Decadence and Modernity

The article is devoted to understanding decadence as a concept describing modernity. Its use in evaluating cultural phenomena of the 19th-20th centuries is viewed as a symptom characterising the mentality of late Modern times (modernity), where the whole loses its self-evidence. Decadence in the art of the late nineteenth century is one of the vivid expressions of modern society’s specificity. This society is defined by proceeding not from the world (antiquity), not from God (Christianity), but from human as the primary subject (humanism). In modern consciousness, the temporal becomes primary rather than the eternal, the particular rather than the general. The problematic nature of the whole, firstly, makes inevitable the description and evaluation of society and human in terms of development or degradation, and secondly, constantly generates the will to restore and maintain connection with the whole (the general). Depending on one’s attitude to the whole (to the world/society), a person tends to evaluate the state of modern society in terms of development, growth, acceleration, or, if driven by a nostalgic attraction to the whole, as an ever-accelerating decline. And while those moving away from the whole associate decadence with society’s partial inability to accept the new and with attempts to preserve or restore discredited forms of life, those moving towards the whole associate it with blind faith in progress and the destruction of any organic forms.