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Cultural pessimism arises with the conviction that the culture of a nation, a civilization, or humanity itself is in a process of irreversible decline. It is a variety of pessimism formulated by a cultural critic.
It has been significant presence in the general outlook of many historical cultures: things are "going to the dogs", the Golden age is in the past, and the current generation is fit only for dumbing down and cultural careerism. Some significant formulations have gone beyond this, proposing a universally-applicable cyclic model of history—notably in the writings of Giambattista Vico.
The pessimistic element was available in Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Matthew Arnold's cultural criticism. The tide of Whiggish optimism (exemplified by Macaulay) receded somewhat in the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria.
Classical culture, based on traditional classical scholarship in Latin and Greek literature, had itself been under attack externally for two generations or more by 1900, and had produced, in Friedrich Nietzsche, a model pessimistic thinker.
Cultural pessimism of the Oswald Spengler epoch might be seen as a refusal of the rather intellectual and secular choice between nihilism and modernism. Politically this tended to squeeze liberal thought.
Specific criticism of the West, in the first years of the twentieth century, is usually taken as of the Old World of Europe, excluding therefore North America in particular. The classic source for this is Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1923), often cited in the years following its publication. The tone of much of the critical writing, for example, of T. S. Eliot, and the historical writing of Arnold J. Toynbee from the 1920s onwards, is identifiable. It was fashionable to say that Spengler had at least formulated some truths about the cultural situation of Europe after World War I. Eliot's major early work The Waste Land (1922) was commonly and directly interpreted in those terms.
Towards the end of the 20th century, cultural pessimism surfaced in a prominent way. The very title of Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (2000) challenges the reader to be hopeful. On Matthew Arnold, a major cultural critic of the Victorian era, Barzun writes:
According to Arnold, the behaviour of the English social classes was touched neither by spiritual nor by intellectual forces; the upper orders were barbarians, the middle classes philistines. (op. cit. p.573)
The end of the millennium saw in the United States concerns rather specific to the conservative view on the culture wars and university education.[ clarification needed ] Western Europe, on the other hand, struggled towards self-definition in the face of limiting demography, and postmodernism as at least journalistically predominant—the difference primarily lying in the political prominence of the issues.
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Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
Pessimism is a mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is "Is the glass half empty or half full?"; in this situation, a pessimist is said to see the glass as half empty, or in extreme cases completely empty, while an optimist is said to see the glass as half full. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
World history or global history as a field of historical study examines history from a global perspective. It emerged centuries ago; leading practitioners have included Voltaire (1694–1778), Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), and Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975). The field became much more active in the late 20th century.
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. He has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues. He was also an inspector of schools for thirty-five years, and supported the concept of state-regulated secondary education.
Fin de siècle is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence."
German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
The Decline of the West is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler. The first volume, subtitled Form and Actuality, was published in the summer of 1918. The second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, was published in 1922. The definitive edition of both volumes was published in 1923.
Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. With his wife Diana Trilling, whom he married in 1929, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review.
Terence Francis Eagleton is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 and 1930. He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions. His book Democracy and Leadership (1924) is regarded as a classic text of political conservatism. Babbitt is regarded as a major influence over American cultural and political conservatism.
In a society, high culture encompasses cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as being exemplary works of art, and the intellectual works of literature and music, history and philosophy, which a society considers representative of their culture.
Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. It contrasts with genetic determinism, the theory that biologically inherited traits and the environmental influences that affect those traits dominate who we are.
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions of the critics and the medium they use vary widely. The conceptual and political grounding of criticism also changes over time.
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iași in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi. The foremost personality and mentor of the society was Maiorescu, who, through the means of scientific papers and essays, helped establish the basis of the modern Romanian culture. Junimea was the most influential intellectual and political association from Romania in the 19th century.
Traditionalist conservatism, often known as classical conservatism, is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of transcendent moral principles, manifested through certain posited natural laws to which it is claimed society should adhere. It is one of many different forms of conservatism. Traditionalist conservatism, as known today, is based on Edmund Burke's political views as well as the views of Joseph de Maistre. Traditionalists value social ties and the preservation of ancestral institutions above what they perceive as excessive individualism. One of the first uses of the phrase "conservatism" began around 1818 with a monarchist newspaper named "Le Conservateur", written by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand with the help of Louis de Bonald.
Criticism of postmodernism is intellectually diverse, reflecting various critical attitudes toward postmodernity, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, and postmodern architecture. Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, especially those associated with Enlightenment rationality though postmodernism in the arts may have their own definitions. Thus, while common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress, critics of postmodernism often defend such concepts. It is frequently alleged that postmodern scholars promote obscurantism, are hostile to objective truth, and encourage relativism to an extent that is epistemically and ethically crippling. Criticism of more artistic postmodern movements such as postmodern art or literature may include objections to a departure from beauty, lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviating from clear structure and the consistent use of dark and negative themes.
In philosophy and sociology, culturalism is the central importance of culture as an organizing force in human affairs. It is also described as an ontological approach that seeks to eliminate simple binaries between seemingly opposing phenomena such as nature and culture.
Declinism is the belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, to view the past more favourably and the future more negatively.
