ABSTRACT
Liberal bourgeois culture believed that humans were rational beings who would master nature through science and themselves through morality, two conditions necessary to the creation of a just society. The chapter looks at the two sets of values dominant during the second half of the nineteenth century: moral and scientific values, on the one hand; aesthetic values, on the other. It discusses certain ideas vigorously defended by Sigmund Freud. The First World War broke out in 1914, which was a period of serious, profound crisis for western science and rationality, and especially for Freud's profoundly shaken beliefs in determinism, unlimited progress, freedom, and happiness through reason, the superiority of western civilisation. Freud came of age amid the new liberalism that triumphed in Austria during the 1860s. The liberals left their mark on State institutions through modifications made in keeping with their constitutional principles and the values of the middle classes.
