Period Overview

This volume covers the period between the 1890s and 1930s, a period that witnessed revolutions in the arts and society which set the agenda for the rest of the century.

Philosophical Developments

In philosophy, the period saw the birth of analytic philosophy, the development of new programmes and new modes of inquiry, the emergence of phenomenology as a new rigorous science, the birth of Freudian psychoanalysis, and the maturing of the discipline of sociology.

Influential Thinkers

This period saw the most influential work of a remarkable series of thinkers who reviewed, evaluated and transformed 19th-century thought. A generation of thinkers — among them, Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein — completed the disenchantment of the world and sought a new re-enchantment.