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Existentialism

As well as the powerful political ideas of the left and the right, the 20th century also witnessed important cultural ideas. An example of these was existentialism, which was both a highly intellectual philosophy and a cultural stance. It became influential in continental Europe in the second quarter of the century.

Unreliability of reason

Originating in the thought of the 19th-century Danish thinker Sören Kierkegaard, existentialism was more an attitude than a dogma. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre elaborated ideas about the importance of being, the unreliability of reason and the need for each individual to contemplate his or her own existence. According to existentialism, only the individual self can make moral choices and has the will to determine what the purpose of its life is.

The idea that the self is in a state of anxiety caused by knowing that it can make choices but, at the same time, not knowing what is certain appealed particularly to the 20th-century modernist sensibility. Existentialist thinkers such as Sartre and Albert Camus liked to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic (or compromised) ways of living. However, feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, who was Sartre's lover, pointed out that this 'authenticity' was often a cover for sexual promiscuity.

Pessimism and scepticism

Culturally, existentialism could be said to have affected such disparate things as Camus's novels, jazz, singers such as Juliette Greco wearing dark glasses and rollneck jerseys, and the popularity in some circles of the movies of Michelangelo Antonioni and the plays of Samuel Beckett. Its mixture of pessimism and scepticism meant that it influenced many young people in the liberation struggles of the second half of the century, and was reflected in cult groups such as the American Beats.

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