Title: The Great War and the death of God : cultural breakdown, retreat from reason, and rise of neo-Darwinian materialism in the aftermath of World War I /
Authors: O'Connor, Charles A.,
Year: 2014
Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 Influence
Abstract: The catastrophic Great War left humanity in a world no longer trustworthy and reassuring but seemingly meaningless and indifferent. Instead of redressing humanity's cosmic alienation, Postwar Western culture abandoned its concern for metaphysical meaning, lost its confidence in human reason, and enabled the scientific worldview of neo-Darwinian materialism to emerge and eventually dominate the Western mind. This book attributes the remarkable and unwarranted success of this atheistic cosmology in displacing the deeply rooted belief in nature's divine governance to the First World War and its effect on Western theology, philosophy, literature, and art.
Contents: Introduction -- God, science, and reason in prewar Western culture -- The Great War and cultural breakdown -- Postwar Christian theology -- Postwar Western literature -- Postwar Western art -- Materialism from World War I to the present -- Conclusion.