The document explores the evolution of Western thought from the Industrial Revolution through to modern times, touching on key movements such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Modernism, while also addressing historical events like the Holocaust and the rise of totalitarianism. It critiques the misuse of philosophy and art in justifying oppressive ideologies, particularly in the context of Nazi Germany and colonial imperialism. Additionally, it discusses the philosophical underpinnings of these ideologies and their consequences on individual and societal levels, including the rise of eugenics and the impact of capitalism on state governance.

1. Industrial RevolutionRenaissance
Enlightenment
Romanticism Victorian
Modernism
Copernican Revolution
French Revolution1848
Das Kapital
Leviath
The Descent of Man
Hegel
SchopenhauerNietzsche
Decadence
PostmodernPost-War/Post-Holocaust/Postcolonial
Part One

2. From Ideas to Ideology
The perversion of philosophy and art in the
pursuit of power

3. Stalinist Purges: 1933-1958
Soviet-engineered “drought”—Ukraine:
1932-1933
How did it come to this?
Holocaust, 1933-1945
The U.S. drops atomic bomb:
Hiroshima, 1945

4. The Renaissance
Scientific explanations
of natural phenomena
Weakening of the
Church’s authority
Creation of nation-states
with stable monarchies

5. The Enlightenment
Greater secularization of
education
Standardization of written
vernaculars and grammars
Stress on formation of
enlightened societies based
on Greco-Roman models of
governance
Limitless human potential

6. The Romantic Movement
Celebration of the individual
Highly introspective
Stressed the role emotions
play in perceiving and acting
with the world (not always
reasonable)
Essentially conceived of
nature as a force without
reason

7. The Victorian Age
Literature as social criticism;
Addressed the problems that
come with rapid
industrialization
Representative of the middle-
class since most of the writers
were middle class
The emergence of Realism as
a working- and middle-class
reaction to the Romanticism of
the landed and leisure classes

8. Fin de Siecle Europe and the
Decadent Movement
Moved away from Victorian model of art
and literature as vehicles for social change
(“Art for art’s sake”—Oscar Wilde)
Saw themselves as the culmination of the
history and culture of the last two thousand
years
Stressed the tedium and malaise of
modern, industrial life
Celebrated the artificial
Symbolists (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé,
etc.) wrote poetry as if it were visual art or
music in an attempt to stress the
aesthetics of language rather than its
meaning

9. Modernists
Attempted to rejuvenate Western art and literature
Introduced the “psychological novel” based on
Freud’s and William James’s models of the psyche
Challenged neoclassical aesthetics
Worked to create a “Modern” mythos to replace the
Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian
Concerned with origins and sources as a result of
creating new mythos
Believed in an “essentialism” in terms of the
individual, meaning there was something innate
that makes an individual an individual and that
something cannot be altered
Preoccupied with the decline of Western
Civilization typified in the politics behind World War
I

10. Literature and National
Identity
Antiquarian movement began in the
late 18th century to preserve folk tales
and other cultural artifacts existing in
nations before the adoption of
neoclassical aesthetic principles and
values
The language of literature becomes far
more vernacular (less standardized) in
response to the increasing
standardization of languages and
grammars
Increasing interest in the cultures that
existed before the Roman Empire and,
later, the Church dominated Europe

11. Nietzsche was not a Nazi
His sister was;
He was dead before the Nazis came to power;
He was an elitist jerk, but he did not propagate
murdering people for the sake of murdering people;
His ubermensch (“Overman”) is the ideal individual
who shapes his own destiny and dares to be different;
The Nazis stressed uniformity to the point of
murdering those whom they deemed “different”;
When Nietzsche writes about Jews, he is speaking of
anyone who practices a religion derived from the
Hebraic tradition; this includes the three major
Western religions;
He believed in meritocracies ruled by the best and
brightest, preferably aristocratic, but in no way
espoused forcing evolution’s hand through pseudo-
sciences like Eugenics.

12. Darwin and
Eugenics
Charles Darwin’s theories of
sexual selection and evolution
gave rise to the pseudo-science of
Eugenics;
Eugenicists believed humanity
could be perfected by ridding the
gene pool of those who did not
meet their standards of the “fittest”;
They also believed that humans,
like dogs and cats, were made up
of different “species”/“races”;
Each race had different abilities,
and these “racial” attributes should
be taken into consideration in
social and political hierarchies;
some races were more fit to rule
while others were more fit to be
ruled;
Darwin makes no mention of using
his theories to promote misguided
political aims, nor to genetically
engineer the human race.

13. Totalizing Visions
The tendency of Western thought to reduce
human experience to models meant to be
applied across the board regardless of
individual circumstances;
Example: Freud
Everything tends to go back to the
Oedipal complex;
Would often shoe-horn individual
experiences into Oedipal complex;
Denied differences in gender or cultural
background when applying his
psychoanalytical models;
Denied any evidence to contradict his
primary theory (Oedipal complex).

14. Nazi Ideology and the Abuse of Philosophy and Art
Could deny God due to dominance of science over religion
Believed certain men had limitless potential
Celebration of the abstract “individual” (every human being) transformed into an excuse for
megalomania
Used the rhetoric of the middle and working classes to gain support
Saw themselves as the culmination of history
Claimed to have the solution to their definition of European decadence (excess instead of malaise;
political instead of aesthetic)
Used Germanic (Norse) myths to create the mythos of the Third Reich
Misused Nietzsche’s concept of the Overman (representative of radical individuality) and applied it
solely to Nazi officials to justify their rank and power
Took advantage of Eugenics to further bastardize Darwin’s theories of evolution to advance a racist
agenda
Borrowed racist ideology from European aristocrats and imperialist officials to organize the state
Reduced all of humanity to race and, consequently, their notions of “good” and “evil” based on racist
assumptions

15. A Convenient “Truth”:
Capitalism, imperialism, and the rights of
man

16. Comte de Gobineau: The
Father of Racism
French nobleman (though he may have
been an impostor) who feared for the fate
of the French aristocracy;
Believed the bourgeois French were
descendants of Gallic-Roman slaves, and
the nobility were descended from
Germanic stock;
Went so far as to claim he himself was
descended from Odin, a Scandinavian
pirate;
Believed the decline of the aristocracy and,
by extension, civilization was the result of
mixing “noble” blood with that of “lesser”
individuals.

17. European Imperialism
Revealed the limited definition of “man”
used by authors and governments during
the formation of democracies;
Used the myths of the “noble savage”
and the “white man’s burden” to further
imperial aims;
A result of surplus capital and surplus
labor (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism);
Created and/or perpetuated race-based
governing structures;
Worked to alienate indigenous
populations and imperial officials alike.

18. Effects of Imperialism
A confusion of economy and state
that persists to this day;
Imperialism furthers the
interests of capitalism, not
democracy;
Imperialism motivated by
private business interests, not
the state;
State aids private business
interests in imperial efforts
because it may help the
economy.

19. Capitalism
and
ImperialismCapitalism works according to a “boom
and bust” cycle;
Too much capital creates a “bust”
due to “over-saving”;
Imperialism preserves the boom a
bit longer or makes the bust less
painful because investors may
“spend” their money in a foreign
market, syphoning the surplus
capital out of the economy;
Also uses colonialism to export
labor to other nations to curb
unemployment.

20. Totalitarianism in Europe
Bad conscience, willful ignorance, and
opportunism
“An idea is always a generalization,
and a generalization is a property of
thinking. To generalize means to
think.”
— Hegel
“In the eyes of
dialectical philosophy,
nothing is established
for all times, nothing is
absolute or sacred.”
— Marx
“Madness is something rare in
individuals, but in groups, parties,
peoples, ages, it is the rule.”
— Nietzsche

21. While Britain remained relatively stable, which is a fact Hannah Arendt attributes to the nation’s two-party
political system, nations on the continent were in political turmoil;
Many practiced a multiparty system that served private interests rather than the welfare of the general public
(imagine if all of our lobbyists decided to create their own parties instead of trying to influence the leaders of
our two parties, and you will have some idea of the chaos);
Due to way too many competing private interests, the majority of Europeans on the continent became
disillusioned with, if not downright hostile, to democracy as they experienced it;
With the bloated party system, people began to mistrust and despise all of them—even those that might
claim to be working in their interests;
Certain politically savvy folks took advantage of the situation and began marketing themselves to the people
as “movements” instead of parties;
As “movements,” they claimed to be “above the fray” and the state—looking out for the interests of the
common man and the national population as a whole instead of representing one class or sector of society;
Thus, by the 1933 election in Germany, the country had split over ideologies (what’s best for the nation and
“humanity” as a whole) rather than specific, tangible interests related to one group or another;
While these ideologies were, in part, based upon philosophy, the members of each “movement” in Germany
(barring the conservative party that still championed the wealthy) had to reach the masses and gain popular
support;
As a result, they took universal and abstract principles and applied them as if they
were courses of action to be assigned to specific groups of individuals.
The Political Climate in Europe after World War I

22. From philosophy to ideology
Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, which may be visualized as follows:
Thesis
Anti-Thesis
Anti-Thesis
Thesis
Object under
study Synthesis SynthesisSynthesis
Observation
Observation
Observation
Observation
ThesisObservation
Anti-ThesisObservation
ThesisObservation
Anti-ThesisObservation

23. Philosophy
Pursues truth, doesn’t attain it;
Concerned with questions, not
answers;
Based on evidence and logic;
Dynamic, not static;
Reviews and revises what went
before;
Expects its own review and revision
in the future;
Abstract and general;
The personal becomes the ethical
or political;
Is not tied to identity;
A person does not practice a
philosophy;
The goal is the acquisition of
knowledge and creating new
knowledge.
Totalitarianism
Secular
Professes to be the only truth;
Answers morally fundamental
questions;
Considered to be infallible;
Based on faith, which requires
neither evidence nor logic, only
divine sanction;
Those who question it will be
punished for all eternity;
Concrete and specific;
The moral and political
become the personal;
A person must practice a
religion since it is tied to
identity;
The goal is attainable, tangible,
and self-centered: personal
salvation.
Western Religions
SacredSecular as Sacred
The ideology supporting it is the only
truth;
Answers politically fundamental
questions;
Considered to be infallible;
Based on falsified evidence and
specious logic;
Tied to identity;
Those who question it will be
ostracized;
Concrete and specific;
Adherents to the ideology idolize its
creator;
Appeals to an individual’s desire for a
“higher purpose”;
The goal is attainable, tangible, and
self-centered: power.
Benefit: decreased individual and
global suffering through
knowledge
Benefit: the end of internal, social,
and global conflict Benefit: heaven and, eventually,
heaven on earth
Cost: accepting ambiguity and
uncertainty
Costs:
• human suffering on a global scale
• self and individual identity
• permanent suspension of reason
Cost: suspension of reason in matters
of faith

24. Genocide, Darfur: 2003-2009
Genocide, Cambodia: 1975-1975
Genocide, Northern Iraq: 1988
Genocide, Bosnia:1992-1995
Genocide, Rwanda:1994
“What we
learn from
history is that
we never
learn from
history.”
— Hegel
Genocide, Syria: 2012-Present