Abendländische Untergänge: Modernekritische Verfallsnarrative im Langen 20. Jahrhundert

This study opens with a reconstruction of ancient cyclical and apocalyptic models of history and a brief account of Enlightenment progress thinking, then develops a systematic analysis of declinist thought from Nietzsche to the milieu of the Conservative Revolution. At its core it asks how critics of modernity delegitimize the present by casting the status quo as the outcome of a historical process of decline, and how that diagnosis is simultaneously bound up with an affirmative appeal to an idealized past. A further aim is to foreground the exhortatory thrust of these narratives of decline, which create urgency through calls for renewal or a turning back. In doing so, the study clarifies the cultural and political force of modernity critical interpretations of history.