What I have attempted to do in these several columns over the past few weeks is to synthesize and describe the observations and analyses of numerous authors on what happened to Western civilization, how and why. Today, we will look at the rather pessimistic diagnoses of some of these writers.

For some years now, notable historians, philosophers and other scholars such as Jacques Barzun, John Lukacs, Alasdair MacIntyre, Pierre Manent and a host of others have diagnosed and chronicled the rise of the modern West and its gradual descent to the present. Barzun's magnum opus, "From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life" is one such chronicle. Lukacs, in "At the End of an Age," "describes how we in the Western world have now been living through the ending of an entire historical age that began in Western Europe almost 500 years ago."

Barzun (b. 1907), Lukacs (b. 1924) and MacIntyre (b. 1929) were born respectively, in France, Hungary and Scotland. They are scholars who have for decades made their homes in the United States at a number of universities. Important to their observations is the sheer length of time that they have personally witnessed history. Each of their scholarly accounts is deepened by their actual knowledge and experience of the 20th century. Among them, they have authored dozens of books on history and philosophy.

Barzun wrote "From Dawn to Decadence" at the end of the 20th century. He notes that as the century was coming to an end, he thought it timely to review "the great achievements and the sorry failures" of the past 500 years. "A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West, the culture of the last 500 years is ending." To Barzun, this past half millennium has been a unique and glorious experiment. "By tracing in broad outline the evolution of art, science, religion, philosophy and social thought during the last 500 years, I hope to show that during this span, the people of the West offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier or elsewhere."

This great civilization, however, carried within it the seeds of its own decadence. This is primarily a consequence of greater and greater individual autonomy. This "full-blown individual wields a panoply of rights, including the right to do 'his own thing' without hindrance from authority." This intense focus on the emancipation of the individual led to a humanism which "is accordingly charged with inverting the relation between man and God, with atheism and the secularizing of society." The result of this individualism, humanism and emancipation from authority results in a culture that "is old and unraveling."