The Climax of Civilisation

Correa Moylan Walsh’s The Climax of Civilisation presents a cyclical theory of history from a distinctly American perspective. Civilisations rise and eventually reach a plateau of cultural sophistication which leads to decline and eventual conquest or disintegration.

Before Spengler, Walsh argues that Western civilisation has entered this culminating stage, identifying many so-called “advances” of modernity as symptoms of decay.

• He treats emancipation as degeneration;
• he defends hierarchy as good;
• he sees humanitarianism as weakness; and
• he rehabilitates war as a “moral purgative.”

Yet Walsh knows that history cannot simply be reversed. He accepts industrial civilisation while demanding that it be sustained by older structures of patriarchy, discipline, and martial strength.

One of the true unsung reactionary modernists, Walsh teaches that modern societies mistake symptoms of decline for signs of progress.