Philosophy in Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist means spirit of times, the drift of thought and feeling in a certain period. Philosophy had a long journey to each Zeitgeist. Existentialism is one of main core of philosophy. Since René Descartes with his famous “I think therefore I am” until the post Word-War years were the great time of existentialism. The most varied philosophies schools of thought and ideologies have always coexisted. What is meant here are those ideas which penetrated beyond the small circle of the philosophically interested into the public at large and influenced thinking in many fields where each in its way for several years determined zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist is linked with the names of German philosopher, Martin Heideger and Karl Jespers. The main works of both had appeared decades previously, but only now met with a broader response, whereby no doubt misunderstandings and over-simplification occurred. In the time of crisis and period of deprivation following total defeat in 1945, where often enough the issue was mere survival, many could identify with a philosophy whose main precepts were Angst (fear), Sorge (worry), Scheitern (failure), Geworfenheit (being cast down) and which radically threw the human being back to that innermost core which is preserved even in the face of death.

The people who live at that zeitgeist, stood in a make-or-break situation the moment had come for this teaching to prove its worth. Thus it is no coincidence that among the many whose in philosophical seriousness pronounced on the question. Karl Jespers had the weightiest utterances to make. He and Martin Heideger contribute to increase public philosophical awareness. When economic rose in German, the attractiveness of existentialism gradually paled. People live in consolidating, prosperity, and social security advanced year by year and there appeared to be no limits to their growth.

In such a climate one readily tended to think that fundamental questions such as the meanings of history or human coexistence had lost their importance and that the only thing which still mattered was finding pragmatic solutions for individual problems. To some this was not enough. They took the view that to reject Communism with its self-contained ideology one needed a counter-ideology which had to rest on such precepts as “freedom” and “Western civilization”. But on the whole, the fact that on German soil two conflicting models of society were being tried out was felt to be more of an annoyance than a challenge. The majority wanted nothing to do with such problems. Sociologist of the time spoke of the “skeptical generation” and of a progress of “de-ideologization” which they regarded as irreversible.