand (Fr.) Austin Chamberlain (Br.) Guaranteed the common boundaries of Belgium, France, and Germany as specified in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919.
Germany signed treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, agreeing to change the eastern borders of Germany by arbitration only. | | Slide70 : Kellogg-Briand Pact: 1928 15 nations committed to outlawing aggression and war for settling disputes.
Problem no way of enforcement. | | Slide71 : Washington Naval Conference [1921-1922] U. S. Britain Japan France Italy 5 5 3 1.67 1.67 A diplomatic conference, called by the administration of President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington, D.C. from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922.
Conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations having interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference.
It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first disarmament conference in history, and is studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement. (Kaufman, 1990)
Held at the Memorial Continental Hall (now DAR Constitution Hall) in downtown Washington, it resulted in three major treaties: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty and the Nine-Power Treaty and a number of smaller agreements.
These treaties preserved peace during the 1920s but are also credited with enabling the rise of the Japanese Empire as a naval power leading up to World War II. Wikipedia | | Slide72 : The Maginot Line | | Slide73 : The Great Depression (1929-1941) | | The Economic Crisis : The Economic Crisis In the late 1920s, American investment in the stock market boomed as direct investment in factories, farms, equipment, and so on fell.
Much of the stock market investment was “on margin”; that is, bought with loans. As the stock market began to fall in October 1929, investors began a mass sell-off which caused the market to collapse.
Recall of private loans by American banks caused the world banking system to fall apart.
The financial crisis caused world production of goods to fall by more than one-third between 1929 and 1933.
Traditional economic theory did not recognize that government deficit spending to stimulate the economy was a possible solution in this situation. | | Black Thursday (24 October 1929) : Black Thursday (24 October 1929) Stock purchases on margin (3%)
Hints of slowdown in Europe
investors begin to sell
Snowball effect
Life savings lost
Black Thursday
11 Suicides
| | Slide76 : The Great Depression (1929-1941) | | Mass Unemployment : Mass Unemployment
The need for large-scale government spending was tied to mass unemployment.
Unemployment posed grave social problems. | | The New Deal in the United States : The New Deal in the United States In 1933 newly elected U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began using government intervention in the economy to fight the Depression.
Roosevelt’s administration passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act that aimed to raise prices and farm income by limiting production.
Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration was supposed to fix wages and prices for the benefit of all, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1935.
Under Roosevelt, the U.S. government hired many unemployed workers through the Works Progress Administration.
The United States also created a national social security system and legalized collective bargaining by unions in this period. | | The Scandinavian Response to the Depression : The Scandinavian Response to the Depression The Swedish Social Democratic party had great success dealing with the Depression by increasing social welfare benefits and using government deficit spending to finance big public works projects. | | Recovery and Reform in Britain : Recovery and Reform in Britain British manufacturing’s reorientation from international to national markets for consumer goods alleviated the worst of the Depression. | | Recovery and Reform in France : Recovery and Reform in France In France, political disunity prevented effective action to deal with the economic crisis. The only attempt to do so was that of Leon Blum’s Popular Front government, a coalition of communist and moderate left parties. |
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