Decadence  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 18:28, 26 August 2007

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

See also Decadent movement

Decadence refers to a personal trait and, much more commonly, to a state of society. In a person, or used to describe a person's lifestyle, it describes a lack of moral and intellectual discipline. In a society, it describes corrosive decline due to a perceived erosion of necessary moral traditions. (A society that discards unnecessary and outmoded values would not be considered decadent.) Due to the subjective nature of morality, whether a society is decadent or not is a matter of debate, though certain historical societies (such as ancient Rome near its end) are generally held to have been decadent, as decadence may lead to objective decline.

Decadent societies are often prosperous but usually have severe social and economic inequality, to such a degree that the upper class becomes either complacent or greedy, while the lower classes become hopeless and apathetic. The middle class may exhibit either or both patterns, or it may vanish entirely. Poor leadership is generally held to be both a cause and a symptom of decadence, as the lifestyle of a decadent individual is usually considered to be incompatible with responsibility. Applied to the arts, decadence implies an elevation of self-indulgence and pretension over effort and talent; when applied to science and the professions, it describes an erosion of professional ethics. Individual or collective greed is generally disliked in societies with strong moral beliefs, and for this reason, societies that nurture it are sometimes accused of decadence.

Societies that persist in a state of decadence may become unable or unwilling to commit to their own upkeep and fall into decline. One historical perspective on ancient Rome is that it became decadent due to a succession of poor emperors like Nero and Caligula. While they ruled centuries before the date of Rome's fall, their leadership may have played a role in its decline. This point of view may also be biased by ex-post interpretation : beyond his eccentricity Nero was also viewed as a good ruler and very popular during his reign, and Caligula only reigned a few years. Machiavelli attributed Roman decadence to the rise of Christianity. See also: Roman decadence.

Contemporary post-industrial societies such as the United States and Western Europe are sometimes accused of decadence, the argument being that consumerism, materialism, and selfishness have eroded traditional moral values of community, democracy, and the work ethic.

In literature, the Decadent movement—late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers who were associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement—was first given its name by hostile critics, and then the name was triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves. These "decadents" relished artifice over the earlier Romantics' naive view of nature (see Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Some of these writers were influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

See also

• Degenerate art
• Decadent movement
• Jacques Barzun
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918)
• Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Further reading

• Richard Gilman, Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet. ISBN 0-374-13567-3
• Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity. ISBN 0-8223-0767-7
• Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony (1930). ISBN 0-19-281061-8
• Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence (2000). ISBN 0-06-017586-9
• A. E. Carter, The Idea of Decadence in French Literature (1978). ISBN 0-8020-7078-7

Decadent movement

Decadent movement