Editing Max Nordau (section)

==''Degeneration'' (1892)==
[[File:Portrait of Max Nordau in The Bookman - April 1895.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Portrait of Nordau in April 1895 edition of [[The Bookman (New York City)|''The Bookman'']]]]
Nordau's major work ''Entartung'' (''[[Degeneration (Max Nordau)|Degeneration]]'') is a moralistic attack on what he believed to be [[degenerate art]], as well as a polemic against the effects of a range of the rising social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body.

In ''Réflexions sur la question gay'' (translated into English as ''Insult and the Making of the Gay Self''<ref>''Insult and the Making of the Gay Self'' (originally ''Réflexions sur la question gay'' (1999)). Translated by Michael Lucey. Duke University Press, 440 pages. July 2004</ref>), [[Didier Eribon]] refers to a whole section in Nordau's book targeting [[Oscar Wilde]] in aggressive terms: "Wilde loves immorality, sin, and crime". According to Eribon, the two volumes of ''Degeneration'' are centred on a description of the artistic and literary currents of an "end-of-century" that was leading society to "ruin". Nordau attacks [[symbolism (arts)|symbolists]], [[mysticism|mystics]], [[Pre-Raphaelites]], [[Wagner]]ism, [[Aestheticism]], and [[Decadentism]]. [[Joris-Karl Huysmans|Huysmans]] and [[Émile Zola|Zola]] are also targeted by him as "[[neurosis|neurotics]]" and "the worst kind of enemies of society", against whom the latter had "a duty to defend itself". He sustained that society was "at the highest of a serious intellectual epidemic, some kind of Black Death of degeneration and hysteria, such that it is only natural to hear a generalized, anguished questioning: 'What is going to happen?'" Therefore, he called upon [[judge]]s, [[teacher]]s, [[politician]]s, all those who wished to protect [[civilization]], to organize repression and censorship. As for [[psychiatrist]]s, their role would be predominant in such academia of "honest people" in charge of condemning "works that speculate on [[immorality]]". Any artist whom this small cluster of "the most qualified men of the people" might dislike would be doomed, because in such case "both the man and his work would be annihilated".<ref name="Réflexions sur la question gay">{{cite book|title=Réflexions sur la question gay |first=Didier |last=Eribon |year=1999 |publisher=Fayard}}</ref>

Nordau's ''Degeneration'' is cited by [[William James]] in his lecture on Neurology and Religion at the beginning of ''[[The Varieties of Religious Experience]]''. James mocks the author for his "bulky book" on the grounds that he exemplifies the then-current school of medical materialism, stating that Nordau "has striven to impugn the value of works of genius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many) by using medical arguments".<ref name="The Varieties of Religious Experience">{{cite book |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/621/pg621.txt |title=The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature |first=William |last=James |year=1902 |publisher=Longmans, Green & Co. |access-date=2011-11-29 |archive-date=2017-02-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201233906/http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/621/pg621.txt |url-status=live}}</ref>