From my review of Arthur Herman on The Idea of Decline.
In 1997, Arthur Herman published The Idea of Decline in Western History, a book that examines the role doomsayers have played in promoting ideologies that reject the core Western values of individualism, capitalism, and democracy. His analytical framework strikes me as relevant in the current environment.
I am surprised you only listed left wing figures on the contemporary cultural pessimist side. Seems clear to me that Hazony, Deneen, Anton, Vermeule, Moldbug etc belong in this camp– and in the intellectual lineage of the Nazi-apologist and racist cultural pessimists Herman lists.
An insightful review. Based on an post at this blog, I am happy to have bought the book and engaged with it.
This is the kind of book that I love. Relevant. Broad sweeping but composed of cases. Heavy name-dropping requiring frequent visits to Wikipedia. Non-didactic and stimulating.
Concur with Dr Kling’s observation that the book is relevant in the current times. The penultimate and final chapters on multiculturalism and eco-pessimism in particular.
But an additional example of this relevance might be that it provides a counter to Niall Ferguson’s argument that Weimar is not the appropriate analogy for understanding current times. The nazis’ earliest success was with university students. And their conquest of university administration largely enabled by fearful incumbents seeking to retain their privileges. And the Garveyist worldview (now entrenched in elite powerbroker thinking) as described in the book resembles Weimar anti-semitism. And Portland is redolent of the book’s description of the Spartacist League seizure of Berlin.
As Dr Kling notes, book focuses on historical versus cultural pessimism and not always comfortably ascribing a camp. In this regard it would be interesting to see Darwinian pessimism expanded upon. An epigraph from Edwin Lankester begins chapter 4 that includes “it is well to remember that we are subject to the general laws of evolution, and are as likely to degenerate as progress.” Evolutionary growth in human skull size appears to have ended in the Holocene and skull size is now possibly decreasing (see Maiciej Henneberg, “Decrease of Human Skull Size in the Holocene” in Human Biology). With the improved gene measurements technology available, one wonders if there are ways to objectively ascertain progress or decline in human biology.
Another aspect of decline not fully developed in the book is that related to education. The trope in the USA of comparing substantive educational attainment between current and past generations has been at least a little influential even if the hubris of the current generation remains unbounded. This might be interesting to explore.
The book is of course way over my intellectual pay grade, but I discerned questionable assertions sufficient that I would retain modest skepticism about any of its particular (possibly the author’s idiosyncratic) assertions: Arthur Schopenhauer had one major work of philosophy? How Is On the Basis of Morality not major? A portrait of Nietzsche disguised a total emptiness of mind? Smears populism by reducing it to the demagoguery of a couple outspoken representatives. The 17th Amendment was demagoguery? The book also seemed to me to uncharitably diminish the significance of Leopold von Ranke whom I think is under appreciated.
Nevertheless, a 5 star book in my estimation. Worth buying for the last two chapters alone.
Another two final chapters on this topic worth reading are in quantum physicist David Deutsch’s 2011 book, The Beginning of Infinity: 17. Unsustainable and 18. The Beginning. He lashes out at the idea of “unsustainability” and argues that humanity is (usually) not static and is always exploring and innovating to overcome problems.
Sorry, Arnold. I’m worried only about one source of pessimism. Let me explain it with an approach quite different from Herman’s.
At any time, in any society, most likely there is at least one person that complaints (A) “we have taken the wrong road to X”, and at least one person that claims (B) “we should be going to Y rather than X”. Most people are interested either in enjoying the ride or in surviving it. As long as people complaining (A) or claiming (B) are few, the large majority ignore them. But sometimes those complaining (A) or claiming (B) are a minority not to be ignored, in particular, if membership is growing.
At what point does the absolute or relative majority start to realize that they have to stop them? We have to understand the cycle of the suppliers of change. We can assume that at the beginning and during the adolescent stage both (A) and (B) people resort to voice to persuade others and their voices will become noisy (indeed, a different kind of noise depending on the success or failure of past efforts). But at some point, they may recognize failure and then they will have to choose one of two alternatives: forget the mission by voting with their feet or doubling the bet by resorting to violence. I’d say that (A) people are more likely to vote with their feet, but (B) people to resort to violence. (A) people always have the choice of “marginal revolution” which includes taking advantage of whatever still is good. (B) people hate the status quo and how much violent they become will depend on the price they are willing to pay for enriching themselves (in turn the ticket to enjoy the status quo). But what about if at some point they recognize success. Both (A) and (B) people will accelerate and push for radical changes but the acceleration will depend largely on their perceptions of how much “cooperation” they can get from the majority. (A) people want this majority to embrace their proposed changes, but (B) people reject all those that may oppose their changes. (A) people will try to accelerate the persuasion of those in the majority that can be converted to their cause and they will double their bet on persuasion. (B) people will try to accelerate the dismissal of those in the majority that may oppose their cause and they will resort to any means, including violence, to get rid of the opposition.
So the absolute or relative majority may have to deal with (A) people only if they succeed in their adolescent stage. It could imply a large, long struggle but one that hardly turns violent. But they will have to deal with (B) people in failure or success. They may think that in failure, the few violent people can be handle with individual punishment or reward but repression may be needed when they become criminal gangs. More importantly, the majority will have to repress (B) people that behave as if they had succeeded in their adolescent stage and were ready to march on.