Becoming What We Are
By JUDE DOUGHERTY How we became what we are. There are many explanations. One plausible account is found in the work of Rudolf Allers, who wrote about the European intellectual landscape from 1850 to the opening decades of the twentieth century. Hegel and Nietzsche played their roles in shaping “modernity,” or whatever you may want to call it. From Allers we learn the meaning of the emerging disciplines — psychiatry, psychology, existentialism — and their varieties and exponents. We are exposed to the work of Gabriel Marcel, Ortega y Gasset, and others who tried to bridge or reconcile the gap between modernity and tradition. Allers is best known for The Successful Error, a critical study of Sigmund Freud, and for…Continue Reading