From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present [Paperback]

Being French, the author shares the arrogance of many Francophone intellectuals who ascribe too much intellectual and cultural influence to their Gallic heritage. From Barzun's Franco-centric perspective, there were few ideas worthy of the name that originated anywhere else in the civilized world, much less globally. Such a bias gives little credit to the intellectual history of the Middle East and the Orient, which pre-date the various French Republics by hundreds or even thousands of years. And American and British contributions to the world of ideas are mostly derivative, in Barzun's view.

Like other well-known foreign-born writers who make English their lingua franca, Barzun tends to assume his command of English-its grammar, syntax, and vocabulary-are at least the equal of any native speaker of English, especially those who choose to call themselves intellectuals. Because of this, many of his sentences are at best convoluted and over-long, and at worst are unintelligible, lacking normal subject-verb agreement or perhaps reflecting a reflexive or subconscious attempt to "fit" this mongrelized English syntax and its rules into a more familiar and linguistically-pure French language construction. Nabokov's "Lolita" reflected a similar unjustified exhibitionism with regard to the use of a second language that the writer assumed he knew better than he did.

Finally, Barzun's eccentric insistence on using the term "techne" as a replacement for the word "technology," that is well known and understood in common English usage, reflects an ignorance of writing for a "lay" public. Perhaps such free-form constructivist foibles are tolerated in academic journals and high-specialized monographs in which an academic is seeking to establish himself in a field, but in a work intended for the generalist, such novel creations serve only to confuse rather than enlighten.

All of this said, Barzun's "Dawn to Decadence" is still a magnificent work and one that would serve a variety of factual and source reference purposes, as long as one keeps in mind the apparent Franco-centric biases of its author about such sources and his interpretations of them.

When Barzun bemoans the rise in the crime rate and in the prison population, he is talking largely about an American problem. Crime rates in Canada are significantly lower and the UK and the Irish Republic manage to maintain largely unarmed police forces. Something we could hardly do if we suffered from epidemic bouts of criminal activity. Then there's the laughable assertion that in the 19th century, crime was a rather jovial affair where cops and criminals knew each other, playing a high stakes game and 'killing had a clear motive'p.696. Just look around the world today and you'll see that killing has never had so many clear motives. Terrorists don't suffer from a Freudian death wish or notions about the 'absurdity' of the human condition.

Most of Barzun's laments about the decline of Western culture seem to be focused entirely on the rise of the welfare state and the 'Great Switch' from liberalism. The doctrine of which is the best government is that which governs least. However when it comes to geography and population Barzun makes a great switch to the opposing view, the best government is that which governs most! For him the current vogue of independant cultural identities seeking independant political states is a thorn in the side of the idea of developing a common culture. Yet for the first 350 years of the period covered we are talking about the culture of mainly propertied white males. Nothing wrong with that, propertied white males have done more than any other minority to shape the world we live in today. But they are just that, a minority. Once the seeds of education have spread worldwide, there is no reason why a working-class black woman should not demand to frame the world through her experience and on her terms just as much as a propertied white male does.

Barzun seems annoyed that the idea of EMANCIPATION that white males have argued over and fought for for 500 years are now being taken up by non-whites all over the world. Even within predominantly white cultures generic nation state terms such as 'British' can seem oppressive and for the most part mis-leading. The constant mis-use of the term 'British' to mean 'English' is a case in point. 'British' has traditionaly stood for English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh.

The ideas and attitudes which he says have shaped our age, Compassion, Irreverence and Creativity, have produced some of the greatest popular art of the post-war world (The Beatles anyone?). What is most prominant in Barzun's tome however is his passionate embrace of liberal economics. Compassion for instance 'requires a constant supply of the poor and the weak, instead of encouraging the healthful and reliant' p.621. These could be the exact sentiments of Charles Trevelyan, head of the relief effort of the largest humanitarian disaster in the 19th century 'Occident', the Irish potato famine, which is mystifyingly overlooked in Barzun's thesis. The fact that in the western part of the richest, most powerful, most industrialized, most democratic and most 'cultured' nation in the world, one million people starved to death, is enough for most to question the benevolance of large nation states and the 'human' benefits of lassiez-faire.

The moneterist policies of Thatcher and Reagan also get ignored. Since both these 'radical' leaders came to power in 1979 and 1980 respectively, the welfare state in the Anglo-American world of which Barzun is most familiar, has been stripped of its coffers year after year. With Bush's recent tax cut measures, you can be sure that the most expendable department of federal funding will be the arts.

The New Left and the counter-culture of the '60's has been described as 'the last gasp of the western soul', searching for some sense of community. It was the unrestrained free-marketeers who have lowered the cultural levels for all. This is their world. The radical free-marketeers believe nothing should get in the way of making a buck. This ideology culminated in Thatcher's infamous 1987 statement 'There is no such thing as society'. George W. Bush has a much greater understanding of Marx than Jacques Barzun. He understands that history isn't moved by things (as Barzun misunderstands Marx) but by material needs. The time and effort put into securing the oil fields in Iraq (base), while the museums and galleries of Baghdad (superstructure) were largely ignored is testament to his view of history.