Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
15 - Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
Summary
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Europeans became obsessed with the idea of their own degeneration. Images of cultural decline and social pathology pervaded the products of popular imagination, as well as of avant-garde art. Predictions about an imminent barbarian invasion, envisioned as coming from within Europe or from the outside, became commonplaces of public discourse. At the epicenter of these extravagant claims was the figure of the decadent artist, invariably presented as the neurasthenic product of an aging civilization. His affinity for exotic settings, stylistic refinement, and psychological nuance gave rise to a literature of inwardness, which supposedly reflected “a refined and mournful nervousness, a bitter taste of life, a nostalgic pessimism about existence.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought , pp. 353 - 371Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019