New Philosophy
- World wars led to decreased confidence in science as the solution to all our problems (scientific developments could now be used to kill millions of people)
- Society began to stray away from Enlightenment Rationalism
- Existentialism- philosophy that the world was absurd, and one had to find meaning depict that absurdity
- Led by Friedrich Nietzche, who believed God was dead and life was inherently meaningless
- Postmodernism - believed all truth was relative & no one group understood absolute truth and all their ideas were culturally conditioned
Organized religion
- Over the 20th & 21st centuries, Europe grew more secular, BUT organized religion still played a significant role in European social & cultural life, 20th century, the church had to deal with totalitarian governments
- Germany: Confessing Church, founded by Dietrich Bonhoeffer- openly criticized Nazi policies
- Italy: Mussolini needed the support of the Catholic Church in Rome -> he gave the Vatican City independence & recognized Catholicism in Italy -> the pope encouraged Italians to support the fascist gov
- Poland: the church to deal with Soviet Communist repression
- Solidarity (est. 1980)- Polish trade union outside of the Warsaw Pact, Soviets did not like this union tried very hard to crush this opposition
- 1978, John Paul II became pope of the Catholic Church & financially supported Solidarity’s efforts to undermine the Soviet Communist regime in Poland
- 1960s, the Catholic Church underwent a massive reform movement at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), which was meant to bring the church into the modern world -> these reforms led to a revival of Catholicism in parts of Europe
Arts- 20th cen, began questioning objective knowledge
- Cubism- depicted 3-D objects in 2-D (Pablo Picasso, very famous cubist)
- Futurism- emphasized the future of Italy in Russia to distract from their past (WWII)
- Dadaism- response to the purposelessness of life after two world wars, satirical commentary on Western Aesthetic values
- If life has no purpose, neither should art
- Surrealism- art should reflect the chaos of the human mind that had been exposed by Sigmund Freud
- Salvador Dali- persistence of memory, commentary on the disturbing relativity of time
Architecture
- Germany: Bauhaus School of Architecture- goal was to design structures solely on function and not aesthetics
Literature
- James Joyce developed Stream of Consciousness- new form of composition, writing the characters actual thoughts occur in rapid succession without typical conventions of composition (commas & stuff)
- Franz Kafka- challenged old conventions by mixing elegant writing with elements of fantastical imagination
Consumerism
- the disposable income of the average European increased
- WWII -> factories had perfected their workflow from producing munitions & now shifted towards producing consumer products
Baby Boom- occurred during the postwar years
- Many countries encouraged the baby boom by investing in neonatologist (encouraging more babies)
- More common in Western countries than in the Soviet Union
Civil Rights Movements
- Gay & lesbian movements- fought for the equality for LGBTQ+ people in the 20th & 21st centuries
- France: Homosexual front for Revolutionary Action
Revolts of 1968
- Counterculture Movement: opposed cultural conformity caused by consumerism & the growing wealth gap
- They revolted across Europe & the world, against inequality & other social justice issues