The two world wars in the 20th century were a hyper realistic shock to humanity, in general, and to philosophy – particularly.
Until then philosophy was divorced from its being and mission: which is finding the truth about human existence. It was locked in the prison of intellectualism.
The hyper realistic shock of the 2 world wars and the demonic forces that gushed out – were so frightening, that philosophy could not go on as before, at the meeting point of this war and philosophy, existentialism was born.
Philosophy got connected again to reality (by the hyper realistic shock of the world wars) through concepts such as; the absurd, angst, death, Existence precedes essence, The Übermensch, The death of God, Meaning of life, Social alienation, Emptiness, Importance of the individual, Importance of choice, Importance of personal relations, contingencies, being unauthentic and social criticism.
And so on. And great thinkers were born: Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus‘ Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida. Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
This existential philosophy and its main themes, are standing on the border between realistic philosophy and hyper realistic philosophy. So, it was a blessing and revitalization of philosophy so far. But what happens to it today? It is almost gone. This stream in philosophy got categorized, and then was left outside our real personal life, and this could happen, again, by over intellectualization of this important hyper realistic stream of thought; existentialism.
If humanity or a society or a person got into escapist way of life (and it doesn’t matter what kind of escapism), then in order to come from it back to reality – the only way is to use a hyper realistic shock; the double shock of the hyper realism – will bring those who received it back to the signal shock of realty. If a culture or society or and individual are deep in escapist mentality – only a double shock might do the work of returning them to reality, meaning: the truth of one’s life and of existence.
But the effect of this philosophy was weakening, and now it is in cool the sac, stuck in intellectualism, while inside the demons are getting stronger each day.
Part two:
When does the horror of the bursting out of demonic forces from the depth of the subconscious – happens, usually? It happens in a low point of humanity, at the time – It is the combination of two things: technological overall ruler ship and being stuck in combination of intellectualism and escapism. And this low points were the background for the demons bursting out.
Most of the dark forces came out of Germany. This nation has got some of the greatest thinks and composers of all times.
In music:
- Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) …
- Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) …
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) …
- Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) …
- Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) …
- Robert Schumann (1810-1856) …
- Richard Wagner (1813-1883) …
- Johannes Brahms (1833-1897).
In philosophy:
1 Kant, the very first one. One of the greatest of all time.
2 Nietzsche, original, strong, influent thinker. A top writer on his own right.
3 Hegel, his philosophical reached the ultimate limits of thought.
4 Husserl, a mathematician, developed almost from scratch the phenomenology, one of the most influential philosophical schools in the last century.
5 Marx, changed forever the face of philosophy, and of the world.
6 Leibniz, universal sage, jurist, mathematician, philosopher, wrote in Latin, French, and German.
7 Eckhart, philosopher, theologian, mystic, founder of the German language.
8 Schopenhauer, idiosyncratic and powerful thinker.
9 Schelling, a philosophical genius; created five different philosophical systems.
10 Habermas, most influential postwar philosopher.
Surely, one could easily add another 10 names to this list. Just to mention a few: Cassirer, Fichte, Jaspers, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Dilthey, Cohen, Scheler, Gehlen, Natorp.
But here is a problem – the greater is the talent and potential. The stronger and more powerful – the demons would get. A great person has an equally great demons, the demons are the internal antithesis to the thesis of its greatness. When technology takes over human life and the standards of human warmth, empathy – give way to alienation, and one becomes cold to his fellow man – a switch could be made, from the thesis of being genius and the antithesis of the dark and crazy demons.
It is much easier to switch from thesis to anti thesis, then from one of this two extremes to the sane middle. Extreme pole and much closer to each other then any of them to the neutral vector.
Gabriel