Apocalyptic views on our future are commonplace today. Revolutionary outlooks took hold of scholars and students alike in the 1960s. Oswald Spengler wrote his prophetic DECLINE OF THE WEST in the 1920s. Friedrich Nietzsche saw the need for a revaluation of all values in the 1880s. Karl Marx envisioned the general breakdown of the industrial nations in the 1840s. But, the first modern thinker to spot the writing on the wall was IMMANUEL KANT. His perspectives on a possible backslide from civilized society to a havoc of rebarbarization date from the 1790s, some 220 years prior to the doomsday scenarios displayed on our flatscreens. Of all the Enlightenment philosophers, KANT was the only one whose concerns, even today, prove to be right on the mark. * Carlos Wiggen, doctor of philosophy and history of ideas, author of Barbary and Civilization, presents and discusses the Kantian notes on the frailty of civilization and the need for a resolute defense in this personal, essayistic tour de force exposition of one of the true giants of thought in Western culture.