The Idea of Decline in Western History 9781451603132, 0684827913, 9780684827919

Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed t

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English Pages 528 Year 1997

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The Idea of Decline in Western History 9781451603132, 0684827913, 9780684827919

Table of contents :
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

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