Thought and Culture Since 1945

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 mankind in general? Only after extensive soul searching could Europeans, especially Germans, begin to find answers to this paradox. Except for those who remained loyal to some form of Marxism, many of Europe’s intellectuals turned against ideological systems and their attempts at understanding the whole and developed a distrust of facts and knowledge. This existential attitude was most evident in postwar philosophy and literature.

“Is it not barbarous to write poems after Auschwitz?”

Theodore Adorno