Esmé L. K. Partridge

University of Cambridge

Esmé L. K. Partridge is a recent MPhil graduate from the University of Cambridge.

Music and the Decline of Civilization

Both Greek and Chinese traditions see the abandonment of musical laws as calamitous for the common good.

“In almost every description of a declining civilization we find the same tropes: an excess of liberty, a confusion of social norms, and the weakening of authority that soon descends into lawlessness. The medieval Muslim sociologist Ibn Khaldun, who developed one of the first theories of anacyclosis—the rise and fall of political regimes—explained this phenomenon as the loss of asabiyyah (group consciousness or social unity). Exactly what it is that undermines cohesion in the first place, however, has been the subject of almost mythic speculation.” —Esmé L. K. Partridge

Read the Article Instead: “Music and the Decline of Civilization”