Crisis and Future in Nineteenth-Century European Thought
Axel Körner
The course explores concepts of crisis and future in nineteenth-century European thought. The age of revolution started as an era widely associated with the liberation and emancipation of man, with technological progress, national aspirations and constitutional promises. How then do we explain that since the second half of the nineteenth century concepts such as “alienation”, “degeneration” and “decay” started dominating European thought and in particular the Fin-de-siècle? A new consciousness of crisis marked the semantics of time, permeating the philosophical, political and scientific discourse of nineteenth-century Europe. While focussing mainly on France, Germany, Italy and Austria, the course takes a transnational approach, including the reception of ideas from Central and Eastern Europe. The course draws upon a wide range of sources, discussing works by Carducci, Croce, de Tocqueville, Dostoevski, Engels, Freud, Hegel, Marx, Mazzini, Nietzsche, Sorel, Spengler, Stirner, Wagner among others.