Abstract
After the experiences of World War II—the mass exterminations, the bombing of civilian centers, the atomic bombing of Japan—a pervasive cultural pessimism settled over continental Europe in the immediate postwar period. For if the land of Goethe and Bach could carry out the atrocities of Auschwitz, what hope was there for humanity in general? Only after extensive soul-searching could Europeans, especially the Germans, begin to seek answers to this paradox. Except for those who remained loyal to some form of Marxism, Europe’s intellectuals first turned against all ideological systems, all attempts at understanding the whole, and toward a distrust of all “facts” and “knowledge.” This existential attitude was most evident immediately after the war in philosophy and literature.
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