Ideas of the 20th Century

In our introductory lecture, we learn about early 20th-century thinkers who warned against intellectual and cultural trends that threatened Western civilization—Miguel de Unamuno, Julien Benda, and José Ortega y Gasset. Unamuno rejected reductive views of humanity, emphasizing emotion, individuality, and treating people as ends in themselves. Benda criticized intellectuals who abandoned transcendent ideals for political fanaticism, while Ortega’s perspectivism and critique of mass media warned of conformity, “mass man,” and the erosion of civilization—developments that foreshadowed totalitarianism.