Desires Made Known. An Examination of 19th and 20th Century European Attitudes Towards Conflict and Competition

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 4.00, Indiana University (College of Arts and Sciences - Hutton Honors College), course: HON-H326 Ideas and Conflicts in Modern Culture, language: English, abstract: This paper will explore societal attitudes predominantly in western and central Europe towards violence by dissecting the vacuum left by retreating societal institutions of the Middle Ages and Enlightenment. The way that Europeans largely approached and often glorified violence during this period and immediately prior will also be examined to gain closer insight into the ideologies that led nations into catastrophe. The 19th and 20th centuries in western civilization revealed new attitudes towards nationalism and militarism with disastrous implications for the whole of human life. In the history of ideas, investigating the writings of intellectuals, the elite, and the common man during this period has the potential for clarifying why these attitudes arose and how indelibly their influence shaped the thinking of 19th and 20th century western societies.

I'm an undergraduate student at Indiana University studying Philosophy and Economics and currently working for the Institute of Ideas in London, England under director Claire Fox.