Postwar disillusionment about fixed human nature created existentialism’s opening

Evidence

The war had made people realise that they and their fellow humans were capable of departing entirely from civilised norms; no wonder the idea of a fixed human nature seemed questionable. Whatever new world was going to arise out of the old one, it would probably need to be built without reliable guidance from sources of authority such as politicians, religious leaders, and even philosophers — the old kind of philosophers, that is, in their remote and abstract worlds. But here was a new kind of philosopher, ready to wade in and perfectly suited to the task. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 40

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s degradation-theme books where catastrophe compels moral re-foundation — e.g. Parable of the Sower’s post-collapse worldbuilding. — connects to: Historical crisis enables the existential self to be freed from individualism; Postwar ruin and atrocity discredited belief in fixed human nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 40; Postwar German spiritual seeking responded to metaphysical emptiness, not present chaos

Broader Connections

• Postwar ruin and atrocity discredited belief in fixed human nature #corroborates (0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 40
• Historical crisis enables the existential self to be freed from individualism #expands (0.78)