Issues
Critique
of Liberalism | Socialism | Nationalism
Dionysus | Vegetarianism
| Spiritualism
Critique of Austrian Liberalism
This broad topic could almost be held as a general theme from which the other issues
derive.
It can be argued that, for the generation represented within the circle (born circa
1850-60), a powerful adolescent rejection of the values of their parents' generation was a
common and formative experience. This rejected value-set was has been broadly labeled
19th-Century Austrian Liberalism, and is associated with:
- a faith in reason and science as the foundations for progress;
- a scholarly, dispassionate intellectual style;
- a cosmopolitan emphasis;
- industrialization and bourgeois capitalism;
- social Darwinism;
- individualism;
- the dual monarchy of the Habsburg empire; and
- resistance to unification of Austria with Germany.
The anti-liberal stance, as exemplified by members of the Pernerstorfer circle, was
often radical in its flavor, espousing:
- dismantling of the Habsburg empire;
- German nationalism and unification of Austria with
Germany;
- socialist economic structures;
- democratic reform and expanded suffrage;
- a culture of unity rather than individualism;
- passionate and engaged art, politics, and ideas;
- social and cultural renewal; and
- a return to nature (and a turn from industrialized, urban culture).
Critique
of Liberalism | Socialism | Nationalism
Dionysus | Vegetarianism
| Spiritualism
|