One of the important and influential works on global culture in the 20th century is the book "Man, the Unknown" by Alexis Carrel. In this book, the author expresses concern about the human condition at the historical time of the book's writing; a condition in which human knowledge of the environment has surpassed self-knowledge, resulting in numerous psychological and individual problems, and the great civilization of the European white race has declined. He wants to find a way out. Understanding Carrel's thoughts in this book correctly requires knowing the relationship between the views reflected in the work and other prevalent thoughts in the environment of the book's composition. This study pursues these same goals. We want to explore the background of the author’s fundamental and distinctive thoughts in this book in Western society and understand what thoughts and schools of thought influenced Carrel in writing “Man, the Unknown”. We intend to argue that Carrel lived in an era of ambiguity and underdevelopment of certain concepts such as racism, fascism, eugenics, and the like, and Carrel’s defense of these perspectives gave the book a special meaning in opposition to Western civilization; a meaning that perhaps these views would never have been interpreted as such at the time of the work’s creation.