The Idea of Decline in Western HistoryThe renowned historian’s “learned study of the concept of decline since the Enlightenment” (Kirkus Reviews). Through a series of biographical portraits spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and aims to show how major thinkers of the past and present, including Nietzsche, DuBois, Sartre, and Foucault, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. He then demonstrates how this intellectual posture has spread from elite enclaves to the general culture. From Nazism to the Sixties counterculture, from Britain’s Fabian socialists to America’s multiculturalists, and from Dracula and Freud to Robert Bly and Madonna, historian Arthur Herman sets out to explain how the conviction of civilization’s inevitable end has become a fixed part of the modern Western imagination. Shedding light on this increasingly pervasive notion, Herman is quick to point out that—to paraphrase Mark Twain—reports of Western civilization’s demise are greatly exaggerated. |
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Adorno African American argued aristocratic Arnold Toynbee Aryan Authoritarian Personality became become Bois's bourgeois Brooks Adams Burckhardt Cambridge capitalism capitalist corruption creative critics cultural pessimism cultural pessimist decadence decline degeneration democracy Dialectic of Enlightenment Earth economic empire Enlightenment Essay Europe European Fanon fascism forces Foucault Frankfurt School Frantz Fanon freedom French Freud future Garvey German Gobineau Heidegger Henry Adams Herbert Marcuse Hitler Horkheimer human Ibid idea identity imperialism individual industrial society institutions intellectual Jews later liberal living Lombroso man's Martin Heidegger Marx Marxist mass modern civilization modern society modern West moral movement nation nature Nazi Negro Nietzsche Nietzsche's Nietzschean nineteenth century organic Oswald Spengler Oxford philosophy political progress Quoted race racial radical revolution Romantic Sartre Sartre's sense social socialist Spengler spiritual theory Toynbee tradition Trans turned University Press violence vital vitalist W.E.B. Du Bois Wagner Western civilization wrote York Zivilisation