Philosophical Development in 19th Century

Philosophy since the late Middle Ages has been experiencing a decline. The 19^th Century came after Christianity and Reason had been discarded. Starting with Romanticism, and ending with Existentialism, the 19^th Century saw humanity lose its human identity and significance.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduced the movement of Romanticism in the early 19^th Century. Its ideas, as heavily expressed in Romantic art, such as that by John Constable, stressed the importance of nature and emotion. Humanity was distinct, and must connect with the world around it. Romanticism promoted harmony and peace, since much of its art showed serene scenes and described peace.

As the Romantic Movement began to fade, a new theme emerged. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel described history as a constant cycle of clashing, synthesizing, and victory. There was always a battle between the thesis and the anti-thesis, which would merge and create a new thesis, causing an anti-thesis to emerge, which persisted throughout history. When The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, it emphasized dialectical materialism, the ongoing class struggle of humanity. Marx and Engles explained history as a continuum beginning with complete suppression and growing towards the ideal perfect state of freedom, which they saw as communism. A decade later in 1858, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species eventually followed by Descent of Man in 1876. Darwin attempted to prove that man was just a result of evolution. The history of evolution in the world, as described by Darwin, was a struggle for survival, where only the most fit would survive. The theme of constant struggle grew out of the works of Hegel, Marx, and Darwin and brought an end to the peacefulness and optimism of Romanticism.

Towards the end of the 19^th Century, philosophy began to be remolded. Fyodor Dostoevsky introduced the idea that man was bound by the curse of freedom. Friedrich Nietzsche continued the ideas of Dostoevsky and furthered them by emphasizing that God did not exist. Freedom was now viewed as a curse because man had the freedom to define its own identity. This philosophy was fulfilled by the work of Jean-Paul Sartre in the phrase “existence precedes essence.” According to Sartre, there was no absolute concept of humanity because there was no one to establish such a concept. Thus man bore the curse of freedom to define his own essence.

The 19^th Century saw turbulent change in philosophy. While starting with Romanticism, many factors led to the emergence of existentialism. Man’s identity was no longer found in emotion or nature, but in the relative, arbitrary definitions of man itself.