The Idea of Decline in Western History

Description

Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. 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, this work examines the idea of decline in Western history and sets out to explain how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become a fixed part of the modern Western imagination. Through a series of biographical portraits spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the author 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. * Introduction PART ONE THE LANGUAGES OF DECLINE 1. Progress, Decline, and Decadence 2. Afloat on the Wreckage Arthur de Gobineau and Racial Pessimism 3. Historical and Cultural Pessimism Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche 4. Degeneration Liberalism’s Doom PART TWO PREDICTING THE DECLINE OF THE WEST 5. Gilded Age Apocalypse Henry and Brooks Adams 6. Black Over White W.E.B. Du Bois 7. The Closing of the German Mind Oswald Spengler and The Decline of the West 8. Welcoming Defeat Arnold Toynbee PART THREE THE TRIUMPH OF CULTURAL PESSIMISM 9. The Critical Personality The Frankfurt School and Herbert Marcuse 10. The Modern French Prophets Sartre, Foucault, Fanon 11. The Multiculturalist Impulse 12. Eco-Pessimism The Final Curtain Afterword Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index