Editing Cultural pessimism

{{Short description|Conviction that culture is in decline}}
{{No footnotes|date=October 2022}}
[[File:Virgil Solis - Iron Age.jpg|thumb|300px|''The Iron Age''. Engraving by [[Virgil Solis]] for [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]'', Book I, 141–150.]]
'''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]].

==Traditional versions==

It has been significant presence in the general outlook of many historical cultures: things are "going to the dogs", the [[Golden age (metaphor)|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 history|cyclic model of history]]—notably in the writings of [[Giambattista Vico]].

==Nineteenth century==

The pessimistic element was available in [[Arthur Schopenhauer]]'s philosophy and [[Matthew Arnold]]'s cultural criticism. The tide of [[Whiggish optimism]] (exemplified by [[Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Macaulay]]) receded somewhat in the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria.

Classical culture, based on traditional classical scholarship in [[Latin]] and [[Greek language|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.

==Early twentieth century==
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R06610, Oswald Spengler.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Oswald Spengler]], author of ''[[The Decline of the West]]'']]
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 [[Liberalism|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.

==Contemporary proponents==

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:

<blockquote>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)</blockquote>

The end of the millennium saw in the United States concerns rather specific to the conservative view on the [[culture war]]s and [[university education]].{{Clarify|date=April 2010}} 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.

==See also==
* [[Ages of Man]]
* [[Philosophical pessimism]]
* [[Tragic hero]]
* ''[[We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism]]''
*[[Richard M. Weaver]]
**''[[Ideas Have Consequences]]''

==Bibliography==
*{{cite book |last=Bennett |first=Oliver |year=2001 |title=Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World |location=[[Edinburgh]] |publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]] |isbn=9780748609369}}
*Schmitt, Mark (2023). ''Spectres of Pessimism: A Cultural Logic of the Worst''. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20121104154453/http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v20n5/culture.pdf Cato Institute report] 
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110525055114/http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=346 C-theory page]
*{{cite journal | last1 = Contestabile | first1 = Bruno | year = 2016 | title = The Denial of the World from an Impartial View | url = http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/w2bQ5j5xVahrmnPUrjqQ/full | journal = Contemporary Buddhism| volume = 17 | pages = 49–61 | doi = 10.1080/14639947.2015.1104003 | s2cid = 148168698 }}

{{Culture}}
{{Social philosophy}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Pessimism]]
[[Category:Cultural concepts]]
[[Category:Concepts in the philosophy of history]]
[[Category:Philosophy of culture]]