Review:

Dadaism (Tzara): Attack on bourgeois, sentimental notions of high ‘art’; absurdity; destruction; art as a state of mind and not as a product

Surrealism (Breton): Promotion of the dream world as a valid form of reality; production of art that reflects dreams and subconscious; absurdity

See web for names of artists and dates

Nietzsche:

-    Son of a Protestant minister

-    Genius philology professor

-    Work impacts philosophy, history, and some might even say politics

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Vision of prophet Zarathustra, mythical spiritual leader of Zoroastrianism

Modernist connections to Nietzsche:

-    individualism

-    childlike innocence

-    dream / vision/ hallucination

-    contradiction

FW: Write about 3 qualities of the modern self and/or modern revolutions as you understand them through the literature, art, history, and politics we have discussed thus far in the course. (10 minutes)

Review:

“Modern Civilization” (up to ca. 1940)

Call for change in beliefs, traditions, and culture

End of traditional control systems as they exist in politics, economics, and religion

Individualism: subjectivity vs. objectivity

War, revolution, revolt, and manifestos of these new ways of seeing and shaping the world

Nietzsche’s Modernity

-    the Overman/Superman: to overcome all prior traditions and human-ness; man becomes his own god; not for the masses

-    WWI: justification of war (see overman) and glorification of the warrior; amorality and loss of faith in humanity accompany war; worship of the self and not a higher power or others