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synoptic_view's review against another edition
Declinism--the idea that society's best days are behind it--can be found throughout arts, philosophy, and political rhetoric. Just think of the last book you read or movie you watched; I would be willing to bet even money that it featured declinism. For me, it was No Country for Old Men, a story that has declinism right in the freaking title (although the story also critiques the knee jerk declinism exhibited by one of the main characters).
In The Idea of Decline in Western History, Arthur Herman provides a page turning, pop history account of modern declinist philosophy. He starts the historical account with a group of largely German romantic philosophers in the 1800s and proceeds to the near-present day. The book manages the remarkable feat of covering huge amounts of ground in a comprehensible, readable, and--given the breadth--not too shallow way. I really have to commend Herman for his ability to keep things pithy.
For a review that provides a more thorough overview of the book, I recommend Murtaza's review on Goodreads. Here, I will focus on a few points that struck my personal interest.
First, in Herman's account, preoccupation with decline has swung between the political left and right over time. Declinism is typically conservative. It is the belief, after all, that the past was better than the present. And that is reflected in many early declinists in the 1800s who were obsessed with racial purity and the perceived corruption of vital essence. But declinism can also be widespread on the progressive left.
For example, the book ends with a discussion of the environmental movement and Al Gore (who Herbert weirdly insists on calling Albert Gore--more on that later). In Herbert's account, environmental declinism is conservative in some of the same ways as cultural declinism. A fixation on purity. A sense of irreversible loss. Both even have similar "return to the land" volkish sentiments.
And of course this cycle of left-right declinism continues to the present day. Declinism has retaken--if it ever left--a strong hold on American conservatives over the last few years, so maybe we are due for a 25th anniversary edition of the book.
Second, in the afterword, Herbert talks about Robert Samuelson's The Good Life and Its Discontents, written at about the same time as Idea of Decline. Samuelson talks about how the pessimistic public mood clashes with improvements in health, material wealth, political freedom, etc. that have occured over recent decades. Is it this clash that was the primary impetus for me to read Idea of Decline. Since the late 1990s, my sense is that the national mood in the US has gotten, if anything, even more pessimistic (opinion polls are essentially useless here, but ironically, when looking over the last 40 years, the late 1990s were a high point in how many people thought the US was heading in the right direction).
Part of the increased pessimism is likely do to real setbacks in some of the improvements Samuelson points out. As we have learned, the apparent material gains since the late 1970s/early 1980s have largely accrued to a narrow sliver of the top 1% wealthiest households. There have been notable setbacks in health even before COVID. Political freedoms....
But to what extent is this pessimism driven more by a philosophical attitude than any objective observation? And what, if anything, should be done about these attitudes. Herbert recommends pushing back on historicist accounts of decline:
Here, Herbert echoes Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything, which tries to supplant historicist narratives of early human history with more empirically grounded accounts that highlight substantial diversity in social and political arrangements.
This particular type of pessimism isn't new, of course. A quote from Arnold Toynbee in 1969 makes a similar point:
Why do budget constraints seem to bind so hard these days(/century)? I was watching a youtube video about bridges in London, and the person in the video claimed that the world wars essentially ended large public infrastructure projects in the city because public funds were used up during the war. This seems incredible to me, but the timing sure lines up.
Third, it was humorous to see that social scientists have been misinterpreting the second law of thermodynamics basically since the first day it was articulated. Georgescu-Roegen, one of the founders of modern ecological economics, famously mis-applied the second law of thermodynamics to ordinary matter, and in this book, I learned that Herbert Spencer learned about the law in 1858, saying "Your assertion that when equilibrium was reached life would cease, staggered me...I still feel unsettled." Bro, hate to break it to you, but life is going to cease way before the heat death of the universe. But rejoice! After the heat death, there will be an infinity of Boltzmann brains. Utilitarianism is meaningless!
Fourth, racists are so predictable. Joseph Arthur de Gobineau is a figure I hadn't heard of before reading this book, but he is responsible for many of the race-based declinist theories we are still saddled with today. He was one of the major originators of the aryan myth, for instance, and he regularly bemoaned the weakened, fallen state of European society. He thought that only a race of aryan aristocrats could put Europe on the right path again. One little problem: he wasn't an aristocrat himself. No problem! He just invented his own family tree to make it seem like he had an aristocratic lineage. He provides me with further justification for my scepticism of anyone who is really into genealogy.
Fifth, this book drew a clear link between volkisch movement in Germany and Du Bois' writing. Du Bois took the term volksseele, commonly translated as collective soul, and used it in very much the same way as 19th century German social theorists in The Souls of Black Folk.
Sixth, Herman is generally pretty good about not judging the declinist philosophies he presents. But he is a conservative, and there are many points in the book (like the insistence on Albert Gore) where he gets away from himself. This happens especially often when discussing Marxism. Marxism is historicist, but it isn't obviously a declinist philosophy. If anything, it says that the best is (inevitably) yet to come. To argue that Marxism is declinist, Herman resorts to a rhetorical trick that, just a few pages earlier in the book, he chastises the Frankfurt school of social theorists for using:
Just 20 pages later, we see Herman say the following about Herbert Marcuse, the Frankfurt School Marxist: "Behind every prophet of decline lurks a vision of progress." This is really having the cake and eating it too. If a group is declinist, then great, put them in the book. If they are progressives, though, then they are really secret declinists in disguise. Herbert also repeatedly conflates Marxist critiques of currently bad conditions--static critiques of society--with declinism which is inherently dynamic. Pessimism alone is not declinist.
Finally, I would be curious to see a similar book about panglossian optimists. Almost the exact counterpoint to the declinists featured here. I am happy to help write the chapters on freshwater macro.
In The Idea of Decline in Western History, Arthur Herman provides a page turning, pop history account of modern declinist philosophy. He starts the historical account with a group of largely German romantic philosophers in the 1800s and proceeds to the near-present day. The book manages the remarkable feat of covering huge amounts of ground in a comprehensible, readable, and--given the breadth--not too shallow way. I really have to commend Herman for his ability to keep things pithy.
For a review that provides a more thorough overview of the book, I recommend Murtaza's review on Goodreads. Here, I will focus on a few points that struck my personal interest.
First, in Herman's account, preoccupation with decline has swung between the political left and right over time. Declinism is typically conservative. It is the belief, after all, that the past was better than the present. And that is reflected in many early declinists in the 1800s who were obsessed with racial purity and the perceived corruption of vital essence. But declinism can also be widespread on the progressive left.
For example, the book ends with a discussion of the environmental movement and Al Gore (who Herbert weirdly insists on calling Albert Gore--more on that later). In Herbert's account, environmental declinism is conservative in some of the same ways as cultural declinism. A fixation on purity. A sense of irreversible loss. Both even have similar "return to the land" volkish sentiments.
And of course this cycle of left-right declinism continues to the present day. Declinism has retaken--if it ever left--a strong hold on American conservatives over the last few years, so maybe we are due for a 25th anniversary edition of the book.
Second, in the afterword, Herbert talks about Robert Samuelson's The Good Life and Its Discontents, written at about the same time as Idea of Decline. Samuelson talks about how the pessimistic public mood clashes with improvements in health, material wealth, political freedom, etc. that have occured over recent decades. Is it this clash that was the primary impetus for me to read Idea of Decline. Since the late 1990s, my sense is that the national mood in the US has gotten, if anything, even more pessimistic (opinion polls are essentially useless here, but ironically, when looking over the last 40 years, the late 1990s were a high point in how many people thought the US was heading in the right direction).
Part of the increased pessimism is likely do to real setbacks in some of the improvements Samuelson points out. As we have learned, the apparent material gains since the late 1970s/early 1980s have largely accrued to a narrow sliver of the top 1% wealthiest households. There have been notable setbacks in health even before COVID. Political freedoms....
But to what extent is this pessimism driven more by a philosophical attitude than any objective observation? And what, if anything, should be done about these attitudes. Herbert recommends pushing back on historicist accounts of decline:
It is legitimate to deplore certain trends and developments in any society as malign or destructive. However, it is quite another thing to draw, or allow to be drawn, a picture that suggests that these problems have such deeply rooted causes that they are unsolvable, or have such far-reaching implications that only a drastic overhaul of society or culture as a whole can fix them. Yet this is precisely what large numbers of Western intellectuals did at the end of the nineteenth century and again in the century that followed. It is this assumption--that modern Western civilisation functions as a whole, and that its problems require holistic, not piecemeal, solutions--which lies at the hart of both the pessimistic persuasion and its optimistic counterpart, the blind faith in Progress.
Here, Herbert echoes Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything, which tries to supplant historicist narratives of early human history with more empirically grounded accounts that highlight substantial diversity in social and political arrangements.
This particular type of pessimism isn't new, of course. A quote from Arnold Toynbee in 1969 makes a similar point:
At one time, Toynbee wrote later, Europe's nation-states could afford to expand both as 'welfare states' and as 'war-making states.' In the twentieth century, they could no longer afford to do both and would have to make a choice.
Why do budget constraints seem to bind so hard these days(/century)? I was watching a youtube video about bridges in London, and the person in the video claimed that the world wars essentially ended large public infrastructure projects in the city because public funds were used up during the war. This seems incredible to me, but the timing sure lines up.
Third, it was humorous to see that social scientists have been misinterpreting the second law of thermodynamics basically since the first day it was articulated. Georgescu-Roegen, one of the founders of modern ecological economics, famously mis-applied the second law of thermodynamics to ordinary matter, and in this book, I learned that Herbert Spencer learned about the law in 1858, saying "Your assertion that when equilibrium was reached life would cease, staggered me...I still feel unsettled." Bro, hate to break it to you, but life is going to cease way before the heat death of the universe. But rejoice! After the heat death, there will be an infinity of Boltzmann brains. Utilitarianism is meaningless!
Fourth, racists are so predictable. Joseph Arthur de Gobineau is a figure I hadn't heard of before reading this book, but he is responsible for many of the race-based declinist theories we are still saddled with today. He was one of the major originators of the aryan myth, for instance, and he regularly bemoaned the weakened, fallen state of European society. He thought that only a race of aryan aristocrats could put Europe on the right path again. One little problem: he wasn't an aristocrat himself. No problem! He just invented his own family tree to make it seem like he had an aristocratic lineage. He provides me with further justification for my scepticism of anyone who is really into genealogy.
Fifth, this book drew a clear link between volkisch movement in Germany and Du Bois' writing. Du Bois took the term volksseele, commonly translated as collective soul, and used it in very much the same way as 19th century German social theorists in The Souls of Black Folk.
Sixth, Herman is generally pretty good about not judging the declinist philosophies he presents. But he is a conservative, and there are many points in the book (like the insistence on Albert Gore) where he gets away from himself. This happens especially often when discussing Marxism. Marxism is historicist, but it isn't obviously a declinist philosophy. If anything, it says that the best is (inevitably) yet to come. To argue that Marxism is declinist, Herman resorts to a rhetorical trick that, just a few pages earlier in the book, he chastises the Frankfurt school of social theorists for using:
This established a principle, and a useful rhetorical device, that became characteristic of other cultural pessimists besides the members of the Frankfurt School: the more things seem to be opposites (liberalism and fascism, affluence and poverty, free speech and censorship) the more they are actually the same.
Just 20 pages later, we see Herman say the following about Herbert Marcuse, the Frankfurt School Marxist: "Behind every prophet of decline lurks a vision of progress." This is really having the cake and eating it too. If a group is declinist, then great, put them in the book. If they are progressives, though, then they are really secret declinists in disguise. Herbert also repeatedly conflates Marxist critiques of currently bad conditions--static critiques of society--with declinism which is inherently dynamic. Pessimism alone is not declinist.
Finally, I would be curious to see a similar book about panglossian optimists. Almost the exact counterpoint to the declinists featured here. I am happy to help write the chapters on freshwater macro.
ckehoe79's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent treatment of the History of the Decline in the West. It is very thorough, and covers a lot of material, but it is well explained.
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