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…
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…
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…
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
The term ‘modernism’ is commonly used to describe some of the literary and cultural production of the early twentieth century in China, Japan, and Korea,…
Symbolism is a late-nineteenth-century literary movement centred mostly around the work of poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam,…
Exploring modernity and its intellectual trends in the Middle East is a very fitting endeavour, as ‘Middle East’ itself is a ‘modern’ term which has…
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
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…
Existentialism is the term given to an interdisciplinary school of thought that focuses on the lived experience of human beings. Existentialism was especially popular in…
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…
French philosopher, writer, artist and translator Pierre Klossowski was born in Paris and raised in Switzerland, Germany and France. His education was influenced by Rainer…
Vitalism is a philosophy of life that ascribes a vital principle or animating life-force to the processes of living organisms. Against the assertions of mechanistic…
American author John Fante (8 April 1909–8 May 1983) is best known for his Arturo Bandini novels, including The Road to Los Angeles (written 1933,…
Modernist organicism emphasizes the interrelationship between the natural world and society, and links sociocultural changes with nature, biology, and aesthetic forms in imagining the human…
Apollo (Apollon, 1909–1917) was the third and last major Russian modernist art periodical before the revolution of 1917. Edited by the art critic and art…
Georges Bataille (September 10, 1897–July 9, 1962) was a French writer who synthesized ideas from many disciplines. He converted to Catholicism at the start of…
The Danish literary critic Georg Brandes is known as the force behind the modern breakthrough in Scandinavian literature in the late 19th century. Inspired by…
The Cambridge Ritualists, also known as the Cambridge Group of Classical Anthropologists, were a closely knit group of four classicists—Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), Francis M.…
Born in Dacre, Yorkshire, England, Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual and writer and the editor of The New Age magazine. The son of…
Most broadly, Nihilism is the rejection of meaningful moral or religious values. Nihilism is often associated with moral Relativism, extreme Skepticism, and Pessimism. First used…
Born in Meßkirch, Germany, Martin Heidegger is renowned as a leading 20th-century philosopher of existentialism and phenomenology with far-reaching influence in the Western world. Heidegger…
The New Age was a weekly British literary magazine published from 1894 to 1938. Established by Frederick A. Atkins (1864–1940) in October 1894, the New…
Karl Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and existential philosopher. After graduating from medical school in 1908, Jaspers took up a research position in a psychiatric…
Francis Macdonald Cornford was a British classical scholar associated with the Cambridge Ritualists group. Drawing on James George Frazer’s (1854–1941) The Golden Bough (1890–1915), the…
Mina Loy, born Mina Gertrude Lowry, (1882–1966), was a British artist, designer, model, novelist, nurse, playwright and poet, with ties to the Dadaist, Futurist and…