ABSTRACT
The scientific and intellectual revolutions of the seventeenth century had a profound impact upon nearly every aspect of human society. By the early twentieth century, it was evident that a new revolution in scientific and intellectual thought was occurring. One revolutionary thinker was Sigmund Freud. In the early twentieth century, Western society began to doubt and then to reject values and beliefs that had been cherished since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The philosophical optimism of Enlightenment thought was apparently confirmed during the nineteenth century by increasing economic prosperity, by improving standards of living, and by expanding political and personal rights for the middle and lower classes. Fascism in Italy, Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and most especially Nazism in Germany borrowed ideas from Nietzsche and other prewar writers. Nazism profoundly affected the life and work of the German painter Max Beckmann. Infuriated by the artist's uncompromising opposition, Hitler labeled Beckmann's art "degenerate" and banned it from public viewing.
