Chapter 26: The Age of Anxiety

Postimpressionists

and expressionists, such as Vincent van Gogh (1853- 1890), built on impressionist motifs of color and light but added a deep psychological element to their pictures, reflecting the attempt to search within the self and reveal (or "express) "deep inner feelings on the canvas.

early twentieth centuries

Existentialism had important precedents in the late nineteenth and , but the philosophy really came of age in France during and immediately after World War II.

healthy individual

For Freud, the possessed a strong ego that effectively balanced the id and superego.

pugnacious Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

In his (Essay on Logical Philosophy), published in 1922, Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is only the logical clarification of thoughts and that therefore it should concentrate on the study of language, which expresses thoughts.

Cinema

became a true mass medium in the 1920s, the golden age of silent film.

Einsteins

In addition, theory stated that matter and energy are interchangeable and that even a particle of matter contains enormous levels of potential energy.

influential writings

In brilliant and , Barth argued that human beings were imperfect, sinful creatures whose reason and will are hopelessly flawed.

Germany

In 1911 twenty- eight- year- old Walter Gropius (1883- 1969) broke sharply with the past in his design of the Fagus shoe factory at Alfeld, - a clean, light, elegant building of glass and iron.

President Herbert Hoover

(r. 1929- 1933) and his administration initially reacted to the stock market crash and economic decline with dogged optimism but limited action.

Nietzsche

painted a dark world, perhaps foreshadowing his own loss of sanity in 1889.

Hitlers Nazi Party

Throughout the 1920s attracted support from fanatical anti- Semites, ultranationalists, and disgruntled ex- servicemen.

Surrealists

such as Salvador Dalí (1904- 1989) were deeply influenced by Freudian psychology and portrayed images of the unconscious in their art.

Freud

Before , poets and mystics had probed the unconscious and irrational aspects of human behavior.

Political dissension

in France was encouraged by the Spanish Civil War (1936- 1939), during which authoritarian Fascist rebels overthrew the democratically elected republican government.

1890s

In the French philosophy professor Henri Bergson (1859- 1941), for one, argued that immediate experience and intuition were as important as rational and scientific thinking for understanding reality.

Zurich

In 1916 a group of artists and intellectuals in exile in , Switzerland, championed a new movement they called Dadaism, which attacked all the familiar standards of art and delighted in outrageous behavior.

consumer society

The emerging of the 1920s is a good example of the way technological developments can lead to widespread social change.

Great Depression

The and the government response to it marked a major turning point in American history.

modern philosophy

Like , physics no longer provided comforting truths about natural laws or optimistic answers about humanitys place in an understandable world.

Composers

and performers expressed the emotional intensity and shock of the age in radically experimental forms.

Department stores

epitomized the emergence of consumer society.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

The (1844- 1900) was particularly influential, though not until after his death.

Christianity

- and religion in general- had been on the defensive in intellectual circles since the Enlightenment.

financial crisis

The led to a general crisis of production: between 1929 and 1933 world output of goods fell by an estimated 38 percent.

Experimental radio sets

were first available in the 1880s; the work of Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874- 1937) around 1900 and the development of the vacuum tube in 1904 made possible primitive transmissions of speech and music.

single interdisciplinary school

In 1919 Gropius merged the schools of fine and applied arts at Weimar into a(n) , the Bauhaus.

book Civilization

In his and Its Discontents (1930), Freud argued that civilization was possible only when individuals renounced their irrational instincts in order to live peaceably in groups.

Mass

- produced goods had a profound impact on the lives of ordinary people.

consumer culture

The emergence of modern both undermined and reinforced existing social differences.

financial panic

The triggered an international financial crisis.

Freud

described three structures of the self- the id, the ego, and the superego- that were basically at war with one another.

Cinema

first emerged in the United States around 1880, driven in part by the inventions of Thomas Edison.