“The Idea of Decline in Western History”, by Arthur Herman

 

528 pages, Free Press, ISBN-13: 978-1416576334

I’ll be honest: my idea of a good time does not involve spending several weeks reading a book about how the West is going to hell in a handbasket with bells on but, pay heed dear reader, for that is not what Arthur Herman’s The Idea of Decline in Western History is; rather, this book is a first-rate discussion on some deep and penetrating themes in intellectual history, his central thesis being that the idea of decline is perennial and always has been, which means that either the pessimist or the progressivist is wrong…but then, one of them must be wrong about the general trend of history, right? For every impoverished locale a person sees, hears about or happens to live in, it is only proper to remind oneself that such depressive things need not characterize society in general (a good antidote for intellectuals who tread in Franco-German philosophical waters, or who think America is the worst in the world because it describes itself as the best and so must fall short…looking at you, Liberals). Herman expresses a refreshing skepticism toward habitual skepticism…I’ll elaborate: deep thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Paul-Michel Foucault provided important milestones for the viewpoint of pessimism: Spengler’s era, what with the fall of the Old World and the rise of Nazism, really was disintegrating, and Foucault was pessimistic in part because he was an intellectual at a time when both were undergoing violent assaults.

But Herman provides a bit of sanity to counteract the misery one witnesses in everyday life and continually points out that life has always been pretty rough for most people, but such a fact ought not to negate the great achievements of liberal society. He represents a classical view of conservatism – that is, Classical Liberalism – rather than the popular political representation that has persisted since the days of Goldwater, for good and for ill. While an excellent primer into the downers who have infected society for eons, I would have liked to have seen Herman distinguish between the short-term versus the long-term declines of history, and the distinction between the Fall of nations versus the Fall of Civilizations: the Greek nation(s) did fall, but their contributions to Western Civilization survived; Rome likewise fell, and yet their institutions likewise provide inspiration to the modern world. My fear is that America will fall and, if it does, can future generations take much comfort in the fact that the West may continue? The humanitarian principles of liberty and equal opportunity may be here to stay (at least in a few nations), but if those golden precepts are extinguished in all but a few isolated places, then those pessimistic purveyors of gloom and doom will eventually be proven right.