Materialism, Realism, Positivism New ways of Thinking…Post 1840 revolutions (More “isms”)

Materialism, Realism, Positivism One accomplishment of the Revolutions of 1848 was the emancipation of the peasantry in the German states and the Austrian Empire. Yet, once freed, they showed little interest in constitutional or bourgeois ideas! In fact, peasant emancipation strengthened the forces of political counterrevolution!

A New Toughness of Mind Another more far-reaching consequence of the 1848 Revolutions was a new toughness of mind. Idealism and Romanticism were discredited in culture and politics. Revolutionaries became less optimistic and conservatives, more willing to exercise repression! The future would be determined by present realities rather than by imaginings of what ought to be.

A New Toughness of Mind IN PHILOSOPHY: the new mental toughness of mind appeared in MATERIALISM, holding that everything mental, spiritual, or idea was an outgrowth of physical or physiological forces. IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS: the new toughness of mind was called REALISM. Writers and painters broke away from Romanticism, which they said colored things out of relation to the real facts. They attempted to describe and reproduce life as they found it.

A New Toughness of Mind IN POLITICS: the new toughness of mind was called by the Germans REALPOLITIK. This meant a politics of reality. In domestic affairs it meant that people should give up Utopian dreams, that caused the debacle of 1848 and content themselves with the blessings of orderly, honest hard working government.

REALPOLITIK For radicals, it meant that people should stop imagining that the new society would result from goodness or the love of justice. Social reformers must resort to the methods of politics, power and calculation.

REALPOLITIK In international affairs, Realpolitik meant that governments should not be guided by ideology, or by any system of “natural” enemies or “natural” allies or by any desire to defend or promote any particular view of the world. But that they should follow their own practical interests, meet facts and situations as they arose. That they should make alliances that seemed useful, disregard ethical theories and scruples and use any practical means to achieve their ends.

REALPOLITIK War, which governments since the overthrow of Napoleon had successfully tried to prevent, was accepted in the 1850’s as a strategic option that was sometimes needed to achieve a political purpose. War as a new tool of realistic statesmanship!

POSITIVISM Also a new term to describe the new attitude. Compté: saw human history as a series of three stages, the theological, the metaphysical and the scientific. The revolutions in France had all suffered from an excess of metaphysical abstractions, empty words, and unverifiable high-flying principles. Those who worked for the improvement of society must adopt a strictly scientific outlook.

POSITIVISM Comté produced an elaborate classification of the sciences, of which the highest would be the science of society, for which he coined the word “sociology.” This new science would build upon observation of facts to develop broad scientific laws of social progress. Positivism came to mean an insistence on verifiable facts, an avoidance of wishful thinking, a questioning of all assumptions, and a dislike of improvable generalizations.

Emile Zola

Gustave Flaubert

Realist Novels Thomas Hardy

Henrik Ibsen

George Bernard Shaw

George Eliot