Max Nordau’s paranoid but seduced classic, “Degeneration”

Ideas

• Sounds outraged, but ultimately optimistic
  • All we have to do is fix them!
  • If we fight the forces of modernity, we’ll be okay
  • An old-school liberal: anti-individual reformism
• Positivism
  • We will use science to make everything better
  • Order, will, and rationality rock
• Inner freedom is a myth
  • Biological problems of the decadents make them think so
• Defines fin de siecle
  • A mood begun in France that the century is an organic being and is winding down
  • Hysterical, gloomy, confused, restless, confessional, whiny, despairing
• Degenerate
  • A set of biological flaws due to the fatigues of modernization
    • Disease: a new subspecies with Lombrosian deformities
      • He thanked Lombroso in his dedication
  • Weak, inane, egoistic, impulsive, emotional, pious
  • Have contempt for ordinary morality
  • Have morbid need for stimulation
  • Mismatched, insane clothes, cosmopolitan houses, nervous music
• Oddly, he enjoys the culture he maligns (how long does he spend on the symbolist poets? on the degenerate’s house and clothes?)