Materialism and the Crisis of Meaningful Existence
The beginning of the twentieth century was the best of times and the worst of times for atheism. Science was making stupendous discoveries and technological advances faster than any time in history, and science was interpreted as a product of atheism. Darwinism had triumphed in the highest levels of all the institutions that governed the world. The Great War (World War I) was welcomed as an opportunity for a great evolutionary leap forward for humanity by culling the weak and allowing the fit to triumph. Yet the scene of massive misery, destruction, and death caused by the war was revolting. The triumph of atheism that was supposed to be a triumph for humanity forced intellectuals to confront Nietzschean nihilism. The term “crisis” became the word of the day among academicians in Europe, which called for an existential philosophy that addressed whether human life had any meaning. Max Scheler wrote, “In our ten-thousand year history, we are the first time period in which the human being has become fully and totally ‘problematic’; the first time period in which the human being no longer knows who he or she is, but also knows that he doesn’t know.”[1] The machines built by science threatened to destroy the self, the spirit, the soul.
