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…
Search Results 1 - 25 of 225
Rationalism
Rationalism [Ratsionalizm] was a modernist movement in Soviet architecture that was current in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was led by the architect and…
Washington, Booker T. (1856–1915)
Born into slavery in Virginia, Booker Taliaferro Washington was the most prominent spokesman for Black Americans at the end of the 19th century. After attending…
Russell, Bertrand Arthur William (1872–1970)
Bertrand Russell, FRS, OM, and third earl Russell, was a mathematician, philosopher, social critic, political activist, writer, and Nobel laureate in literature. Russell was born…
Quantum Theory
Developed in the early 20th century, quantum theory is a branch of theoretical physics that concerns the unpredictable quality of particles at the quantum, or…
Alienation
From the Christian doctrine of original sin, through G. W. F. Hegel’s conception of freedom, and the situated subject of existentialist thought in the wake…
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951)
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher whose work, largely on the philosophy of language, had far-reaching implications for modernist intellectual history and for…
Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove
The Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove is part of the story of Nigerian Modernism. Situated on the outskirts of the city of Osogbo in Southwest Nigeria,…
Populism
The most salient first use of the term populism and its cognates can be found in late 19th-century Tsarist Russia. The Russian peasant Narodniki [populists]…
Anti-Semitism including the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism, a term coined in Europe at the end of the 19th century, is the hatred of Jews and Jewishness, the latter being perceived in…
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a Lutheran minister, was a German philologist, philosopher, and iconoclast. He is best known for his controversial but powerful reevaluation…
Acéphale
The name Acéphale refers to two related projects: one is a journal, founded by Georges Bataille (1887–1962), published between 1936 and 1939, whose articles often…
Anarchism
Anarchism is a term derived from the Greek anarkhia, meaning “contrary to authority” or ”without a ruler.“ Anarchism narrowly refers to a theory of society…
The Vienna Circle
In 1922 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) transformed the Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society), a weekly reading group concerned with logical positivism, into an international assembly…
Theory of Relativity, The
The Theory of Relativity is the name given to two separate theories put forth by Albert Einstein (1879–1955): ‘Special Relativity’ and ‘General Relativity’. When first…
Tarde, Gabriel (1843–1904)
Gabriel Tarde was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and criminologist. In The Laws of Imitation (1880), he suggests that imitation drives the development of language…
Nazi Modernism
Nazi Modernism is not a contradiction in terms, even if Nazi-era rhetoric and propaganda directed against Entartete Kunst powerfully suggested that this was the case.…
Lin, Yutang (林语堂) (1895–1976)
Lin Yutang (林语堂) was a major figure in the development of twentieth-century Chinese modernity. He was a scholar, inventor, educator and translator, as well as…
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a social and political program advocating an economic system based on equal ownership of production and democratic rule by federated trade unions. Peculiar…
Structuralism
Structuralism, generally described, is a twentieth-century intellectual movement associated with linguistic studies in Europe, despite its vast applicability and many adherents. An initial aim of…
Turing, Alan Mathison (1912–1954)
Alan Mathison Turing is known as the father of modern computer science. Of his early achievements he helped to bring the Second World War to…
Piaget, Jean (1896–1980)
Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean William Fritz Piaget pioneered the field of cognitive developmental psychology using empirical methods to study children. Like Walter Benjamin, Piaget…
Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy vs. Ferguson is a legal decision made by the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of ‘separate but equal’ laws popular in the…
Technocracy
A broad notion of technocracy can be traced back to ancient Greece. The narrow notion of the term is distinctly modern, inspired by the Industrial…
Malinowski, Bronisław Kasper (1884–1942)
Born Bronisław Kasper Malinowski to a family in the Polish nobility (the szlachta), Malinowski made contributions to anthropology through his text Argonauts of the Western…