24.4: Philosophy and Art

Ironically, the major intellectual movements focused on the premise that life was, and probably would remain, alienating and unjust. Despite the real, tangible improvements in the quality of life for most people in Western Europe between 1945 - 1975, there was a marked insecurity and pessimism reflected in postwar art and philosophy. The devastation of the war, the threat of nuclear war between the superpowers, and the declining power of Europe on the world stage led to this outlook. New cultural struggles emerged against the backdrop of economic prosperity and the threat of nuclear war.

The postwar era began in the shadow of the war and the fascist nightmare that had preceded it. British writer George Orwell noted that “since about 1930, the world had given no reason for optimism whatsoever. Nothing in sight except a welter of lies, cruelty, hatred, and ignorance.” Moral exhaustion was the result of the war, something that lingered over Europe for years and grew with the discovery of the extent of the Holocaust. There was also the simple fact that the world itself could not survive another world war. Indeed, once the Cold War began in earnest in the late 1940s, the world was just a few decisions away from devastation, if not outright destruction.

Existentialism

The quintessential postwar philosophy was existentialism, influenced by French writers and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. During World War II, Sartre and Beauvoir had played minor roles in the French Resistance, while Camus wrote and edited a clandestine anti-Nazi paper, Combat. Sartre and Beauvoir were products of the most elite schools and universities in France, while Camus was an Algerian-born French citizen who took pride in his “provincial” background. Even before the war, Sartre was famous for his philosophical work and for his novel Nausea, which depicted a "hero" who tried unsuccessfully to find meaning in life after realizing that his actions were all ultimately pointless.

Figure 24.3.1: Lifelong companions and fellow philosophers Beauvoir and Sartre.

While existentialism is a flowery word, its essential arguments are straightforward. First, there is no inherent meaning to life. Humans just exist: they are born, they do things while alive, then they die. During life, people are forced to constantly make choices. Sartre wrote that humans "are condemned to be free." Most people find this process of always having to make choices frightening and difficult, so they pretend that something greater and more important provides the essential answers: religion, political ideologies, the pursuit of wealth, and so on. Sartre and Beauvoir called this "bad faith," the pretense that individual decisions are dictated by an imaginary higher power or higher calling.

There was no salvation in existentialism. However, there was at least the possibility of embracing the human condition, of accepting the heroic act of choosing one’s actions and projects in life without hope of heaven, immortality, or even being remembered after death. The existentialists called living in this manner "authenticity" - a kind of courageous defiance of the despair of being alive without a higher purpose or meaning. Increasingly, the major existential philosophers argued that authenticity could also be found as part of a shared project with others, but only if that project did not succumb to ideological or religious dogmatism.

Existentialism had its heyday from 1945 until about 1960. It enjoyed mainstream press coverage and even inspired self-styled “existentialists” in popular culture who imitated intellectual heroes by frequenting cafes and jazz clubs on the Left Bank of the Seine River in Paris. While the existentialists continued to write, debate, and be involved in politics (most became Marxist intellectuals and supporters of third-world uprisings against colonialism), existential philosophy eventually went out of fashion in favor of various theories loosely grouped together as "postmodernism."

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is complex. The term has been used to describe many different things, often lacking a core definition or even basic coherence. TTe basis of postmodernism is the rejection of big stories, or “meta-narratives,” about life, history, and society. Whereas in the past intellectuals tried to define the “meaning” of history, Western Civilization, or “mankind,” postmodern thinkers exposed all of the ways in which those “meanings” had been constructed, usually in order to support the desires of the people doing the storytelling. In other words, to claim that history led inevitably to greater freedom, plenty, or happiness had almost always been an excuse for domination and some kind of conquest.

For example, during the highpoint of European imperialism, high-minded notions of the civilizing mission, the culmination of the liberal and nationalist political aspirations, and the emergence of truly modern science all coincided with the blood-soaked plundering of overseas territories. The postmodern historical critique of imperialism argued that the very notion of history moving “forward” to a better future was obviously incorrect. Based on this perspective, history has no overarching narrative - things simply change, with those changes generally revolving around the deployment of social and economic power.

Perhaps the most famous and important postmodern philosopher was the Frenchman Michel Foucault, who analyzed the history of culture in the West, covering everything from the concept of insanity to state power, and from crime to sexuality, while demonstrating the ways that ideas about society and culture had always been shaped to serve power. In addition, Foucault’s examined how the definition of crime and the practices of punishment had changed in the modern world to justify a huge surveillance apparatus, one set to monitor all behavior. In this model, “criminality” was an invention of the social and political system that justified the system’s police apparatus.

Postmodernism came under fire. Theorists, such as Frenchmen Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, argued that authorial intent in writing was meaningless because the text became entirely separate from the author at the moment of being written down. Likewise, both worked to demonstrate that texts were elaborate word games, with any implied “meaning” simply an illusion in the mind of a reader. At its most extreme, postmodernism went a step beyond existentialism: not only was life inherently meaningless, but even a person’s intentions and actions amounted to nothing.

There was often a joyful, irreverent play of ideas and words at work in postmodern thought, even if it was largely indecipherable outside of the halls of academia. Postmodern art often both satirized and embraced the breakdown between mainstream culture and self-understood “avant-gardes.”

Figure 24.3.2: Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup, 1968

The iconic example of postmodern art was pop art, including the work of New York-based Andy Warhol. Pop art consisted of taking images from popular culture - in Warhol's case, everything from portraits of Marilyn Monroe to the Campbell's Soup can - and making it into "fine art." In fact, much of pop art consisted of blurring the line between commercial advertising and fine art.