J. D.'s Reviews > The De-moralization Of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values

The book is mostly about the moral life of Victorian England. For my purposes, there’s too much detail.

I like mainly the overarching theme to this book. Back then, there was a certain sense of propriety – standards of proper behavior – that had an enduring if not eternal quality about them. Increasingly in the post Victorian era, this kind of moral presence waned. For the author, it was replaced by “values,” which had a distinct subjectivism and relativeness, as in anything an individual might like (“value”). This, for her, becomes “The Demoralization of Society.”

Himmelfarb acknowledges that to a significant degree there’s a cultural- and age-boundedness to Victorian morals. She even makes a distinction between the overly prescriptiveness of the early Victorian period and the more liberalized, tolerant morals of the later Victorian period. She is not advocating a return to the Victorian Age. Rather, she would like to see the re-emergence of a sense of what is and what is not proper for society today.

As to what this might be, Himmelfarb focuses on personal responsibility that goes hand in hand with demands for personal rights, and she is against government paternalism, of the Orwellian, Big Brother kind, about what is and is not appropriate for personal and public behavior. (It is especially interesting that this 1994 book highlights the problem with “woke” politics that was current even then).

Early on in her book, she says that Victorians were not about cruelty, misery, squalor and ignorance – the common charges of the Victorian age. Well, maybe not explicitly, goal wise, that way, but there did seem to be hefty collateral damage along that line, and an unhealthy indifference to it as “the price of doing business.” The larger point is that Victorian “morals” were part of the colonial era when standards about what was and what was not proper were highly ethno- and class-centric in their judgments.

I also think her criticism of Nietzsche missed an important point – a call to break the bondage to morals and belief systems that pinned humans down and turned them into other-directed beings. But tossing out Victorian morals leads in her mind to the value-free, nihilistic relativism that she believes pervades our culture today in academia, in thought leaders, and in government speak, where no one, putatively, judges another for what they believe.

I say “putatively” because value judgements are only in theory relative and nihilistic. In reality, standards of “proper” behavior pervade today's society and they are highly moralistic and judgmental. They are everywhere and they are heavily tribal with pressures to conform and substantial penalties for violation. That’s really her point about “woke” politics coming from the left. It’s also the point about the cultural right and family values. Both political spectrums have a significant religiosity about them, with strong opinions about right and wrong. And then there’s the silent stuff – the prohibitions about probing too much into one’s personal life because it breaks through the masks people wear to cover who they really are. Then you get superficial pleasantries, not genuineness. Or, there’s the deportment issue. For example, real men don’t reveal themselves, except for anger, which is ok because it presents strength. Stoic life is the ideal. Or, the rural-urban cultural divide where each looks on the other as unsophisticated or silly. Where is our inner Nietzsche – to free ourselves of all of this and to be tolerant ourselves?

What is “proper” is a loaded question. Himmelfarb is about such things as restraint, duty, persistence and grace. Translate that for the commoners though and that could mean for one to know one’s place, to accept one’s position, to just do one’s job without complaint. By default, it’s convenient hierarchy and elitism, the pecking order of chickens. More fundamentally, I think, what is proper has a strong tint of what is “enduring and eternal,” i.e., Plato’s objective realm, which, per Nietzsche, doesn’t exist.

I think “proper” reflects that balance point that divides the self from the other. It is that line that Himmelfarb sort of draws with her comment about personal responsibility counter that balances demands for personal rights. Too much of either is bad, for the other or for the self. It’s the golden rule concept, as variously expressed across the ages and across the globe. The rest is detail, a weighing of one side or the other – to push forward when there’s need, out of respect for the self; or, to restrain oneself out of respect for the other’s interest. It certainly is not a nitpicking of dos and don’ts by religious nutcases, Boston Brahmins, or the old school marm who is heavy handed with the ruler.