

Decadence
A Very Short Introduction
Author: David Weir
Narrator: Graham Halstead
Unabridged: 4 hr 37 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 08/14/2018
Categories: Nonfiction, History, Social History
Synopsis
In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence—the excess of artifice—and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences.