After the Second World War, many Europeans embraced Existentialism. However, the next generation of thinkers rejected all forms of existentialism, including Jean-Paul Sartre’s Marxism and Heidegger’s Nazism. These thinkers were inspired by structuralism, a theory that sees human behavior in terms of language as well as social structures. Structuralists saw themselves as following two major lines of thought – linguistics and psychoanalysis. Philosophers like Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes applied these approaches to politics and culture. Their view that society is shaped by language meant that there was nothing special about humanity, and the task of philosophy was simply to interpret the discourses of others, not to change them. So, while the structuralists still valued individual freedom, they believed that it was impossible to escape language and its structures.
Introduction
How do we really define Philosophy? The Greek word φιλοσοφία – Philosophia. Or as the term has been coined by modern Western language – Philosophy. The literal meaning of this word is relatively static. Derived from its Greek origin it comprises two separate words...
