From the Rational to the Irrational or, Why Joss

Whedon is a Prophet of Our Times

HUM 2052: Civilization IISummer 2010Dr. Perdigao

June 17, 2010

The Old West and Evil Alliances“What is civilization?”

Back to the Reavers, to Serenity’s world

Place of Imperialism

Civilized vs. savage

Redefining Civilization• “Nineteenth-century writings on civilization tended to emphasize

its evolution from barbarism to the pinnacle reached by modern industrial society” (1692)

• Pride in technological advancement (return to Crystal Palace) but question if “the technical prowess that was the most visible sign of an advanced society could also mean its doom?” (1693)

• Becoming “less civilized”

• “Civilization is an illusion, a temporary truce for survival that always masks hostile instincts” (1693). For Freud, civilization “Set of constraints entered into reluctantly by instinctively hostile and competitive individuals for the survival of the community (and, therefore, the individual)” (1693).

• Question of “ethical and (primarily European) cultural values” (1693)

• Early modernity and late modernity (Perry 678); second Scientific Revolution in twentieth century; Planck’s theory of discontinuity, nature as “fundamentally elusive and unpredictable” (Perry 698); “uncertainty and disorientation” (Perry 699)

Changing Tides• 1914, Germany as “most highly industrialized and powerful

European nation, with the largest and most successful socialist party” yet retained aspects of absolute monarchy (Perry 640)

• In the United States, in the election of 1912, division between workers and employers

• “Golden Age” as viewed in 1915 with story of progress “liberal institutions and democratic movements, autonomous nations, scientific and industrial progress, and individual human development” but, in reassessment, idea that “something had gone wrong in the nineteenth century” with persistence of authoritarian governments in central, eastern, and southern Europe, repression of opposition, questions about limitations of democratic and liberal governments (Perry 645-46).

• Since defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and Franco-Prussian war, avoidance of war between Great Powers (Perry 709)

Decline of Civilization• 1914—pride in “accomplishments of Western civilization and

confidence in its future progress” (Perry 709) but nationalism caused divisions, created alliances and hostility, preponderance of pseudoscientific racial and Social Darwinist theories (survival and domination); extension of Imperialist attitudes/goals (Perry 709)

• For some, shift from belief in rationality upheld by Enlightenment thinkers to the primitive, instinctual, and irrational (Perry 709)

• Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to throne of Austria-Hungary, (June 28, 1914) begins road to war; Europe splits into two hostile alliance systems (Perry 712)—Bismarck’s effort to keep France isolated (Perry 713), creates Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy and alliance with Russia (Perry 713), resignation of Bismarck with Kaiser William II’s ascension, divisions between Austria and Russia

• Triple Entente—France, Russia, Britain, as protection against German military, industrial, and diplomatic power (Perry 715)

• Question of responsibility raised in relation to World War I, frames for writings during and after the period

Decline of Civilization• April 1917, US declares war on Germany under President Woodrow

Wilson (1856-1924), fight to “make the world safe for democracy,” becomes war of conflict between democracy and autocracy (Perry 728)

• Lenin’s adaptation of Marxism to Russian conditions leads to Bolshevik Revolution in 1917; in 1918, changes party’s name to Communist

• March 1918, Russian signs Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, loses territory to Germany (Finland, Poland, Baltic provinces, Ukraine) and withdraws from war

• January 1918, Wilson’s Fourteen Points

• November 3, 1918, Austria-Hungary signs armistice with Allies; November 11, 1918, Germany signs armistice with Allies, ending WWI

• January 1919, Paris Peace Conference; Germany signs Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919; full timeline on 710

• Casualties of war—9.4 million dead and 21 million wounded (Perry 739); sense that Western civilization was “perishable” and its people were “never more than a step or two away from barbarism” (Perry 739)

Reaving• Note to The Future of an Illusion (1927)—divide between culture

and civilization—with culture defined as a “complex whole,” including “knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1694); by the twentieth century, 164 definitions of culture

• Civilization and Its Discontents (1929)

• From barbarism to “negotiated relationship between human instincts and the institutions necessary for survival” (1694); inclination to aggression, threat to civilization

• Science and technology—can be “used for their annihilation” (1694); examples in WWI with tank and fighter plane revolutionizing “the future of warfare” (Perry 742); “One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion” (Freud 1694).

• “The present cultural state of America would give us a good opportunity for studying the damage to civilization which is thus to be feared. But I shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization: I do not wish to give an impression of wanting myself to employ American methods” (Freud 1699).

Losses• Freud—shift from “Enlightenment’s view of the individual’s

essential goodness and rationality” (Perry 685); nonrational drives as dictating behavior but still emphasis on control for benefits of civilization

• Nietzsche’s superman or overman—notion that “A society that definitely and instinctively gives up war and conquest is in decline” (qtd. in Perry 682) but Nietzsche’s critique of and contempt for German nationalism and militarism

• Valéry, French poet and philosopher, Spengler, German philosopher

• Spengler’s “scientific analysis of broad sociological patterns” as a response to World War I; Valéry’s “personal identification with the continent-wide crisis,” the “crisis of the mind” (1701). Both were written in 1919.

• Valéry references Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx

• Valéry’s Hamlet mocks “anthill society,” introduces relationship between order and disorder

Culture/Civilization Divide• Spengler’s argument that cultures and civilizations follow

cyclical patterns: rise, mature, die when “initial creative impulses were exhausted” (1706); “modern Western civilization has already begun to fall” (1693)

• Imperialism is “Civilization unadulterated” as “culture-man” is directed inwards and “civilization-man” outwards (1710)

• Spengler: “The Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture” (1709)—accomplishment in transition from Culture to Civilization in the Classical world in 4th century and for the Western in 19th century (1710).

Revolutions of the Mind?• Economic crisis: intellectual crisis

• Error of the mind: disorder in the mind of Europe

• Freud’s theory of dominant aggression in man—as a psychosocial manifestation—role in larger realm of politics

• The place of Freud (and psychoanalysis) in discovering the causes of World War I?

• Education and improved living conditions (philosophes) and abolition of private property (Marx) would not “eliminate evil” as people will “lust after power and privilege” (Perry 688).

• American culture in relation to world order, according to Freud?

• “think[ing] in continents” from Spengler’s theories?