Cultural pessimism

Short description: Conviction that culture is in decline

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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.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 1.1 Traditional versions
* 1.2 19th century
* 1.3 20th century
* 2 See also
* 3 Bibliography
* 4 External links

## History

### Traditional versions

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.

### 19th century

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.

### 20th century

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 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.

## See also

* Ages of Man
* Philosophical pessimism
* Tragic hero
* We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism
* Richard M. Weaver
* Ideas Have Consequences

## Bibliography

* Bennett, Oliver (2001). Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748609369.
* Schmitt, Mark (2023). Spectres of Pessimism: A Cultural Logic of the Worst. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

## External links

* Cato Institute report
* C-theory page
* Contestabile, Bruno (2016). "The Denial of the World from an Impartial View". Contemporary Buddhism 17: 49–61. doi:10.1080/14639947.2015.1104003. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/w2bQ5j5xVahrmnPUrjqQ/full.

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Culture

Outline

Sciences|

* Cultural anthropology
* Cultural astronomy
* Cultural ecology
* Cultural geography
* Cultural neuroscience
* Cultural studies
* Culturology
* Culture theorysecurity culture
* Neuroculture

Subfields|

* Bioculture
* Cross-cultural studies
* Cross-cultural communication
* Cross-cultural leadership
* Cross-cultural psychiatry
* Cross-cultural psychology
* Cultural analytics
* Cultural economics
* Cultural entomology
* Cultural history
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* Cultural psychology
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* Intercultural learning
* Intercultural relations
* Internet culture
* Philosophy of culture
* Popular culture studies
* Postcritique
* Semiotics of culture
* Sociology of culture
* Sound culture
* Theology of culture
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Types|

* Constructed culture
* Dominant culture
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* High culture
* Individualistic culture
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* Low culture
* Microculture
* Official culture
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Aspects|

* Acculturation
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* Cultural communication
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* Cultural cringe
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* Manuscript culture
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Politics|

* Colonial mentality
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Religions|

* Buddhism
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* Cultural Catholic
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* Role of Christianity in civilization
* Eastern Orthodoxy
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* Cultural Hindu
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* Judaism
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Related|

* Animal culture
* Archaeological culture
* Bennett scale
* Cannabis culture
* Circuit of culture
* Civilization
* Coffee culture
* Cross-cultural
* Cultural center
* Cultural competence
* Cultural critic
* Cultural Detective
* Cultural determinism
* Cultural diversity
* Cultural encoding
* Cultural evolutionism
* Cultural homogenization
* Cultural institution
* Cultural jet lag
* Cultural lag
* Cultural literacy
* Cultural mosaic
* Cultural movement
* Cultural mulatto
* Cultural probe
* Cultural relativism
* Culture speculation
* Cultural tourism
* Pop-culture
* Cultural translation
* Cultural turn
* Cultural sensibility
* Culture and menstruation
* Culture and positive psychology
* Culture and social cognition
* Culture gap
* Culture hero
* Culture industry
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* Culturgen
* Children's culture
* Culturalism
* Cyberculture
* Death and culture
* Disability culture
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* Intercultural communication
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* Languaculture
* Living things in culture
* Media culture
* Oppositional culture
* Participatory culture
* Permission culture
* Rape culture
* Remix culture
* Tea culture
* Transformation of culture
* Urban culture
* Welfare culture
* Western culture

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