Skaitlis kultūrkritikas perspektīvā: valoda – sabiedrība – pasaule

Abstract

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the optimistic expectations of modern science and the Enlightenment that the mind can know the world and its laws, and construct a new model of a perfect society, are radically questioned. As a result of these dreams, a human becomes rather alienated from the world and faces the increasingly complex and deeper socio-political problems of modern society. Many authors approaching the prophets of the 19th century cultural crisis (Romanticism, Bahofen, Nietzsche, etc.), and cultural criticism (Kulturkritik) emerged in the early 20th century, creating a special genre and style of analysing the general cultural situation. Not all of them will call themselves cultural critics. However, in their works one can find persistent themes and common approaches that form the discourse of cultural criticism in the first half of the 20th century. Several thinkers, writers and publicists of this time address the decline of cultural themes from different perspectives, where the important topics of cultural criticism are calculation, computation, and the focus of modern sciences on numbers.