Abstract

"Decline" is a concept which organizes a certain randomness of history to formalize a sense of movement. It posits a disjunction from some norm and implies a comparison between norm and "other." Historically, decline was a value-free concept which subsequently came to connote a movement in values from better to worse. The use of decline involves an interplay of ethical norms and a sense of distance between ideal and subsequent states. Decline can be linear , or cyclical or spiral, in which a decline is only one part of an overall pattern of historical movement