"Gautier says, “Baudelaire abhorred philanthropy, progressivists, utilitarians, humanitarians and utopianists.” In other words, Baudelaire condemned Rousseausism in all its forms. Today, Rousseausism has so triumphed that the arts and the avant-garde are synonymous with liberalism, an error enforced by literature teachers, with their humanist bias. I follow the Decadents in trying to drive Rousseauist benevolence out of the discourse in art and literature. The Decadents satirized the liberal faith in progress with sizzling prophecies of catastrophe and cultural collapse."
React to this quote
More by Camille Paglia
See allResonant Thoughts
"If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make i…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity."
— Larry Wall"On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. The first was a very tall young man, just que…"
— Virginia Woolf"I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since th…"
— Malala Yousafzai"The most authentic and penetrating of Premchand’s portrayals center around village life. This was a life he…"
— Premchand"Card games, fruit machines, collective idle chatter, criticising others is all , as is playing the lottery,…"
— Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad"In Saudi Arabia, everything bad was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the t…"
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on education
- Randy Pausch on education
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on life
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on truth
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on knowledge
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on freedom
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on mind
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on philosophy
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on love
- Nisargadatta Maharaj on time
- knowledge & Beauty
- knowledge & Change

