Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
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Ouvroir de literature potentielle (Oulipo) [Workshop of potential literature]
Oulipo, Ouvroir de littérature potentielle [Workshop of potential literature] is a dynamic and even flamboyant group of writers, poets, and mathematicians who strive to elaborate…
Organicism
Modernist organicism emphasizes the interrelationship between the natural world and society, and links sociocultural changes with nature, biology, and aesthetic forms in imagining the human…
Bataille, Georges Albert Maurice Victor (1897–1962)
Georges Bataille (September 10, 1897–July 9, 1962) was a French writer who synthesized ideas from many disciplines. He converted to Catholicism at the start of…
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1895–1975)
Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher and thinker whose long career concerned aesthetics, ethics, literary and cultural theory, linguistics, and sociology. His earliest works, in…
Santayana, George (1863–1952)
George Santayana—philosopher, poet, novelist, memoirist, and critic—was born in Madrid, the son and grandson of diplomats, and was brought to America by his mother in…
Nwoko, Demas (1935--)
Across the spectrum of fine art and design, Demas Nwanna Nwoko has made his mark as a central contributor to a neo-traditionalist philosophy at the…
Schapiro, Meyer (1904–1996)
Art historian Meyer Schapiro was born in Šiauliai [Shavley], Lithuania, on September 23, 1904, but soon immigrated to the United States with his family in…
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, left-wing political activist, playwright, and novelist. One of the leading French public intellectuals of the twentieth century, he was…
Al-Bustani, Butrus بطرس البستاني (1819–83)
Butrus Al-Bustani is known as the “father of the Arabic Renaissance” and was a leading pioneer of the Al-Nahda (النهضه) or cultural awakening. Al-Bustani sought…
Weininger, Otto (1880–1903)
Otto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher and racial theorist. Born in Vienna to Jewish parents, he committed suicide five months after the publication of Sex…
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the notion that basic life forms increase in complexity over time due to environmental adaptation. While commonly attributed to Charles Darwin (1809–1882),…
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903–69)
Born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund to an Italian Catholic mother and an assimilated Jewish father, Adorno would take his mother’s vaguely aristocratic last name. Philosopher, aesthetician,…
Orage, A. R. (1873–1934)
Born in Dacre, Yorkshire, England, Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual and writer and the editor of The New Age magazine. The son of…
National Socialism and Fascism
To appreciate that the various forms of fascism, particularly German National Socialism under Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers' Party commonly…
Lukács, György (1885–1971)
György Lukács was a Hungarian philosopher and literary critic. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he spent his youth in Berlin and Vienna studying German…
Gyre
The term “gyre” describes the spiral motion of matter that widens and narrows as it moves around an axis. Also represented as a vortex, a…
New Criticism
Formed in response to philological, historical, and moral methods of teaching literature in the mid-1930s, the New Criticism was an American critical movement that insisted…
Stephen, Leslie (1832–1904)
Leslie Stephen was an English author and editor who contributed significantly to the science-religion debate in the latter part of the Victorian period. Father of…
Collège de Sociologie
A discussion group of French intellectuals established in Paris in March 1937, the Collège de Sociologie lasted until late 1939.
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976)
Born in Meßkirch, Germany, Martin Heidegger is renowned as a leading 20th-century philosopher of existentialism and phenomenology with far-reaching influence in the Western world. Heidegger…
Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892–1971)
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an influential pastor and theologian in America. His thought initially centered on liberal pacifism, but it later turned to the…
Volksgemeinschaft
The German term Volksgemeinschaft, normally translated as ‘national community’ or ‘people’s community’, expresses an ideal image of a harmonious and united society. The term draws…
Ennui
Ennui (French, from Lat. in odio esse, to be an object of hate) is an existential form of boredom, a weary state of constant disaffectedness…
Dialectical Materialism
Dialectical Materialism is a doctrine of late-nineteenth-century German socialist philosophy, which later developed as a central tenet of Marxist political philosophy.