Birth of Modern European Thought Remember these movements

1
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Remember these movements?
• The Scientific Revolution?
• The Enlightenment?
• Romanticism?
• Could you capsulate them, and define them within
  their historical context?

2
Birth of Modern European Thought

• We have seen Europe move though an age of
  Materialism, Nationalism and Imperialism in the
  latter 1800s
• Attitudes about the very foundation of life and
  thought are changing
• Lets look at the birth of ideas that will
  shape the coming century

3
Birth of Modern European Thought

• We will see the Great thinkers, artists and
  writers of this age Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Van
  Gogh, August Comte, Flaubert, Zola, Shaw,
  Nietzsche and Jung absolutely reshape the way
  that society is structured.
• This is an age that challenges the social
  structure, mores and ideology, and with it
  propels Europe into the twentieth century.

4
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Advances in access to education make for a more
  literate public.
• Instilling basic skills of reading writing and
  math make for a public that can better serve the
  growing bureaucracies and industrial economies of
  Europe.
• Think of the new literacy as the same as the
  railway or the steamship. Both radically changes
  the very structure of society, and transported
  if you will, the general public more quickly than
  before.

5
The Birth of Modern European Thought

• Cheap reading material will also promote
  literacy and the exchange of Ideas. Newspapers
  became conduits for advertisements of new
  products, and the nexus for political or
  religious viewpoints
• Yet, literacy among the public was marginal at
  best, and most publications were geared to a
  lesser reading public
• Hence, we do not necessarily see the general
  populace digesting the works of Zola or Ibsen.
  They remain the province of the intelligentsia.

6
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Science at the mid-century mark, and how we are
  on the cusp of great change.
• Experimentation and observation remained the
  cornerstone of the scientific community.
• We will see the changes within the scientific
  community will become the foundation of changes
  in other facets of European Thought.

7
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Science was, by mid 1850
• Rational
• Mechanical
• Dependable
• Lets look at some key movements in this area
• August Comte and the theory of Positivism.

8
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Positivism
• All human thought was in three stages
• Theological physical nature explained through
  the actions of spirits
• Metaphysical- abstract principles were the
  operative agencies of nature
• Positive Stage nature was explained by exact
  description, by scientific observation.
• Science had entered that third stage, and Comte
  believed that other laws could do the same
  (behavior laws those applicable to Human
  behavior)
• Hence, knowledge in any area should match
  knowledge gained in the scientific realm

9
The Birth of Modern European Thought

• What we can assess concerning the importance to
  Comte is that he is the father of the modern
  science of Sociology.
• Hence, human behavior, interaction, morality and
  relationships could be subjected to the same
  level of experimentation and scrutiny as the
  physical laws of the universe.
• This will break the ice for the formation of
  Psychoanalysis as a actual pursuit of the medical
  community.

10
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Charles Darwin and Natural Selection.
• Theory of Natural Selection
• This removes purpose, or the idea of an
  all-knowing creator as a means of explaining how
  things have developed.
• Hence, eyes were not made for seeing by God, they
  were developed out of a need, mechanistically,
  over time.
• This attacks both the fixed nature of the
  Universe, and the deistic argument for the
  existence of God.
• The world was in a state of flux, and if that
  were true, was it not true that values, customs
  and beliefs are also in a constant state of
  change?

11
Birth of Modern European Thought

• And, if the world was changing, then could not
  society and values, customs, and beliefs be
  changing as well?
• In his Descent of Man, Darwin became the first to
  apply natural selection to mankind.
• Morality, religion, and the physical frame all
  developed in response to the requirement of
  survival.
• Hence, neither mans origin, nor his character,
  (what it has always meant to be human) required
  the existence of God.
• Think if the impact of this in relationship to
  the role of Christianity in Western Europe!

12
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Science and Ethics.
• Herbert Spencer and Survival of the Fittest.
• Sociologically
• Competition makes society
• Struggle was an ethical imperative
• Why aid the poor when they are simply less able
  to struggle
• Hence, we see the roots of Social Darwinism

13
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Thomas Huxley opposed the thinking of Spencer
• He felt that the physical process of evolution
  was against the process of ethical development
• Natural struggle simply demonstrated how human
  should not behave
• We are not animals our ethical structure
  separates us from the animals!
• Goodness and Virtue have nothing to do with the
  survival of the fittest!
• See the Huxley document on pg. 800, where he
  criticizes the evolutionary Ethicists.

14
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Christianity Under Siege
• Could we hold the teachings of the church to the
  same standards as those of science?
• What was the historical validity of Bible of the
  existence of Jesus?
• David Strauss questions whether a historical
  figure known as Jesus existed at all!
• Jesus simply was an externalization of the
  peoples hopes and aspirations at that time, as
  opposed to the existence of an actual person.
• Other proposed that human authors were the ones
  who wrote the Bible, like the Homeric Epics

15
Birth of Modern European Thought

• How did science undermine the basis of
  Christianity?
• Geology the Earth is actually much older than
  the bible portends
• Floods earthquakes and the like have natural and
  explainable causes
• Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists
  all became professions that, in most cases,
  supplant the impact/necessity of organized
  religion.
• Science becoming the new Religion

16
The Birth of Modern European Thought

• Morality.
• Was the Old Testament God of retribution and
  punishment, of judgment, really tenable with the
  New Testament God who sacrificed himself for the
  good of mankind?
• After all, the Old Testament God did sacrifice
  the only perfect being to walk on the earth for
  his own satisfaction!
• Could clergy preach beliefs they did not
  subscribe to?

17
The Birth of Modern European Thought

• Christianity, as a whole, was losing its
  intellectual credibility.
• We will see the assault on Christianity enjoined
  most vehemently by Nietzsche, who see it as
  weakening mankind and promoting sacrifice rather
  than personal will and strength.
• This leads, naturally, to a competition between
  Church and State.
• Could modern science and politics take the place
  of organized religion in a persons life?

18
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Examples of conflict between Church and State
• Great Britain Education Act of 1870.
• Government run Schools were opened where the
  Anglican Church had previously not provided for
  the people.
• Anglicans, and Non-Anglican groups were angered
  by this new competition, and it forced them to
  spend more money on their own school to keep up.
• Education Act of 1902 provided aid for both
  religious and non-religious schools, but held
  each to the same standard

19
Birth of Modern European Thought

• France Education issue was very contentious!
• Falloux Law 1850 priests were instructors in
  Public Schools
• Ferry Laws religious education in public
  schools is replaced
• Pro-Dreyfus pressure helped to suppress religious
  orders
• 1905- Napoleonic Concordat is replaced breaking
  ties with Rome and separating church and state

20
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Germany and Kulturkampf This is key!!!
• Threat of the Roman Catholic Church leads
  Bismarck to enact the Policy of Kulturkampf
• He removes both Protestant and Catholic clergy
  from local education. Secularizes education.
• May Laws passed for Prussians only. Priests are
  educated in German Schools, and have to pass
  state administered tests
• State could veto church appointments.
• Pope loses disciplinary power it is the
  province of the state.
• Police used against any dissenters.
• Yet, the policy fails. It engenders Catholic
  resentment an creates Martyrs. It is Bismarck's
  greatest blunder!

21
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Roman Catholic Church strikes back
• Papacy remains steadfast and conservative
• Liberal ideology is attacked
• Syllabus of Errors 1864 Pius IX condemns all
  liberal thought and modern thought
• The church is posited against all contemporary
  science, philosophy and politics
• It gets deeper

22
Birth of Modern European Thought

• 1869 First Vatican Council
• Papal infallibility is re-established
• Papacy, after Italian unification is relegated to
  the Vatican State they do not recognize the
  newly formed Italian nation. They will not until
  1929, after a concession by Benito Mussolini!!!
• Pope Leo XIII takes over in 1878 and enacts
  progressive measures in the church
• What were they?

23
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Rerum Novarum 1891 Think of this as a
  mini-version of the Council of Trent.
• Defends Private Property
• Religious education
• Control of marriage laws the church
• Condemns socialism
• Call for fair treatment of employees by employers
• Supports laws to regulate labor
• Calls for a corporate society to replace both
  socialism and capitalism
• Condemns catholic modernism.

24
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Toward the Twentieth century frame of mind.
• Rationalism Liberalism and Bourgeoisie
  mentality are challenged
• Lets look at changes in science

25
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Key Scientists and basic concepts
• Wilhelm Roentgen- discovery of X-Rays
• J.J Thompson Theory of the Electron
• Ernest Rutherford Explains origin of radiation.
  Speculates on Energy gained from this.
• Max Planck Quantum theory of Energy. Energy is
  a series of packets, not a continuous stream.

26
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Albert Einstein Theory of Relativity Time and
  Space are a continuum.
• Werner Heisneberg Behavior of matter (subatomic
  particles) is statistical Probability not
  determinable
• Again, this throws doubt on previously held
  doctrine

27
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Scientific movement is important on a number of
  levels
• It makes science less popular, and somewhat less
  accessible than it previously had been
• Most of the certainty of previously held theories
  is called into question
• Through research, medical knowledge and
  technological change will affect 20th century
  society more than any other intellectual activity

28
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Literature Realism and Naturalism
• In both cases, these literary movements challenge
  established beliefs and mores concerning what
  would be called the middle class values of
  European life.
• Remember that these middle class values are a
  direct result of the growing economic prosperity
  over the course of industrialism.
• Often, how a writer sees society can tell us a
  great deal of how society can affect writers in
  this case, we are speaking of the continued of
  influence of scientific investigation

29
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Realism and Naturalism confronted the reader with
  the harsh realities of life,telling stories of
  human torment and loss in a graphic and sometimes
  brutal fashion.
• These authors are products of the influence of
  science, as well as the horrid social conditions
  of many of the residents of Europe at this time.

30
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Key Figures
• Charles Dickens most of his work reflected the
  poverty dejection and hopelessness of the English
  working class
• Henri Balzac Reflected the same world View as
  Dickens, but in France

31
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Gustav Flaubert His work Madam Bovary is widely
  considered the first work of realism
• Emile Zola moves realism to a more naturalistic
  state. He felt that he could observe his
  characters as a scientist would observe
  phenomena,and that he would report, through the
  composition of his work the results
• He sees himself like a surgeon, except he
  performs autopsies on living creatures.

32
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Henrik Ibsen strips away the veneer of proper
  middle class life to expose its more seamy side.
• Issues of self hatred, despair, and death
  provide a very different view of the values of
  the middle class.
• George Bernard Shaw attacks the romantic notions
  concerning love and war a fan of Ibsens work.

33
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Hence, we see literature move in a similar
  direction as science in the fact that its major
  figures are confronting/attacking some of the
  traditional social mores, and presenting a more
  analytical view of the human condition.
• Realist writers felt it was their duty to
  represent the commonplace and the real world.
• Subjects that had been previously considered ot
  be off limits were examined in great detail.

34
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Literature had never before dealt with issues
  like infidelity, murder, poverty and despair.
• These writers were not interested in posing
  solutions to these issues, they were rather
  recorders of the human condition.
• It is of some note that, arguable the greatest of
  the naturalists, Emile Zola, was a former
  newspaper reporter.

35
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Modernism The term Modernism usually refers to
  the early part of the twentieth century --
  sometimes beginning with the First World War in
  1914, and continuing through the 1930s or so --
  perhaps up to the Second World War.
• Some of the most influential Modernist writers
  tried some radical experiments with form poets
  like Pound and Eliot working in free verse, for
  instance, and novelists like Joyce, Woolf, and
  Stein experimenting with stream of consciousness
  and elaborate language games.

36
Birth of Modern European Thought

• How is Modernism different from Naturalism?
• A naturalist novel, like La Bete Humaine by Emile
  Zola is brutally accurate, almost told in the
  manner of a newspaper report.
• Modernism relies on stream of consciousness. In
  modernist literature, authors will not rely so
  heavily on story line, character development and
  resolution of conflict
• It is not so concerned with social issues.
  Instead, it was meant to focus on the aesthetic
  on what was beautiful

37
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Modernists were like their naturalist
  predecessors in the fact that they were breaking
  with convention, with the accepted form.
• This is reflected not only in Literature, but
  also in art and Poetry
• Key figures

38
Birth of Modern European Thought

• England Virginia Woolf. Challenges the stogy and
  formal Victorian mores.
• France Marcel Proust. Relies heavily on Stream
  of Consciousness. Seven novel work Search of Time
  Past is his most significant.
• Germany Thomas Mann. Magic Mountain tells the
  horrific tale of a tuberculosis hospital
• Ireland James Joyce. Ulysses Transforms the
  structure of then modern novel, and the paragraph
  as well. Very difficult reading.

39
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Friedrich Nietzsche The revolt against reason.
  This stuff is good!
• Big pictureRational thought comes under attack.
  How necessary is it to address the human
  condition?
• Nietzsche will, at various stages of his career,
  attack the following institutions or belief
  systems

40
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Christianity
• Democracy
• Nationalism
• Science
• Progress

41
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Key works and ideas
• Birth of Tragedy (1872) non-rational aspects of
  human nature are as significant as rational
  aspects
• Instinct and Ecstasy are significant
• Limiting experience to what can be reasoned or
  analyzed is to limit the human experience
• The Socratic method of limitless questioning is
  favored rather than more traditional methods

42
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Further Ideas of Nietzsche
• Thus Spake Zarathustra Sees democracy and
  religion as only creating sheep
• Pronounces the death of God, and the existence of
  the Ubermensch or over man.
• This is often misinterpreted, and is later
  co-opted by the Nazis as the Justification for
  the Master Race.

43
Birth of Modern European Thought

• What Nietzsche realized was that man must
  understand that life is not governed by rational
  principles. Life is full of cruelty, injustice,
  uncertainty and absurdity.
• There are no absolute standards of good and evil
  which can be demonstrated by human reason.

44
Birth of Modern European Thought

• There is only naked man living alone in a godless
  and absurd world.
• Modern industrial, bourgeois society, according
  to Nietzsche, made man decadent and feeble.
• It made man a victim of the excessive development
  of the rational faculties at the expense of human
  will and instinct.

45
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Against the tendencies of bourgeois society,
  Nietzsche stressed that man ought to recognize
  the dark and mysterious world of instinct -- the
  true life force. "Du sollst werden, der du bist,"
  Nietzsche wrote.
• "You must become who you are."
• Excessive rationality, an over-reliance on human
  reason, does little more than smother the
  spontaneity necessary for creativity.

46
Birth of Modern European Thought

• For man to realize his potential, he must sever
  his dependence on reason and the intellect and
  instead, develop his instincts, drive and will.
• Christianity, with all its restrictions and
  demands to conform, crushes the human impulse to
  life. Christian morality must be obliterated
  because it is fit only for the weak and the
  slave.

47
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Nietzsche said that the reason Christianity
  triumphed in the Roman world was that the lowest
  orders -- the meek and the mild -- wanted to
  inherit the earth from their aristocratic
  superiors.
• The lower orders were trying to strike back and
  subdue their superiors. They did this by
  condemning as evil those traits which they
  lacked strength, power and the zest for life.

48
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Instead, the Christians made their own low and
  wretched lives the standard of all things to
  come. If you deviated from this standard, you
  were shackled with guilt.
• In his book, The Anti-Christ of 1888, Nietzsche
  wrote that

49
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Christianity has waged a war to the death against
  this higher type of man. . . . Christianity has
  taken the side of everything weak, base,
  ill-constituted, it has made an ideal out of
  opposition to the instinct of strong life. . . .
  Christianity is a revolt of everything that
  crawls along the ground directed against that
  which is elevated.

50
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment of
  the 18th century, attacked Christianity because
  it was contrary to human reason. Because they
  wanted to make Christianity more reasonable, they
  retained Christian ethics.
• Nietzsche attacked Christianity as well -- but he
  did so on the grounds that it gave man a sick
  soul. It was life-denying. It blocked the free
  and spontaneous exercise of human instinct and
  will. In short, Christianity extinguished the
  spark of life.

51
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Man must then rise above and go beyond nihilism
  (the belief that all the old values and truths
  have lost their vitality and validity) by
  creating new values man could then become his
  own master and be true to himself rather than to
  another. "Du sollst werden, der du bist."
• Man can overcome uniformity and mediocrity, he
  can overcome socialism, democracy, trade
  unionism, progress, enlightenment and all the
  other ills so consistent with western
  civilization.

52
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The new man dares to be himself and as himself,
  traditional, Christian ideals of good and evil
  have no meaning and he recognizes them as such.
  His "will to power" means, for Nietzsche, that he
  has gone "beyond good and evil."
• The enhancement of the will to power brings
  supreme enjoyment. The Superman casts off all
  established values and because he is now free of
  all restraints, rules and codes of behavior
  imposed by civilization, he creates his own
  values.

53
Birth of Modern European Thought

• According to Nietzsche, man could be saved by a
  new type of man, the "Übermensch," the Superman.
• These are the men who will not be held back by
  the hogwash of modern, mediocre, industrial,
  scientific, bourgeois, Christian civilization.
• The superman creates his own morality based on
  human instincts, drive and will.

54
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Killer Kwotes
• There is no moral phenomena, but only a moral
  interpretation of phenomena.
• We need a critique of moral values the value of
  these values must first be called into question.
• He was more interested in the social and
  psychological sources of what is considered good
  or evil, than simply trying to identify what
  good and evil are.

55
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Think for a moment
• This new age seems to have a common thread of
  looking below the surface and examining those
  issues that are not reflected by accepted
  thought.
• No other field of study reflects this better than
  the field of Psychoanalysis, and the work of
  Freud.

56
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Freud Big Picture
• Key work Interpretation of Dreams
• Key Concepts
• Infants have a sexual consciousness/ awarenessit
  does not simply appear at Puberty
• And, matters of sexuality figured prominently in
  the mental well-being of any patient.

57
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Here, in this theory of child development, is
  perhaps one of Freuds most controversial ideas
• Since children are sexual beings, and these
  urges do not simply emerge during puberty, then
  the innocence of childhood, long revered in
  Western society, became a falsehood.
• It would be in Freuds interpretations of
  dreams, long held in cultures to be simply
  nonsense, until the Romantic Era, as the work of
  an active mind, even during sleep.

58
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Dreams are not simply nonsense they are in fact
  the expression of our subconscious selves
• A dream is a disguised fulfillment of a
  suppressed wish.
• And, from that it is clear that unconscious
  drives impact conscious behavior.
• There is her a reflection of the Romantic era,
  and the importance of emotion and instinct, yet
  we will see a distinct sense of the Enlightenment
  in Freuds theories as well

59
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Freud and Enlightenment Thought
• Wanted humans to use reason to live free of fears
  caused by the subconscious
• His belief that there were rational foundations
  for the formation of personalities
• He knew the tremendous sacrifice necessary to
  curtail instinct and form rational, civilized
  behaviors.

60
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Yet, it would be incorrect to see Freud as one
  who believed that Humans should divest themselves
  of all forms of repression and express themselves
  freely
• Freud knew that civilization was dependent on a
  certain degree of repression of mans sexuality
  and aggressive tendencies.
• Sacrifice and struggle were necessary, and Freud
  did not have a very optimistic view of the future
  of civilization in the West, like many other
  thinkers of this time.

61
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Freud is best known for his interpretations of
  dreams, and the internal struggle present in all
  of mankind of three forces contending for control
  of our conscious and subconscious minds.
• All of mankinds personality traits, behaviors
  and dreams can be examined as a product of this
  struggle.
• Remember how revolutionary it was to consider
  Psychoanalysis a legitimate science.
• Similar to many of the breakthroughs in science,
  most of Freuds work would take place below the
  surface of what was considered to be known and
  discoverable.

62
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Id Ego Superego
• We have the
• Conscious
• Pre-Conscious
• Unconscious Mind.
• Freud felt that there was a physical process, a
  struggle, between these three. All of us are the
  result of the finality of this struggle, of which
  of the three is most dominant.

63
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Id
• Ego
• Super Ego
• These are the three masters that are vying for
  the control of the individuals mind and
  thoughts.
• They are distinct beings, and they have different
  levels of control on the individual, and on the
  conscious mind.

64
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Id
• Raw animal nature
• No values
• No good
• No evil
• No morality
• Every action can be justified/rationalized
  nothing can be judged

65
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Id is that raw part of our being that
  society strives to keep in check.
• Our whole legal code and religious structure
  seeks to contain the Id.
• Anarchy. Hedonism. Lust. Avarice. Jealousy.
  Violence.
• These are more stylized names for then Id.

66
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Our mind seeks to keep this Id repressed, on
  lockdown
• Because of the volatile nature of the Id, and the
  ease with which it can spring to the surface. It
  must be contained
• We need assistance in this repression of Mr. Id,
  and there are others who will join us in this
  battleotherwiseChaos!

67
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Ego.
• First, try and divest yourself of the common
  notion of the ego as that chest thumping,
  self-centered behavior that we expect out of
  enormously overpaid professional athletes.
• In Freudian psychology, it is more than thator
  less???

68
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Think of the Ego as a part of the Id
• Orthe Ego is the manager/P.R. guy for the Id.
• Without him, the Id would do nothing but wreck
  hotel rooms, abuse substances, violate laws and
  generally self-destruct.
• Ego keeps the Id in check, and is a liaison
  between the Id and the rational world.
• It places thought between desire and action!

69
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Some final statements on the relationship between
  Id and Ego
• Ego is reason, rationality, circumspection,
  thoughtconscious
• Id is untamed passions, impulse and emotion,
  random actionpre-conscious
• Got it?
• (Who is winning your Id vs. Ego battle?)

70
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The poor Ego really has a tough time, because
  dealing with the Id is not the only task it must
  accomplish.
• Freud states that the Ego really has to serve
  three masters..
• The Id (Got it)
• The External World (Got it)
• The Super Ego (What the?)

71
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Lets backtrack a second before we look at the
  Super Ego
• The Ego actually digs the Idlikes to hang out
  with Id..feeds off Ids energy.
• Ego wants to be loyaleven wants to be down
  with the Id if only the Id could just relax, and
  slow downchill out.
• But, Id wont(get it?)

72
Birth of Modern European Thought

• There lurks in the background, watching every
  move the Ego makes..
• Super Ego!!!

73
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Super Egohas the Ego under surveillance.
• Super Ego does not want to hear how difficult it
  is to deal with Id.
• Super Ego has no time to hear of the difficulties
  Ego has with the real world.
• Super Ego wants the norms of society followed,
  no Ids, ands or buts. (Get it?)

74
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Superego is that collection of societal moral
  imperatives, and expectations that the ego is
  mandated to follow.
• Hence, it is both a watchdog of the ego, and an
  example that is held up to the ego as something
  that it has to strive for.
• The ID will act as the ID will, which is like a
  four-year old.

75
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Because of the enormous pressure from the Id to
  feed me
• And, from the Super Ego to keep that Id in
  line
• And, dealing with the external world, reality
• The Ego begins to acknowledge its weaknesses
• It cannot wear this many hats.
• There is a sense of inadequacy because it cannot
  keep the ID in line, and cannot measure up to the
  societal expectations of the Superego.

76
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Ego feels anxiety, despair, inadequacies,
  self-hatred because it just cant keep up with
  all of its responsibilities.
• It is any wonder that these feelings are so
  prevalent in todays, or for that matter, any
  society.
• So, many of the character traits people exhibit
  are simply externalizations reflect of the egos
  struggle with the ID and the Superego

77
Birth of Modern European Thought

• The Ego feels anxiety
• Reality anxiety in the face of the real world
• Normal anxiety in the face of the Super Ego
• Neurotic anxiety as it deals with the Id
• Freud states in conclusion that

78
Birth of Modern European Thought

• We cannot think of the Ego, Id and the Super ego
  as part of a clearly defined pie chart or graph.
• Even though these entities have distinct roles
  we have to view them as more like colors of a
  impressionist painting, that, although they are
  clearly different hues, make up the larger
  picture.
• Peasant Man by Vincent Van Gogh

79
Birth of Modern European Thought
80
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Carl Jung A successor to Freud and another big
  hitter in the early Twentieth Century
  Psychoanalysis
• Jung saw the existence of a collective
  unconscious that all humans were attuned to.
• These collective memories constitute the soul
  of a person
• He saw twentieth century man as being alienated
  from these collective memories.
• Think of Freud as a child of the Enlightenment
  and Jung as a product of the Romantic Movement

81
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Retreat from Rationalism in Politics.
• Big Picture
• Rational Principles were looked at as a way to
  amend the inequities of society by liberal and
  socialists alike.
• Increasing the vote was believed to create a more
  participatory and representative government.

82
Birth of Modern European Thought

• We have a backlash against this progressive
  thought because, society did not seem to be
  reaping the benefits of expanding the franchise
  and increased education
• Major figures in the retreat from Rationalism

83
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Max Weber The primary proponent of the
  rationalist movement.
• He views the bureaucracy as necessary it
  provided the human with a place
• Self image and self worth come from belonging to
  an organization. Division of Labor simply
  provided mankind a place, his role, in society.
• Hence, regimentation and systemic control were a
  good thing!
• Key work is the Protestant ethic and the Spirit
  of Capitalism
• This is the so-called Protestantism Theory

84
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Puritans achieved wealth and success for their
  own sake rather than for the sake of attaining
  some manner of higher place in heaven.
• Look to European History post-Reformation, and
  there is some validity to the belief that where
  Protestantism was predominant, (England and the
  Netherlands) there was a vibrant economy.

85
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Racism.
• Arthur Gobineau. Essay on the Inequality of the
  Human Races.
• Views Western Societies problems because of
  dilution of racial purity, specifically the Aryan
  Race.
• Couple this with growing anthropological findings
  and the new age of Imperialism and we can see the
  spread of Racism as an ideology.
• Most critically, as Race theory is wed with the
  Biological sciences, which had gained credence at
  this time, those proposing racial purity became a
  groundwork for the hierarchy of Superior and
  inferior races in Europe, and beyond.

86
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Englishmen Stewart Chamberlain publishes
  Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.
• Saw genetics as away of making a superior race.
• Anti-Semitism was crucial to this theory, and it
  would become one of the cornerstones of Nazi
  ideology.
• This convergence of Race theory and Anti-Semitism
  also fed in to the growing sense of nationalism
  in late 19th century Europe.
• This nationalism was far cry from the liberal
  national movements from earlier in the century.

87
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Growth of Nationalism
• It is more aggressive and more racial
• This is no longer the nationalists trying to
  quantify an identity of a people
• Now, we are talking about a Europe redrawn along
  ethnic boundaries
• Think of the growing discontent in the Habsburg
  Empire as an example.
• Further, this national character is extended,
  naturally, to the new age of Imperialism The
  White mans burden being the standard example.

88
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Nationality would be able to overcome the issues
  of class, race and geography.
• Nationhood would supplant the importance of
  religion in many cases
• We are moving to the State as the only
  unification of the people-the roots of fascism
  and Totalitarianism
• And, throw in the rise of racism and you have a
  very contentious political and social climate.
• Is it any surprise that nationalism would play
  such a critical role in the onset of WWI.

89
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Anti-Semitism and the Birth of Zionism.
• Anti-Semitic Politics was rooted in the belief
  that no matter what level of assimilation the
  Jews achieved, their Jewishness would remain.
• It was not the character, but the blood of the
  Jew that was the issue, and that would not ever
  change.
• This launches a movement lead by an Austro-
  Hungarian named Theodore Herzl
• See the document on pg. 819 as Herzl calls for
  the establishment of a Jewish state.

90
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Science, Racial Thought and the Non-Western World
• Imperialism also meant the spread of
  experimentation and theory in the scientific
  world.
• Power of science and industry became governmental
  justification for the oppression of those less
  able to rule themselves.
• Japan is alone among these nations who realize
  they have to get in step industrially with the
  west to survive.
• Racial Theory justified the control of racially
  inferior peoples.

91
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Women in Modern Thought
• Anti-feminism in Late century Thought
• Stereotypical views of women were bolstered by
  the growing emphasis of the truths of superiority
  in biology and evolution.
• Women in the mothering role becomes the paramount
  function for them many circles.
• This is an outgrowth of the growing cult of
  domesticity, bolstering stereotypes concerning
  women, and their roles in society.

92
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Women were seen, in a scientific realm, as the
  weaker sex.
• Darwin himself espoused this view.
• TH Huxley proposed that women were unfit to study
  the primitive peoples of the world, it was unfit
  for them to have contact with such savages.
• Anthropologists went so far as to ascribe a lower
  place on the evolutionary scale to women and the
  lesser races.
• There is a natural backlash to this, and we see a
  rise of the feminists movement in the late 1800s.

93
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Further, Psychoanalysts like Freud supplanted the
  scientific communities belief that women were
  inferior.
• Overall, the reproductive role of women placed
  them in virtually every social belief system as
  inferior to men.
• Comte, Spencer and others believed in this
  fervently.

94
Birth of Modern European Thought

• New Directions in Feminism.
• Sexual Morality and the family.
• Treatment of Prostitutes in England, like the
  Contagious Disease act, (which allowed random
  medical exams for women of questionable
  character) prompted many middle class women to
  come to the defense of poor women who often were
  forced into prostitution because of economic
  hardship.

95
Birth of Modern European Thought

• Hence, they took on the double standard that
  existed in society that would punish the
  prostitute while still condoning the behavior of
  the customer.
• Other feminists went so far as to call for the
  enlistment the aid of the state in the lives of
  mothers because the task was so important.