Regeneration

A sustained reply to Max Nordau's Degeneration that challenges its diagnosis of modern culture as pathological. The author disputes Nordau's reliance on physical measurements and narrow psychiatric categories, criticizes the reduction of artistic movements to signs of decay, and defends late nineteenth-century music, drama, literature, and visual art — including Wagner, Ibsen, Zola, the Pre-Raphaelites, symbolists, and Parnassians — as complex expressions of changing sensibilities. The work warns against scientism, argues for a balanced mediation between scientific and humanistic perspectives, and urges calmer, more nuanced appraisal of contemporary creativity.