The Idea of Decline in Western HistoryFrom Nazism to the sixties counterculture, from Britain's Fabian Socialists to America's multiculturalists, from Dracula and Freud to Robert Bly and Madonna, historian Arthur Herman examines the idea of decline in Western history and explains how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become a fixed part of the modern Western imagination. In a series of masterful biographical sketches, Herman examines the ideas of those who came to reject civilization as a doomed enterprise, including Arthur de Gobineau, the aristocratic founder of modern race theory; Friedrich Nietzsche, whose vitalist philosophy of irrationalism inclined a generation toward fascism and Nazism; and W.E.B. Du Bois, whose hostile view of the West would profoundly influence African-American thinking and multiculturalism. Ultimately, Herman shows how two of the most important issues facing contemporary America - race and the fate of the environment - have been shaped and distorted by the assumptions of cultural pessimism. From the Aryan Nation and Afrocentrism to the Unabomber, the myth of Western decline continues to exercise a pervasive influence. In many ways, Herman suggests, today's culture wars are ultimately a struggle between those who still recognize the importance of civilized and humanist values and those who do not. |
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Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Progress Decline and Decadence | 13 |
Afloat on the Wreckage | 46 |
Historical and Cultural Pessimism | 76 |
Degeneration | 109 |
PART | 145 |
Black Over White | 187 |
Welcoming Defeat | 256 |
10 The Modern French Prophets | 329 |
The Multiculturalist Impulse | 364 |
EcoPessimism | 400 |
Afterword | 441 |
Notes | 452 |
Bibliography | 476 |
Acknowledgments | 498 |
PART THREE | 293 |
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Adams Adolf Hitler African American appeared argued Aryan became become believed Bois bourgeois Brooks Brooks Adams Burckhardt called capitalism century civilization claimed concluded created critics cultural death decadent decline degeneration Earth economic empire Enlightenment Europe European explained face fact final forces freedom French future German Gobineau Henry human idea identity individual industrial institutions intellectual Italy later leading Left liberal living London man's Marxism mass material means mind modern moral movement nature Negro Nietzsche organic original pessimism philosophy political progress Quoted race racial radical rational reason remained result Right rise Romantic Sartre School seemed sense social society Spengler spiritual theory tion Toynbee tradition true turned United University Press values vital West Western whole wrote York young