The Decline of Rationality and the Emergence of 20th C Sensibility
- the first chapter in Cassels deals with this aspect but in a very brief form. See also, Roland N. Stromberg, European Intellectual History since 1789, (pp. 172-255— on the web page) for a longer but still concise treatment.
- during the last 3 decades before W. W. 1, the major premises of western thought since the 18th C were being undermined and attacked. Those involved were a minority and were often considered cranks or worse; their influence was primarily on the young, in universities especially, and there was little influence on the mass of the population until after 1918. The war tended to solidify what these critics were saying and opened the door to a much wider acceptance of these new, radical ideas and to their ramifications.
- the Enlightenment view of the universe was attacked and began to crumble; also, the view of humans as rational beings was undermined. A large number of old ‘truths’ became more uncertain, new ideas and beliefs were advanced and new revolutions occurred in science, in social sciences and in the arts.
- intellectually, the 19th C in Europe was a world of relative certainties and the view of the world was still largely a product of the Enlightenment and Newtonian science:
Newtonian science was mechanistic (a machine, the great Clock); the universe or cosmos was rational and logical. The physical ‘laws’ which governed that universe were believed to be ‘fixed’ (i.e., they applied everywhere and they never changed) and were, as a result of systematic study, becoming known and defined;
the moral code, which differentiated between good and evil, was regarded as being relatively clear, and because it was rational, it too was an integral part of the rational universe (it applied everywhere).
religious beliefs and practices were not regarded as incompatible with this view of the cosmos and this approach to science;
people were or were potentially rational beings, pursuing economic self-interest, weighing pros and cons, analysing benefits and costs of their actions, etc.—this was the picture of ‘economic man’; human irrationality was perhaps only an atavism (something which lingers on after its purpose has disappeared) which, with sufficient education and satisfactory conditions, was being reduced and would eventually be eradicated.
as we noted earlier, liberalism and socialism were clearly developments out of enlightenment thought and conservatism of the kind we analysed was largely a reaction against some aspects of the enlightenment.
- this Enlightenment approach incorporated a great deal of optimism including a belief in ‘progress’; the use of reason (in scientific studies especially) as a means to study and eventually to understand this rational universe would enable mankind, both as groups and as individuals, to gain greater control over their destiny and future. Thus, people in general were confident about the future and believed that society was getting better and would continue to improve.
- much, they believed, had been achieved in the 19th C. Newtonian science had been applied to technology and in industrialisation, and the result was greatly increased output and wealth in society; this industrialisation was spreading quickly in Europe.and elsewhere. People were frequently presented with a growing array of new products and wonders: electricity and the growing range of products making use of it; photography; gramophones; even gasoline combustion engines and automobiles; the list could be made almost endless.
- growing proportions of the population were living and working in cities; standards of living were rising even if the increases were not evenly distributed. Education and literacy were being extended to the entire population and participation in political affairs was widened as suffrage was extended to a growing proportion of the male population.
- the triumph of rationalism was never complete. Romanticism had been a reaction against an excessive focus on reason and rationality; emotion and intuition were asserted as alternative pathways to knowledge. ‘Nature’ had, and perhaps always would retain, elements of mystery that would defy the efforts of scientists to unravel them. Nevertheless, most romantics incorporated the findings of science into the awe and glory with which they regarded Nature. Thus, for many, the romantic movement was more a qualification of the enlightenment view rather than a rejection.
- all of this was increasingly questioned and rejected by a minority in the 3 decades or so before the war. The minority from this period had a large impact as time went on, and they helped to create what we might call the modern 20th C sensibility.
- W. W. 1 with its horrors, its incomprehensibility and its irrationality, then the great inflation in Germany and finally the Great Depression in the 1930s further blasted confidence in the idea that the cosmos was rational, comprehensible and predictable.
- there are always on-going changes, but some periods are marked as especially revolutionary because the dominant intellectual stance and attitude is attacked and undermined; different approaches begin to replace the old dominant stance. This was happening in the late 19th and early 20th Cs.
- however, remember that ideas overlap in time; new ideas are only slowly accepted and old ideas can linger for long periods (e.g., there are still people who claim to believe that the world is flat—the flat earth society—and certainly, the number of people who reject evolution and insist on a ‘creationist’ interpretation of the origins of life and humanity is not small). In any period, there are a variety of ideas prevalent and that is certainly true of the 20th C. For most of us, our view of the universe is still strongly influenced by the Newtonian view although, as we shall discuss, many aspects of that view were challenged and rejected by scientists in the late 19th C. Many aspects of the Enlightenment are still familiar to us even though there has been over 100 years of attack. Thus, we have to recognise that everything did not suddenly change so that attitudes, responses and beliefs were 19th C during one year or time period and then become 20th C in the next. We are still strongly influenced by that earlier sensibility and many of its ideas. But increasingly, those have been rejected in whole or in part and an alternative sensibility has been available.
- we have already noted some non-rational elements and attacks on the old sensibility:
nationalism in some of the irrational forms had begun to affect most areas of Europe by the end of the 19th C.
we have also discussed social darwinism, but this was only one application of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution; Darwin’s theories had profound impacts and quickly played a significant part in the undermining of the accepted 19th C world view.
many people then (and indeed many people still today) believe that Darwin’s theories were a contradiction of the Christian view of creation; certainly, the theories did involve a rejection of the literalist interpretation of the Biblical account of creation. Those people who insisted upon a literal interpretation faced a dilemma—they must either give up their religious faith or reject the interpretations which science was presenting. Since Newton’s time, people had not only regarded religion and science as being compatible but had often viewed science as a positive reinforcement of religion—by learning more about the marvels of the universe, science was revealing more about the Creator of that universe. Now, for many, science seemed antagonistic to religion.
Darwin’s ideas seemed also to undermine morality. The struggle for existence, for survival, was not right and wrong; rather, it was amoral. Thus, to many, the world presented by Darwin was without God or morality.
not just opponents of Darwin believed this. Some people, as we noted with the social darwinists, positively rejoiced in this view; thus, they not only insisted that Darwin’s theories were proof of atheism, but they also glorified war. Struggles between groups of people (whether ‘nations’ or ‘races’) were not about right and wrong (about morality) but rather they were amoral struggles for survival and dominance. The only thing that was important was success and survival, not morality or justice. International relations were a Darwinist ‘survival of the fittest’ arena.
- the spread of mass involvement in politics—’democracy’—was very pronounced in the late 19th C, but it was not greeted with universal enthusiasm; not just conservatives demurred as some liberals and intellectuals were worried and opposed this development. The anti-democratic critics argued that democracy led to demagoguery and the debasement of politics, that it would lead to mediocrity in culture and the arts because it catered to the lowest common denominator and that it was the rule of inferiors, the dominance of the herd instinct.
- we earlier noted Kant’s challenges to enlightenment ideas of knowing via the senses, because they were indirect and unreliable; he had suggested inwardness as an alternative. Other philosophers had gone much further.
- Arthur Schopenhauer had asserted, “Almost without exception, philosophers have placed the essence of mind in thought and consciousness [i.e., reason]; this ancient and universal radical error must be set aside. Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, which, as of the surface of the earth, we do not know the inside but only the crust. Under the conscious intellect is the conscious or unconscious will, a striving, persistent, vital force, a spontaneous activity, a will of imperious desire.” (Stromberg, p. 181)
- this distinction between Reason and Will was picked up and carried further by Nietzsche and other writers. Enlightenment writers had recognised the non-rational side of thought and behaviour, but they had denigrated it, calling it primitive, animalistic and rooted in ignorance; it was the source of myth and superstition and therefore of untruth. Reason and rationality were the only pathway to Truth and Knowledge. New thinkers put much more emphasis upon the non-rational and the unconscious as alternative (and perhaps better) sources of insight, knowledge and truth. In fact, some of them began to turn enlightenment ideas on their head.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
- Nietzsche was a very important influence on the young (especially Nazis and fascists) in the late 19th and early 20th C and his most influential work was The Will to Power. Nietzsche’s ideas have permeated quite deeply into the 20th C consciousness, even when we are not aware of it.
- he argued that there were two great approaches to knowledge developed and exploited by the Greeks and typified by 2 cults—that of Apollo (cult of reason and rationality as well as poetry and art); the second cult was that of Dionysus—ecstatic, orgiastic rituals and dances.
- the genius of the Greeks, he claimed, was not so much in joyous optimism as in tragic suffering, not in scientific and philosophical rationalism as in primitive emotionalism tempered by reason. The Greeks had had both and had moreover been infused with the ‘will to live’.
- he argued that the increasing influence of Socrates, Plato and other rationalists, such as Aristotle, had marked the decline and decadence of Greek civilisation; unfortunately, according to Nietzsche, western civilisation had inherited this rationalist tradition more than the Dionysian tradition.
- Nietzsche’s depiction inverted the usual interpretation which glorified the rationalist philosophers as the epitome of the Greek legacy; Nietzsche argued that it was the Dionysian elements of emotion, instinct, uninhibited sexual and sensual feelings and abandon, the unconscious, which provided creativity. Reason, by itself, was deadening and stultifying; thus, when Socrates, Plato, etc. had elevated reason and the conscious mind to preeminence, creativity and dynamism stopped.
- the over-development of the rational faculty (stemming from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment) was the major cause of the enfeeblement and lack of creativity of modern man; conceptual thought paralysed the Will, he claimed.
- Nietzsche rejected Christianity (it was a life denying religion for slaves, he asserted) and traditional morality (“morality is the most pernicious species of ignorance”); these smothered and destroyed the Dionysian, creative elements.
- Nietzsche was appalled by and contemptuous of ‘mass man’ produced by modern, industrial society; he labelled them ‘dwarf-men’ and he saw only mediocrity in bourgeois materialism. The only solution for modern society was to recapture the Dionysian through a new primitivism.
- he called for ‘supermen’ who would burst out of the shackles of reason and of morality and who would surrender to the Will—the Will to struggle, the Will to live and the Will to power; these ‘supermen’ would be beyond religion and morality for they must be “without pity for the degenerate”. They would drive society out of its rationalist, stultifying shackles.
- democracy and nationalism were regarded by him as vulgar superstitions of modern dwarf-men. This is significant; he had no more use for nationalism than he did for ‘democracy’. Thus, he would not have admired fanatical nationalists such as the Nazis.
- he declared, “God is dead.” Modern Europeans had killed him; no one could any longer believe in any principle of cosmic order or rationality. There was only one thing to believe in, “love of life, as it is, in all its disorder, ugliness, cruelty; just because it is.” A few years ago, a number of theologians made a brief splash by reviving the ‘God is dead’ theme but Nietzsche had put forward the idea a century earlier.
- in Nietzsche’s depiction, we are part of this cosmos, which is life, blind and incessantly striving; it goes round in circles and comes back to repeat itself. That is, there is constant flux and change, but it doesn’t go anywhere. There are repetitions. Species, kingdoms, empires, etc. come and go. They are created and then they disappear; there is no goal or end. The universe is irrational and chaotic; there is no ultimate meaning. It simply is. We can reject it , choosing to renounce life by suppressing all desire like the Indian fakir, or we can accept it, fully realising its irrationality, pain and horror.
- nevertheless, he insisted that as individuals, we can assert our own life force by living and striving; we should accept Dionysus and reject Christ (in fact, that is said to have been his last words as he died).
- however, he did argue that a man (at least, the ‘superman’) could create his own values (as a chaos, the universe has none by itself) by his nobility and by acts of will in spite of the hostile irrationality of the universe. This ‘heroic materialism’ is defiant because such people know that they do not change things in the long run (it always reverts to chaos) and every one dies. Nevertheless, Nietzsche argued that to create some order in the face of chaos and some purpose, however temporary and ephemeral these might be, was worthwhile and worth striving for.
- he called for ‘supermen’ to reshape the human race, but he seemed to be thinking of poet-philosopher statesmen rather than brutal Hitlers.
- the Nazis made Nietzsche a cult figure (the title of the famous film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremburg—‘The Triumph of the Will’—was a reference to Nietzsche’s ideas); however, Nietzsche despised all nationalism and militarism, nor was he a racist or anti-Semite. Thus, it is probably not entirely fair to blame Nietzsche because Nazis used and abused his ideas.
- he discussed the darker, submerged, unconscious (‘Dionysian’) elements of human nature, which, by being sublimated, entered into and produced human creativity. In this, he anticipated Freud in arguing that creativity was partly sexual. Nietzsche argued that Christianity and conventional morality had grievously harmed humans in the west by surrounding sex with taboos. Creativity was more important than morality, and morality was condemned for its interference with creativity.
- conventional morality tended to posit a simplistic view of humans and human nature: people were either moral and good or were immoral and bad although people could act both ways (at times and in some circumstances acting moral and in other circumstances being immoral). In any case, moralists argued that most human actions were easily categorised with perhaps some actions being in a grey area or with some actions being moral in some circumstances and immoral in others. Nietzsche argued that conventional morality was largely irrelevant.
- the Dionysian element was partly the animal side of human nature, joyous and spontaneous; civilise it, smother it with morality and something essential and vital was destroyed. The highest culture, which was a major concern of Nietzsche (another area of enormous difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis), needs some intellectual element, but too much intellect and intellectualising leads to decadence.
- Nietzsche is not a comfortable thinker to deal with, yet he articulated ideas and feelings which have been widespread among 20th C people (not just Nazis) and it is almost impossible to try to define 20th C sensibility without referring to Nietzsche.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
- Freud tried to use the methodology of the scientist to explore the unconscious side of the human psyche. He had a profound effect on 20th C views about who and what we humans are. He came to regard the sex drive (the ‘libido’) as the strongest human impulse and the key to life. His view of human beings and human nature also contradicted simplistic views of conventional moralists.
- Freud argued that humans were the product of two sets of conflicting forces:
on the one hand there was the “id”; this was the largely unconscious where powerful sexual urges and drives lurked. These drives were innate and existed from birth; the ‘id’ involved a primitive compulsion to gratify these urges and desires without any concern about anyone or anything except gratification of the self.
on the other hand, there was the “superego”; this represented the inhibitions which society and conscience imposed on an individual’s behaviour. The “superego” embodied the expectations which society tried to impose about what constituted proper and desirable behaviour—social norms and morality.
in between was the “ego”—the persona of who we think we are consciously and which we project to other people, the public person; the ego was the battleground between the “id” and the “superego”. At best, the “ego” was an uneasy compromise between the two.
[In Judeo-Christian tradition, there has frequently been a tendency to see the world as a battleground between good and evil, between God and the Devil; humans, as individuals, were seen as being on one side or the other. Freud argues that both sides are part of our nature as humans.]
- Freud came to regard the sex drive as the strongest human impulse and the key to life; the sexual drive was the real underpinning of the ‘survival’ impulse. But the sexual drive could also be sublimated into great achievements in art, culture and creativity generally.
- however, raw sexuality also underlay rape, murder, sadism and much destructiveness. Society found such things (and much else of lesser violence as well) disruptive of order and stability; for this reason, society tended to condemn and to repress sexual behaviour or, at least, to limit it to very narrow bounds.
- humans cannot give full and free rein and expression to their sexual drives because of the effects on other people and on society; other people cannot tolerate it. Thus, virtually everyone suffers some frustration and unhappiness and most suffer a good deal, because they are not able to satisfy all desires.
- some people are able to ‘sublimate’ this unsatisfied sexual drive. It is like building a power plant on a great river; the energy in the water and current are channelled through a turbine to produce hydraulic power and electricity. In humans, the raw drive and energy of unsatisfied sex urges can be channelled into artistic and social creation.
- however, the frustration and inability to gratify sexual urges can be like a huge landslide in a river; the landslide backs the river up and prevents it from flowing in its normal channels, but it cannot be stopped indefinitely. Eventually, the river builds up until it breaks out, perhaps in very different and often destructive new pathways and directions.
- Freud argued that frustrated and unsatisfied sexual urges produced unhappiness and neuroses; also, these frustrations burst out in different and very destructive behaviour and actions. Freud was a medical doctor who was especially concerned about emotional and mental problems and this understanding of human personality and human nature underlay his analysis of what had caused the problems his patients were experiencing and exhibiting. Freud was the father of ‘psychoanalysis’.
- we are not concerned with whether Freud was correct or mistaken in his views (pure Freudians are becoming increasingly rare these days). However, he has undoubtedly been extraordinarily influential on the thought of people in the 20th C. Freud, more than anyone else, although he was only one of a number of people at about the same time, is responsible for rejecting the idea that discussion of sex should not take place. It was one of the startling adjustments for many people reared in the Victorian or Edwardian eras when in the 1920s, bright young women were not only wearing short skirts and smoking in public, but were also chattering away about sex, libido, etc. Although the so-called Victorian ‘conspiracy of silence’ is by no means dead, still we discuss sex with a freedom that would have appalled and outraged people in the 19th C. [This is a significant indication of the different sensibilities in the 19th C and in the later 20th C.] Although Freud began writing and publishing in the 1890s, his ideas did not really have a large impact until the 1920s.
- the ramifications of these views are substantial: there is a conflict of interest between individual urges and drives on the one hand and social requirements on the other. According to Freud’s view, rape, murder, sadism, etc. lurked in the psyche of all humans. Thus, any ordered society must clamp a lid on this seething underworld of the human mind. Most of us benefit from the order and stability produced by society but the latter imposes many far-reaching restraints on gratification of the libido. However, these repressions produced neuroses; thus, humans became civilised at the cost of becoming emotionally crippled and neurotic.
- what is human nature? Freud’s views contradicted most accepted conceptions. In a sense, sexual urges were more ‘natural’ and more a part of essential human nature than were conscience, morality, etc. (the so-called higher elements of human nature). The libido was there from birth; little boys while still infants wanted to have sex with their mothers (the Oedipus complex) and little girls were always trying to seduce their fathers. [The recent prominence of the issue of sexual abuse of children has highlighted Freud’s views. He claimed that children did indeed initiate sexual advances and certainly that they had sexual fantasies. Many women and girls who were his patients described sexual episodes with adults, often fathers, but Freud insisted that these were fantasies and projections of sexual urges and wishes; this approach has strongly influenced analysts ever since. Many critics now argue that this has inhibited the recognition of incest and the sexual abuse of children as a problem. On the other hand, denying that young children can have strong, even bizarre sexual fantasies has led to some false accusations and prosecutions of innocent people.]
- conscience, morality, and ethical awareness were all subsequent and in some degree artificial impositions. While the traditional Judeo-Christian view of ‘original sin’ asserted that all humans were born with the potential for evil and wickedness, nevertheless, there was a general view that children were innocent of most wickedness, especially of sexual wickedness and that it took a period of debauchery to produce a truly wicked and licentious person. Freud’s view was that almost from the time we open our eyes for the first time the human unconscious with its uninhibited sexual drives and urges is already developed sexually.
- human beings are a kind of on-going battleground in which the idea of good or bad is not applicable; everyone is both rather than either one or the other; there is simply an on-going balance between the two which can tilt either way.
- the sexual side of humans had long been regarded as being more ‘animalistic’ and this strong depiction of the role of sex in human nature and personality clashed with ideas of humans as better than animals. The idea of humans as rational entities was also dealt a blow because, according to Freud’s ideas, the irrational libido was inherent and present at birth while the rational was a later and artificial element imposed on the conscious mind but not really touching or changing the subconscious.
- Freud was not popular with Nazis (he was a Jew and fled from his native Vienna to Britain in the 1930s after the Anschluss), but as you can see, there were some areas of overlap with Nietzsche.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
- Jung for a while was a collaborator with Freud in helping to found psychology and psychiatry, but ultimately he broke with Freud. Freud (like Karl Marx) was dogmatic and refused to brook any disagreement or deviation from his version of truth (this trait has tended to dog psychology and psychiatry, a consequence of the belief that they are engaged in ‘science’, a delusion of Marx also—the ‘scientific socialist’).
- Jung finally came to reject what he thought was the crude over-emphasis upon sex by Freud. Jung believed that psychic energies were not exclusively sexual, although sex was still powerful and important.
- Jung moved towards a theory about archetypes which are an expression of a ‘collective unconscious’; this ‘collective unconscious’ was widely shared, even across cultural patterns. The themes and motifs of the ‘collective unconscious’ were to be found in fairy tales, in art, poetry and dreams as well as in conscious behaviour; he argued that these themes and motifs (or similar ones) were not just cultural because they could be found in widely separate cultures and languages. Unlike Freud, who had relied heavily upon dreams as indicators of repressions and causes of neuroses, in Jung’s approach not everything was assigned sexual meaning and connotation as in Freud’s scheme.
- Jung was also interested in religion as embodying this collective unconscious and argued that religion was part of basic human instincts. Thus, along with Freud, Jung did a great deal to draw attention to and to explore the unconscious and therefore non-rational side of human nature. These speculations had significant ramifications for religion, especially organised religion.
Religion
- as we already noted, many felt that Darwin’s theories of evolution were an attack on Christianity and on the idea that humans were ‘higher’ than animals—i.e., that humans ranked between the angels and the animals and that humans had a soul while animals did not.
- the new proponents of the unconscious had an even more radical view of human nature; as one critic claimed, Freud depicted humans as ‘libidinous beasts’. Surely, there was little left of the notion that human beings were ‘created in the image of God.’
- equally serious was the ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible. Initially, it was simply the study of the Bible as an historical document as one would any other. However, as the results came out, there were far-reaching effects:
it showed that the first 5 books in the Bible were in fact written very late (4th Century B.C.); this was hundreds of years after the events they supposedly described and long after the other ‘historical’ books. [It is almost as if the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were written in Elizabethan English and yet people were claiming that it was an 8th and 9th C account of events in that era; or if someone claimed to have found a new Shakespearean play that was written in 20th C English!]
- the views and depictions of the first 5 books did not coincide with many features of the ‘historical books.’ What this seemed to show was that the first five books were an attempt to impose a view of the earlier history of the Israelites that was made up long afterwards. It could be viewed, therefore, as a later fabrication.
the higher criticism showed also that many elements and stories were common to other cultures in the same area and era (e.g., the story of the Flood and Daniel’s Dream). This implied that the Bible was not as unique as had been thought. If the Bible was divinely inspired, had God also inspired the same stories in other cultures? Alternately, if the ancient Hebrews had simply incorporated stories common to the Middle East of that era, then the claims to divine inspiration seemed exaggerated and perhaps incorrect.
- increasingly, proponents of the higher criticism began to argue that the Bible should be interpreted as myth. Myth in this sense does not mean that it is untrue but rather that it is a representation or understanding of a reality that is perhaps too complex to comprehend in literal terms. Thus, myth cannot and should not be interpreted literally; rather, one has to try to comprehend the truth behind the myth. This is what Christian fundamentalists call ‘liberalism’ or ‘modernism’ in theological terms and what they reject emphatically.
Responses:
for some, this ‘higher criticism’ challenged the truth and validity of Christianity; something is true or it is false. If Christianity were not literally true, then it was false; thus they have had to insist that everything in the Bible, every word, was literally true and when the findings of the higher criticism or of science called into question aspects of the Bible, then they rejected the findings. This was the response of fundamentalists.
others chose rather to redefine religion or Christianity. For those who believe that Truth is unknowable, then the Bible cannot be literally true, but its intuitive insights, myths etc. may convey important elements about the truth. However, this is a very different Christianity from what had commonly been accepted.
others could reject the Bible and Judeo-Christian religions entirely. Many could and did turn to atheism and agnosticism or perhaps to other religions. There was during this period a great burst of interest in Asian religions (Indian religions especially) as well as interest in the occult and paranormal. These other religions could include many ‘secular’ religions (Marxism, social Darwinism and later one could include forms of fascism; I’ve written an article entitled, “Victorian imperialism as religion: Civil or Otherwise” arguing that imperialism/nationalism became a religion for many Britons).
Science
- science too by the late 19th C had acquired enormous prestige: the periodic table of elements, the atomic structure of matter, the law of the conservation of energy had all been derived. They testified to the order, regularity and constancy of natural phenomena; science seemed able to disclose the cosmic principles underlying these phenomena.
- as one writer claimed, “The men of science had become the prophets of progressive minds;” for many people in the search for truth, science seemed a much better replacement for religion. When questioned about their religion, they would say, “I’m a man of science.” The confidence in science rested in certain beliefs:
that science was unfolding an accurate picture of reality;
that it was solidly based and could not err—that it revealed Truth;
that other modes of knowledge (e.g., metaphysics—deductive logic and reasoning, philosophy—and religion) were outmoded and obsolete.
- however, science was about to lose its common sense air and to be confronted with startling paradoxes in physics. The certainty of science was about to be challenged.
Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
- Bergson was a French philosopher; his contribution was to question some of pretensions of science. He made a distinction between the rational, conceptualising intellect and the intuitive understanding. The first, which included the scientific, analysing function, is a practical tool concerned with useful knowledge, but it is not truth-giving because reality cannot be divided up and conceptualised piecemeal. For example, dissecting dead organisms may not give all that much insight into the processes of living organisms or about the nature of life itself.
- ‘Reality,’ Bergson argued, is a continuum, to be grasped by intuition. Intuition is instinct which has become self-conscious and reflective. In a way similar to Kant, Bergson argued that intuition takes one to the very ‘inwardness of life.’
- for example, science tells us that the sound of bells is series of vibrations, but we experience it as a whole. A melody is not simply a series of notes of different frequencies and duration (e.g., 512 hz, 480 hz, 450 hz, etc.); it cannot be described; we intuit it. Reality is indivisible and therefore unanalysable; insofar as we do analyse it, we falsify it. “Science consists only of conventions, and to this circumstance solely does it owe its apparent certitude; the facts of science and , a fortiori, its laws are the artificial work of the scientist; science therefore can teach us nothing of the truth; it can serve only as a rule of action.” (Stromberg, pp. 191-2.)
- this was not an attack upon science, but it did argue that science was not the only or the best means to understand reality and to learn the Truth. The emphasis upon intuition could open the doors to non-rational approaches to knowledge and helped to stimulate the new interest in the mystic eastern religions, psychic phenomena etc.
- this was also very relevant to many trends in literature and the arts (imagism, impressionism etc.) which also emerged during the same period (we’ll discuss these briefly a bit later).
- science itself was in the process of confirming the contentions of Bergson and other critics as the certainties of science were about to be undermined.
- the crisis in science was brought to a head in 1887 by a series of experiments by two American scientists named Michelson and Morley. Essentially, they were trying to calculate the diameter of the earth by measuring the differences in the speed of light going from east to west compared to the speed going west to east. It was assumed that because of the rotation of the earth, one would be faster than the other. [They thought it was analogous to an airplane which takes longer to go around the earth flying east to west than vice versa; i.e., the medium through which the airplane moves—air—moves from west to east, especially in the jet stream. Thus, the airplane moves faster going with the flow of the air than when moving against the flow.] What Michelson and Morley found to their surprise was that there was no difference.
- this destroyed existing conceptions of light and electricity and destroyed the concept of ‘ether’. Ether had long been used to fill a number of gaps in understanding the nature of the universe. People could not imagine the universe as a void so scientists had postulated ‘ether’ as the substance filling up the spaces between the stars and planets. Also, light and electricity, as waves, were thought of as similar to sound waves and needing a medium to be transmitted. Thus, something—‘ether’—had been necessary to be a medium to allow the transmission of light waves from the sun and stars to the earth. Now, it was recognised that ‘ether’ didn’t exist.
- measuring and observing were crucial to Newtonian science; these were what helped to make it ‘objective’. Now, scientists began to argue that measuring was not possible in many areas. Electrons could not be observed and could only be analysed by observing effects. Moreover, they showed that the process of observing and measuring affected, and therefore corrupted, the results.
- the main idea of Newtonian science was of an impartial, neutral observer who does not allow his/her biases to affect the observations and measurements; now they were saying that observing, measuring, etc were not neutral activities. Such activities altered reality. Thus, there cannot be neutral observations in many areas of physics.
- in addition, scientists were beginning to explore the atom and were finding some confusing and disturbing things. The model of the atom as a kind of tiny solar system (i.e., a nucleus with little electrons whizzing around it) was incorrect (the model had been and still was useful for some purposes, especially in chemistry [most of us were taught this model], but increasingly in many areas of physics, it was untenable). As well, some of the ‘laws’ of Newton were violated; e.g., electrons did not act in accordance with the ‘law of gravity’, Newton’s most famous and, it was believed, most universal dictum.
- certainties disappeared in other respects as well. Previously, it was believed that many categories were discrete and separate: time, space, energy and mass (matter). Now scientists were saying that these were not necessarily clear-cut differences. Some sub-atomic particles or entities in the atom, for example, sometimes acted like mass but at other times acted like energy.
- as we noted earlier, Newtonian science had taken a universe that was mysterious, unpredictable and largely incomprehensible and provided explanations, making it predictable and comprehensible. Now, science began to go dramatically the other way; now, scientific depictions were becoming vastly more mysterious and even contradicted common sense.
- it was in this context that Albert Einstein introduced his theories of relativity. The concept is often explained in regard to speed or motion; the speed or motion of a body cannot be measured absolutely but only in comparison or relation to some other body. [How fast am I moving as I walk across the room?
in relation to the furniture in the room, I may be moving about 3 km/hour.
as part of the rotation of the earth on its axis, I am moving a bit less than 1000 miles an hour.
as part of the earth’s rotation around the sun, I am moving at additional speed; this applies to the movement of the solar system within the Milky Way and the movement of the galaxy in relation to other galaxies. There is no single, universal reference point to use as a measuring point.]
- even more confusingly, space and time are said to be part of a continuum rather than discrete and distinct categories; thus, they blend into one another. Space/time are also said to be curved, bent or even folded with the possibility of ‘worm holes’ which connect space/time folds. The concept of the relativity of time has been made familiar to us (the space traveller who leaves earth to visit other planets or stars and returns many years later would find that people who remained behind had experienced a very different time from that of the space-traveller; they are all much older or are dead!). But, for most of us, this concept does not accord with our common sense perception of time.
- in fact many aspects of the theories of relativity seemed outside rational perceptions and increasingly could not be explained by logical models. Many could be defined only in abstract mathematical symbols and formulae.
Ramifications:
- the former certainties of science were upended in a number of ways:
Newton’s ‘laws’ were no longer universal; they were no longer applicable to the very small world of the atom nor to the immensity of the universe. Instead, they seemed to apply only to limited circumstances, essentially the phenomena observable by the senses.
the Newtonian idea of science was that if one knew the general ‘laws’, one could predict individual events. If you know the law of gravity, you can predict what will happen when a particular apple’s connection with the tree is broken. In the rapidly developing field of quantum physics, this was not true; the actions of electrons, e.g., were uncertain. (With similar conditions and elements, there are a number of different outcomes; the action of a particular electron is not predictable.) Gradually, scientists were able to construct proportions for the different kinds of ways the electrons acted; while these new probabilities and trends of outcomes were later proved to be extraordinarily useful (much of the scientific discovery and technology in the 20th C have been based on them), nevertheless, they were not ‘laws’ in the old sense. Thus, the old conceptions of what science was about were changing.
science was increasingly removed from the grasp of ordinary people. Previously, educated people could, with a bit of effort, comprehend most Newtonian science and scientists could often work in several fields; hence forward, this was no longer the case. Increasingly, only experts can master and use the symbolic language or languages in which science was expressed; scientific fields began to diverge rapidly and became more unique [in a sense, scientific knowledge also became relative]. This all tended to make science much more mysterious for everyone outside the very small number of ‘experts’ who worked to master the increasingly arcane fields of science. Scientists have become more like high priests in very mysterious religions. All most of us can do is stand around with our mouths open.
Newtonian science had been perceived as being a rational approach to learning about a comprehensive rational reality—a reality that incorporated moral and social laws and dimensions as well as physical. [The concept of ‘social science’ is based on the Newtonian model and thus may well be obsolete.] Not only was the idea of ‘laws’ tenuous, but now it was suggested that there was not one single reality, but a number of realities, perhaps an infinite number of realities (even parallel realities).
Darwin’s theory had challenged many traditional conceptions of morality; Nature (the universe of lifeforms) was neither moral nor immoral, but rather was amoral. While one might attribute a kind of purpose to ‘Nature’ (the selection of stronger and hardier life forms and a sort of ‘progress’ to higher and more sophisticated life forms), ‘nature’ was completely indifferent to the fate of individual specimens and even to the fate of entire species. In this context, morality was artificial and might well be a negative element. Certainly, the new science gave a new concept to apply, the idea of relativity. If there are no absolute laws to describe or regulate the physical aspects of the universe, are there any grounds for believing that there are any ‘laws’ to govern the moral realm? Thus, the idea of a moral universe was thrown open to question.
What is the significance of all this?
- many scholars have argued that the undermining of the certainties and beliefs in a rational universe or a belief in some sort of God has left people in the 20th C with a moral and spiritual vacuum. They use this to explain the horrors and barbarisms perpetrated by humans in this century.
- to some extent this is a conservative point of view and it would be mistaken to blame everything on this idea of a spiritual vacuum; there have been horrible slaughters before in human history, and in 17th C Europe, religion was the excuse in wars of religion as it was in the crusades. However, I’m not willing to discard it entirely.
- this vacuum and uncertainty are also used to explain why so many people in Europe and the West were so vulnerable to fascism. Bereft of the certainties and securities which had previously been provided by religion and/or science, they turned to leaders who promised certainty, no matter how far-fetched.
- this certainly fits: the fascist leaders were very categorical and insisted on absolute, unquestioning obedience. They required their followers to have complete faith in what they were doing and where they were leading.
- it perhaps applies to communist leaders and parties; incredible upheavals and disruptions have been set in motion to transform societies—the Soviet Union and China especially—into communist ones, all based upon the secular religion of marxism.
Art, Music, Drama and Literature
-in these areas, there were vigorous and often angry reactions to existing patterns and norms. The rebels pointed out that most patterns and norms which governed these disciplines were artificial and only on the surface (i.e., they were one or two dimensional).
- for example, they argued that in fact experience is both multi-faceted and simultaneous. Except when we are sleeping, our experiences are an amalgam of sensory stimuli, emotions, thoughts, drives and urges; some elements of this amalgam are conscious, but many others may be subconscious. [e.g., great thinkers may be thinking great thoughts while they are on the toilet or while they are belching or letting wind; or right in the middle, his wife comes in and tells him to take out the garbage.] We might even be subject to psychic (i.e., non-sensory) inputs and influence. [Many crowds and mobs seem to operate a bit mysteriously. How do groups of people sometimes become galvanised into entities with a herd mentality in which large numbers of people act in unusual ways; individuals may, as part of group, do things that they would never do on their own; feelings and emotions seem to be communicated very quickly in some situations. Some have suggested that something like a ‘group mind’ emerges and takes over.]
- traditional literature, some writers argued, tended to be linear and one-dimensional at best and dealt with one level at a time; most literature ignored much of human experience entirely (how often did novelists and poets write about going to the bathroom?) or tended to ignore the darker side of human nature and human life. This dissatisfaction with traditional literature brought forth a variety of responses and attempts to provide alternatives:
stream of consciousness—this was an attempt to capture something of the simultaneity and multi-faceted aspects (e.g., thinking of life, of art or of Truth while going to the bathroom). James Joyce’s Ulysses was a prime example.
alternately, some writers tried to capture the essence of a moment or experience at a multiple level (much of modern poetry, especially imagist poetry) which by a set of images, singly or in interaction, convey the multiple impressions.
some writers focused on the seedy or nasty side of life and society. The ‘charnel house’ poets, for example, dealt endlessly with descriptions of dead bodies, death, decay and mortuaries. Others focused on people in the underclasses or people outside respectable society (criminals, prostitutes, the insane, etc.).
- in visual art, there was a rejection of representational art and most of the conventions which had governed art. Representational art was too limited and inadequate. Rather, it was the ‘inner truth’ which should be portrayed, not the external appearance.
Henri Matisse declared, “There is an inherent truth which must be disengaged from the outward appearance of the object to be represented. Exactitude is not truth.”
Impressionism tried to convey an impression rather than a strict representation. Expressionism went even further; increasingly, the artists were more concerned with portraying their inner responses and feelings about what they were painting rather than the object itself. Later artists turned to cubism and abstract art insisting that only in this way, by abstracting from the visual appearance entirely, could they really express the totality of their inner reality as artists.
- in music, composers began to experiment with tonality, dissonance and disharmony.
- drama and dance began to take on subject matter that shocked and outraged many. Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” ballet caused a riot at its first performance in Paris; it depicted very sensual and sexual rites [a Nietzschean Dionysian bacchanal] and culminated in a rape and murder. The music too is driving and unrestrained; the over-all effect is over-whelming. About the same time in London, Ibsen’s plays caused a mini-riot and brought demands for the plays to be banned on the grounds that they were immoral and undermined family life and norms.
- much of these artistic reactions were against middle class conventions, superficiality and hypocrisy— against bourgeois values and bourgeois domination of culture.
- it is this period which saw the emergence of artists as rebels, alienated from and antagonistic to society; this had not been the case before, but it has become familiar, almost the norm in the 20th C. Indeed the alienation and the sense of suffocation were almost pathological:
some sought to escape; Van Gogh went to the South Pacific. Others found inspiration in African and Polynesian art (Picasso’s art was radically affected by an exhibition of African art); there was a feeling that primitivism might be a means to sluff off the burden of modern conventions, to again find a path to creativity. This had a kind of Nietzschean perspective. Some committed suicide as a protest and comment on life and culture.
others argued the opposite. Modern life was change, convulsion and speed; art had to get rid of the conventions in order to express the reality of modern life.
many tended to change and to adopt a succession of views and enthusiasms. Picasso had a number of ‘periods’. Some went to different extremes rather than a progressive development.
some artists turned to nationalism and a great many gloried in war and struggle, welcoming the war in 1914. War too ripped away conventions, gave rise to primitive emotions in hate and killings; it was primal and would sweep away middle class conventionality, mediocrity and stultification. They thought that war would help artists to regain creativity.
- in rebelliousness, in the alienation and rejection of society , its conventions and its mores, this minority anticipated the inter-war period; the similarities in the two periods lay not only in attitudes but also in the conflicting and contradictory trends.
- for example, fascists vociferously denounced the conformity of bourgeois society or the uniformity of mass society, but the fascists demanded even greater degrees of conformity and uniformity, even in clothing and uniforms. This is not infrequent; ‘non-conformists’ frequently end up adopting a different conformity rather than abolishing conformity; in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the wearing of army boots, fatigues and long hair by hippies to protest against middle class conformity and materialism became almost a uniform. It is seen often among adolescent teenagers who rebel against their parents and do or wear things that they know will annoy their parents, but they are extremely conformist to their peers’ values.
- thus, many of the elements that were to characterise the attitudes, responses and beliefs of people in the interwar period were already apparent before the war. The war and the interwar experiences (hyperinflation, insecurity, depressions, bohemianism with drugs, unstrained sexual behaviours both homosexual and heterosexual) exacerbated and made their expression more general and widespread. [The musical “Cabaret” deals with the ‘ in your face’ bohemian lifestyle of the period and then ends with the Nazi youth singing “Tomorrow belongs to me”; one kind of excess gave way to, or perhaps opened the door to, another.]