Not only did the range of the then known and read European...

Not only did the range of the then known and read European philosophers widen to include such thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Spencer, but materialistic philosophy with its Buchners and Haeckels also pressed harder across the border. The naturalism of Zola and others became known through literature. The best exponent of naturalism was Besir Fuad, a gifted young man who found himself compelled to commit suicide that he did in a manner conducive to scientific knowledge.

Although his writings were few, they exerted a great influence upon the younger generations, upon those who were going to emerge into full light with the fall of the Hamidian regime. When the Constitutional Revolution of 1326/1908 came, the Turkish intel­lectuals appeared with a vision of European philosophy incomparably keener and broader than that of the pre-Hamidian Turkish intellectuals. From the…