Pre-WWI

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a new outlook took shape, one which differed from the previous enlightenment outlook. Late modern thinkers and scientists made revolutionary insights on human nature, society itself, and the physical universe. These thinkers challenged the philosophies of those before them. But while achieving all these revolutionary ideas there was the first world war to think about. World War I had a dramatic influence on the way people thought …

…proclaimed that there is no natural good in human beings. Few thought that their whole civilization would be gripped by a crisis that threatened its very survival. But there were those who viewed this civilization as dying and beyond redemption. The spiritual crisis that had preceded the war shattered Europe’s social order and led to the destruction of the ideologies of the Enlightenment. The European world was now in dissolution of their own beliefs.