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Exploring the history of cultural pessimism.(Books)

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From: The Washington Times
Date: 19970406
Author:Goode, Stephen

Arthur Herman handles with admirable ease the theories of decline numerous thinkers from the ancients to the moderns have given us. But the main thrust of his new book, "The Idea of Decline in Western History," is discussing intellectuals and writers who follow in the tradition of the 18th century Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for whom human society was a very faulty thing, badly in need of restructuring, and history a series of mistakes in need of rectification.

"Everything degenerates in the hands of men," or so Rousseau claimed. Mr. Herman discusses the large number of ...

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