the decline of the West

Oswald Spengler

The decline of the West. Outline of a morphology of world history is the main cultural and philosophical work of Oswald Spengler . The first and second edition of the first volume, Gestalt und Reality , was published in 1918 by the Braumüller publishing house in Vienna ; the second volume, Welthistorische Perspektiven , was published in 1922 by the CH Beck publishing house in Munich . The other editions since 1923 revise the older parts of the complete work in some, mostly linguistic points.

Spengler compares the European-North American Occident from a cultural-morphological point of view with seven other advanced cultures . In this way he creates the panorama of a specific philosophy of history . It reflects the experiences of the time before and during the First World War and is inspired by the revolutionary circumstances of the era. As a philosopher, however, he recommends "looking at the historical world of forms of millennia [...] if you really want to understand the great crisis of the present."

As early as 1904, in his dissertation, The Metaphysical Basic Thought of Heraclitic Philosophy, the author had come to a comparison. These approaches already concerned the development of ancient and western cultures . Intercultural comparisons between events (including those of an artistic and intellectual history) were by no means new in Spengler's time and were even part of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influential philosophy of history , whose influence on Spengler should not be underestimated; From the connection with his own philosophy, however, Spengler developed a metaphysically rooted system in his dissertation - and now systematically in his main work - which claims to explain the entire higher cultural history and even predict future developments: In his book, "zum dared to try to predict history for the first time. "

The prognosis of the future development of the Occident formulates the famous thesis of “downfall”, understood as a necessary and basically “natural” conclusion of a preceding period of prosperity and a subsequent longer period of decline, followed by the characteristic “ Fellach culture”. This interpretation replaces the notion, which was widespread before the First World War, of a continuous and historically necessary progress in human history.

Choice of title

The main title, which had been established since 1912, was always a cause for misunderstanding. In its darkly accentuated formulation, it traced back to Otto Seeck's story of the fall of the ancient world , published from 1895 to 1921 . Spengler's title does not refer to a one-off, catastrophic turning point in the course of Western history, but to a process lasting several centuries, which he believes was the beginning of Western European history .

Spengler expressly protested against the pessimistic interpretation of his book title: “The word does not contain the concept of a catastrophe . If one says completion instead of downfall, (...) the 'pessimistic' side is temporarily switched off without the actual meaning of the term having been changed. ”In his 1921 defense paper Pessimism? Spengler mocked the misunderstanding that “'sinking' is often understood in the sense of the sinking of an ocean liner”.

The subtitle of the philosophical work is closer to Spengler's main thesis than the alarming main title: It characterizes world history as a recurring rise and fall of cultures and civilizations .

Philosophical foundations

Basic concepts

Spengler's philosophical foundations, including morphology, are eclectic new arrangements of traditional and (at that time) current-contemporary philosophemes. His role models were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's morphology and Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of life , mind and soul . The concept of Dasein , based on the philosophy of life, claimed centrality as “cosmic floods”. Constant growth and decay are their hallmarks. Spengler describes the more detailed determinations of life with the terms:

• Clock and tension: The cosmic directionality of a stream of life (clock) differs from the cognitive and rational structuring, but merely adding to existence, the wakefulness of higher animal species including humans.
• Shape and law: Based on the shape theory as formulated by Christian von Ehrenfels , Spengler assumed two possibilities for conception and understanding of the world. The intuitively comprehensible context of life differs from its mechanistic view based on causality principles . Spengler also speaks of “ physiognomics ” and “systematics”.
• Will to power (borrowed from Nietzsche's Also Spoke Zarathustra ): Life is a constant desire to become more and to overwhelm, an urge not only for existence but for domination:

"What we like to call life energy (vitality) today, that 'it' in us that wants to move forward and upward at any cost, the blind, cosmic, longing urge for validity and power, what everywhere among higher people as political life seeks and must look for the great decisions in order either to be or to suffer a fate. Because you grow or die. There is no third option. "

Spengler participates in social Darwinist ideologies with the idea of ​​a primal war, which is the basic condition of all life - he also speaks of war as the “primal politics of all living things” . A relationship between his view of the world and the philosophy of Henri Bergson is more likely to be based on coincidence, since Spengler received Bergson's writings only after his main work was finished.

Morphology and philosophy of history

The morphological approach goes back to Spengler's reception of Goethe. Since the 19th century, living beings (plants) have been understood as dynamic units. A morphological understanding understood in this way is revealed by the knowledge of living, developing forms (according to Goethe), especially in the assumption that they went through phases of youth, maturation, aging and withering. Spengler transfers morphology as a method of knowledge of nature to knowledge of history. The “world as history” is only revealed when its biological essence is grasped . The cosmic floods of life do not flow arbitrarily into the chaotic world events, but from the philosophical view would be ordered into units of great internal homogeneity, into high cultures and their historical course. Spengler's method thus amounts to an organic world view with life-philosophical accents. Not only plants and animals, but also the artificial forms of human expression, art, society, politics, and the state are life units for him. These, in turn, would determine history in its unalterable process. The originally biological terms used were not metaphors for Spengler , rather he considered them real-naturalistic terms adequate to describe political and social processes. The historian Alexander Bein judges that Spengler thereby moved his cultural show into the realm of myth .

High culture

Under the auspices of the morphological view of history, Spengler postulates high culture as the most distinguished unit and bearer of world history: “Cultures are organisms. World history is her overall biography. "

For Spengler, cultures are, so to speak, giant plants that are born out of a maternal landscape, grow, mature and finally decay. Spengler puts the duration of each high culture at around a millennium. Spengler identifies a total of "eight high cultures" for the past 5,000 years:

1. Egyptian culture : since approx. 2600 BC BC on the Nile , including the Cretan- Minoan culture.
2. Babylonian culture : since around 1900 BC In what is now the Middle East.
3. Indian culture : since 1500 BC In the Indus region and in the interior of the Indian subcontinent
4. Chinese culture : since 1400 BC BC on the East Asian continent.
5. Antiquity , i.e. Greco - Roman culture : since 1100 BC In the Mediterranean area (heartland: today's Greece and Italy).
6. Arab culture (which Spengler also sums up the early Christian and Byzantine cultures ): since the birth of Christ on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean.
7. Aztec culture : since approx. 200 AD in the main region of Central America.
8. Western culture: since 900 AD in Western Europe, later also in North America.

With the ninth, Russian culture , Spengler identifies another cultural organism to which the future of the coming third millennium belongs.

Spengler assumes a period of preparation, a so-called “preculture”, for each culture. For occidental culture, the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians (500–900 AD) represents the period of cultural anticipation of the high culture of the “ Gothic ”.

The meaning of history is fulfilled in the emergence and decay of these advanced cultures, not in linear historical concepts such as the ancient - medieval - modern times . Spengler regards this insight as the Copernican turning point in the view of history.

Culture course

Similarity and equivalence

The high cultures are equal to each other. There is no history of 'humanity' , only a history of (isolated) cultures. As individuals of a higher order, the eight advanced civilizations would allow a morphological comparison:

• All high cultures have an analogous history, a corresponding internal structure. They all had their early days, their heyday, their state of decay and finally their death.
• This makes it possible to predict the future of cultures that have not yet been completed. Western culture was coming to an end and Russian culture was flourishing.

simultaneity

Thus Spengler arrives at a (semantically rather unusual) concept of “simultaneity”. In terms of the philosophy of history, he does not mean the absolute identity of time, but the relative position of corresponding events in different cultures.

The best way to imagine Spengler's point of view is as follows: As a new high culture matures, a new “calendar” begins again and again: the first, second, third (etc.) century after the beginning of culture, so to speak. The “first” ancient century would be the period from about 1100–1000 BC. BC, the “first” occidental 900–1000 AD. Consequently, Spengler assumes these two periods to be simultaneous (in the sense of cultural development). A few examples (mainly from the comparison of ancient and occidental history) may serve to illustrate:

• Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (8th century BC) and the occidental Nibelungenlied (13th century) are to be thought of at the same time, since they each go into the 3rd / 4th Century after the beginning of culture.
• Confucius in Chinese and Immanuel Kant in Western culture correspond to each other: in each case around the 9th century after the beginning of the culture.
• Likewise, after every 9 centuries, Alexander the Great appeared in antiquity and Napoleon Bonaparte in the West .

Spengler's asserted simultaneities sometimes result in deviations of several decades to over a century. Spengler explains this by the different tempos with which the individual phases of a culture are passed through, e.g. B. the slow bourgeois revolution , which in his opinion there was in ancient Greece, as opposed to the rapid one in the West. The decisive factor in Spengler's conception is not the absolute duration of a phase, but the same position of the phases among each other.

Organic culture development

The still “soulful” early days always give birth to a myth of great style (ancient: the Olympian gods , occidental: Germanic Catholicism , corresponding religions in India , China , Mexico , as well as early Christianity at the time of Jesus ). At the same time the new political powers emerged, nobility and priesthood , which he regards as the two origins of every culture.

The art of every early culture shows a new passion, a soul of its own kind (ancient: Dorik , occidental: Gothic cathedral ), and philosophy begins to stir again. The same applies to poetry (ancient: Homer, occidental: the heroic epics).

Over time, the political constitution passed from a feudal association to a corporate state . The rural life of the early days gives way to an urban culture in which the third class (tiers) , the bourgeoisie , increasingly play a role. Later, in the state of civilization, a fourth estate appeared with the proletariat . The peasantry, referred to by Spengler as “non-class”, which is more original than the other classes, but is despised and politically ignored by them, remains aloof.

The high point of cultural development is always absolutism , which Spengler identified for antiquity with Attic democracy at the time of Pericles , and for Occident with the state of the 17th and 18th centuries.

For Spengler, art and philosophy also always reached their peak “simultaneously”: Plato and Aristotle returned in the West in the person of Kant, in China with Confucius. Correspondingly, the other cultures also knew their Enlightenment , rationalism as the “religion” of the educated. However, the completion of culture is synonymous with its end.

Culture and civilization

Spengler calls the last phase of a culture “civilization”, a term that was used in German tradition as an antonym to culture. Spengler arranges the two states historically for the first time. Civilization is the death of culture, more precisely: The death of culture takes place when culture passes into civilization. Characterize the late state of civilization:

• the old instead of the youth, lack of history,
• Artificiality and solidification of all areas of life,
• Rule of the inorganic cosmopolitan city instead of the lively rural country,
• cool factual sense instead of reverence for the traditional,
• Materialism and irreligion,
• anarchic sensuality, panem et circenses , entertainment industries,
• Collapse of morality and death of art,
• Civilization wars and extermination struggles,
• Imperialism and the rise of formless powers.

Every culture goes through a phase of extensive world wars , barbaric orgies of violence and struggles for the final rule. Based on a period in Chinese history, Spengler calls it the “time of the warring states”.

After the transition of culture into civilization, the entire culturally capable population gradually disappears by destroying itself in the wars of annihilation of the civilization crisis or by neglecting the production of offspring due to an urge to exist only as an individual. In the end, the former cultural area would be inhabited by primitive, non-viable masses, the fellahs .

Spengler sees the final state of civilization for antiquity with the beginning of the Roman Empire , for the West with Napoleon, for the Orient with the Ottoman Empire , for China in what he believes to be the unhistorical ups and downs of the Imperial Era, for Egypt with the Dawn of the New Kingdom . Spengler calls the state of civilization (after the crisis of its emergence has been overcome) the epoch of world peace. However, this is based only on the fate of the broad masses, while the great Caesars and dictators fought for power and influence.

Culture characteristic

Apollonian, magical, Faustian

Every culture has its own soul, which it received from the maternal landscape in which it was born. And every culture stamps this soulfulness on the people who fell under its spell. That is why the processes of cultures were alike, but not their style and consequently not their forms of expression. Spengler names three of the eight high cultures separately in order to characterize their inner world feeling:

• Antiquity: Apollonian (after Nietzsche, i.e. sensual-present-oriented, ahistorically feeling, remaining in the finite cosmos, static)
• Orient / Arabia: magical (that is, mysteriously thrown into the world, dualistic feeling)
• Occident: Faustian (powerfully striving towards infinity, thinking historically, dynamic)

That is why the "correspondences" in the various cultures take on a strongly divergent form, for example:

• Architecture: Ancient temple against Arab mosque and Gothic cathedral (with its infinite vertical tendency)
• Art: Ancient sculpture as pure “present”, “Faustian” limitless music in the West
• Mathematics: Ancient number as a quantity, Arabic algebra , Faustian-occidental differential and integral calculus

• Religion: ancient gods physically and almost human, Arab struggle of the powers of light and darkness, occidental god as infinite power
• Morality: Ancient moral ethics and tolerance , on the other hand Arab resignation and Western European intolerance
• State: Ancient city-state, occidental tendency towards the area state

Cultural relations

Spengler denied that there could be an exchange or mutual fertilization between different cultures. He considered the reception of other cultures or the renaissance of older cultures to be fiction. The philosopher Anton Mirko Koktanek describes Spengler's conception of cultures as “windowless monads ”. Although there are always relationships between cultures with him, they should not be confused with real emotional exchange. The completely different disposition of the world feeling and understanding of the world prevent real communication. It is true that Buddhism came from India to China and Christianity from the Orient to Western Europe. That does not mean, however, that people from both cultures understood the same thing by using the same words and formulas. The same applies to our relationship to antiquity, a world that, according to Spengler, is deeply foreign to the West.

The fundamental mutual non-understanding sometimes produces catastrophic flowers. For example, a lack of intercultural empathy caused the culture war of occidental conquerors against Mexican culture and its senseless extinction in the early 16th century. Spengler is definitely a pessimist on this point; Such a complex clash of high cultures could repeat itself at any time under different circumstances.

Political, cross-cultural action becomes problematic due to mutual misunderstanding (i.e. due to a lack of knowledge of the other cultural language), because:

“A person from a foreign culture can be a spectator and thus a descriptive historian of the past, but never a politician, i. H. a man who feels the future working within him. If he does not have the material power to act in the form of his own culture and to disregard or control that of the foreign one [...], he is helpless in the face of events. The Romans and Greeks always thought the living conditions of their polis into foreign events, the modern European looks everywhere through the concepts of constitution, parliament and democracy to foreign fates, although the application of such ideas to other cultures is ridiculous and pointless. "

Pseudomorphosis

As a special case of the cultural relationship, Spengler defines the phenomenon that an existing culture spreads burdensome over the landscape and forces other, just blossoming cultures into their forms (even if not into their "soulfulness"). Based on a term from mineralogy , Spengler calls this a "historical pseudomorphosis".

In this sense, late antiquity placed a hindrance on the Arab culture and for centuries falsified its outward appearance. It was only Islam that freed them from the ancient burden of inheritance. In the year 732 Karl Martell's victory over the advancing Muslim armies had saved the entire West from falling into an oriental pseudomorphosis. In the 17th century, the matured occidental culture since Peter the Great forced a form on Russia that was not in keeping with it. The pseudomorphism is still going on, since Bolshevism is just another foreign import from the West.

Individual questions

Anti-democratic tendency

Spengler's idea of ​​the necessary transition of the political constitutions into Caesarism (imperial era), the late state of civilization, includes an anti-democratic and anti-liberal attitude. The philosopher, nationally conservative in his own conviction, celebrated Prussia as the occidental repetition of the ancient Roman expansion. He dreamed of the future of the Imperium Germanicum , which would once again bring together and organize the decaying occidental culture in its entirety.

The bourgeois revolution of 1789, the ideals of liberty, equality, and brotherhood , in his opinion only brought about the rule of money. But capitalism undermines the structure of society and ultimately turns against its own foundations of the liberal constitution. As a result, the rule of the Third Estate finally passes to that of the Fourth Estate, the formless mass of world cities, more precisely to those who can use these civilization masses as trainers in the service of their own power intentions. The result is the decline of democracy and the beginning rule of demagogues and dictators . Spengler considers this development to be inevitable. He therefore distrusts the ideals of free democracy and the constitutional state.

Imperialism and the cult of Caesar

Spengler declared imperialism , which he affirmed, to be a necessary phenomenon under the sign of collapsing culture:

“I am teaching imperialism here […]. Imperialism is pure civilization. The fate of the West lies irrevocably in this manifestation. "

In the course of cultural development, the forces of the “cultural soul” tied all vital energies into a strict form, even in the context of warlike acts. The absolutist state of the 17th and 18th centuries, Ludwig XIV. And Frederick the Great (ancient: around the time of Pericles) would mark the heyday of the well-designed community. Under the sign of the disintegration of culture, the energies of life would be released again blindly, and chaos would break out. The task of taming this always fell to the great individuals, the Caesars. Consequently, their historical mission is inevitable. The cult that later developed around their “leaders” therefore contained something inevitable in the history of every civilization.

At the end of the Kulturkampf, the winner would always be the one who knew how to best control the anarchic tendencies during the time of the cultural collapse and to neutralize them for himself. The example of the Romans in antiquity shows this. According to Spengler, the Prussian-Germans should take them as an example for the West.

From this it was deduced that Spengler had represented the thesis that the last, in his words “Caesarist” phase of Western high culture would unfold under German domination and that Germany's defeat in the two world wars had prevented this transition. The historian David McNaughton pointed out that Spengler considered Adolf Hitler the most unsuitable man for this task of the “Caesarist phase”: The Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, on the other hand, was for him, according to Spengler's biographer Detlef Felken , the “prototype of a time to come”. According to the German scholar Barbara Beßlich , Spengler wanted to steer Caesarism, which he believed would come, in the direction he wanted, he wanted to " instrumentalize it nationalistically ".

Concept of race and anti-Semitism

Spengler's writing is interspersed with terms such as race , blood and soil or formulations that sound like an homage to National Socialism or fascism . However, he distances himself from the biological concept of race of his time. He writes:

“One does not believe that a people was ever held together by the mere unity of physical ancestry and that this form could only have been preserved for ten generations. It cannot be repeated often enough that this physiological origin is only present for science and never for popular consciousness and that no people have ever been enthusiastic about this ideal of 'pure blood'. "

For Spengler, a race is something cosmic, nothing material, therefore nothing biologically tangible. The race is fulfilled in a strong impulse of life that promises the future, not in an ideology of its purity. In the latest state of culture, civilization, this racial detention is lost after it brought about the most terrible outbreaks of violence during the transition from culture to civilization. The historyless man of the later times no longer knows the passion of wanting and having to work. Instead, he is satisfied with a copy of the culturally inherited forms of religion: the second religiosity.

The Judaism identified Spengler as a "decomposing element" that THAT CONDITION devastating, "where it is engaged." Jews are characterized by a "cynical intelligence" and their "money thinking". Therefore they are incapable of adapting to Western culture and represent a foreign body in Europe. With these anti-Semitic historical speculations, Spengler made a significant contribution to making stereotypes about "the Jews" plausible even in circles that stayed away from clumsy anti-Semitic histories.

Comparing religions

In the last third of his book, Spengler deals in detail with the religious history of the western (“Roman-Greek”) and the eastern (“Persian-Arabic”) worlds, where he compares Christianity with Judaism and the various “Persian” cults (e.g. with Manichaeism ) as well as with the Roman-Greek cult of emperors and gods. He sees in Christianity a large, rather coincidentally created "Oriental-Arab" sect of Judaism, which initially had a lot in common with the "Persian" cults and only through the aforementioned "pseudomorphosis" became the state religion of the western "Roman-Greek" culture since Constantine has been. He emphasizes the connection with Neoplatonism . The “eastern” and “southern” parts of the Christian religion (e.g. the Nestorians , but also the North African successors of Augustine ) were later absorbed into Islam without significant resistance .

Second religiosity

The second religiosity is a kind of consolation for the powerless masses of the late civilizing times. The "Fellach peoples" would be murdered en masse during the so-called world peace, but would renounce the use of force themselves. They would surrender to their fate and seek refuge in forms of religiosity found in the early days of their own culture. Enlightenment and rationalism had in the meantime alienated people from religion and attempted to educate them to come of age and freedom. With the decline of the idea of ​​freedom, however, rationalism is also discredited and the hunger for metaphysics is reported again.

Characteristic of the second religiosity is a humble approach to the myth of prehistoric times, a reprimitization in the forms of religion and the tendency to syncretism . The second religiosity is the inorganic, artificial form of the original religion. It casts a spell on the people who follow it no less intensely, but no longer shows any sustainable characteristics.

Forms of economic life

For Spengler, spirit and money have an inner relationship. It differs depending on whether the economic subject is a person of culture or civilization. The civilized man trade with the help of money, the man of civilization thinks in money. The latter relates everything to the inorganic size of the abstract number. Consequently, the period of civilization is the high time of the financial tycoons, the stock market speculators , the art trade and corruption .

The cultures would also diverge from one another with regard to the money factor. In Roman times, antiquity also knew the rule of money - Spengler uses the term plutocracy  , which is burdened today - as well as Western modernity under the sign of American dominance and the world's leading currency, the US dollar . But ancient people would have concretely understood money to be a pile of coins. According to Spengler, western monetary thinking takes place differently, “Faustian” so to speak, “infinitely”. The symbol for this is double-entry bookkeeping , the conception of money as a dynamic quantity, as a function and an instrument of power. Only the beginning of Caesarism liquidated, according to Spengler, the omnipotence of thinking in money, together with its political basis, democracy.

The Faustian technology also goes for power . It is not sufficiently comprehensible with mere economic considerations. Western technology strives, from Gothic peasantry to modern industry, to rule over nature. The life impulse of infinity seizes the master of the machine and ultimately makes him its slave. Spengler elaborated on this subject in 1931 in his work Man and Technology .

For him, the eternal cosmic flood of growth and decay forms the metaphysical background of the history of the economy:

“War is the creator, hunger the destroyer of all great things. There life is lifted up through death, often to that irresistible force, the very presence of which means victory; here hunger awakens that ugly, mean, completely unmetaphysical kind of fear of life under which the higher world of forms of a culture suddenly collapses and the naked struggle for existence of human beasts begins. "

Future prospects

In his book, Spengler cautiously mentions the obvious questions about the future of the problems he addressed. In order to be able to assert itself against the emerging Russia at least in a transitional period, the West needed a period of Caesarism that would be characterized by technocracy, imperialism and socialism . He only mentions the October Revolution that had already begun at the end of the book in passing . He foresaw a second world war.

reception

Spengler's main work evoked enthusiasm as well as rejection.

The theologian Friedrich Gogarten commented: “That is why we rejoice over Spengler's book. It proves, it may or may not be true in detail, that the hour has come when fine, clever culture discovers the worm in itself out of its own cleverness and where trust in development and culture gets the fatal blow. And Spengler's book is not the only sign. "

Max Scheler commented: "The tremendous impact of this book and the exciting impression of novelty with which it was received can only be understood psychologically from Germany's defeat in the war."

Ernst Cassirer pointed out that Spengler's methodology could already be found in Karl Lamprecht's work before the war .

In his lecture “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion” in the winter semester of 1920/21 Martin Heidegger dealt critically with Spengler. In his Nietzsche lecture in 1937 he also said: “What a revelation it was two decades ago (1917) for the multitude of those who are unfamiliar with real thinking and its rich history when Spengler believed that he had first discovered that every age and every culture has its own worldview! All the same, everything was just a very skilful and witty popularization of thoughts and questions that had long been thought deeper - and most recently by Nietzsche - but were by no means mastered and have not yet been mastered. "

At the time of contemplating an apolitical , Thomas Mann emphatically praised the work and proposed it to the jury of the Nietzsche Prize for award. It is a "book full of love of fate and bravery of knowledge, in which one can find the great points of view that one needs today as a German person". However, as early as 1922 he distanced himself from Spengler. In his first letter from Germany , from which the essay On Spengler's Teaching emerged in 1924 , he praised the literary splendor of the work, but denied the author the humanistic pessimism of Schopenhauer or the “tragic-heroic” character of Nietzsche and characterized him as a " defeatist of morality." The work is fatalistic and hostile to the future. "But such presumptuousness and such disregard for the human are Spengler's part [...] He does not do well to name Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as forerunners of his hyenic prophethood." Especially Spengler's idea that technology and civilization can stop the fall of the West criticized man. In a letter on December 5, 1922, he admitted that he “had not turned away from Nietzsche, even if I gave his clever monkey, Mr. Spengler, cheaply”.

Hitler read Spengler's work in prison in 1924, but, as Rudolf Hess wrote, "was not very happy with him". As Reich Chancellor, in a speech on May Day 1935, he explicitly distanced himself from its cultural pessimism: "It must not be the downfall of the West, but the resurrection of the peoples of this West!"

Karl Popper takes up in his work The misery of historicism u. a. Spengler (and Marx), especially their assumption that there are immutable historical laws.

In the history of science, the fall of the West is mostly scathingly criticized.

At the end of a damning criticism , Robert Musil admitted that others had not made so many mistakes simply because they did not have the span that touches both banks to accommodate so many mistakes.

Spengler exercised considerable influence with his ideas on Arnold J. Toynbee , as well as on Pitirim Sorokin . Franz Borkenau dealt critically with Spengler , whose manuscripts, which were written from 1947 onwards , were published posthumously under the title Late and Early 1984. With his theses on the clash of civilizations, Samuel P. Huntington essentially draws on Spengler's main work on cultural philosophy.

The influence of Spengler's demise was also effective in other humanities disciplines . In the field of Protestant theology , Werner Elert took up Spengler's approach and referred to questions of theological interpretation of time and the history of theology (“Morphology of Lutheranism”).

In terms of art history , Hans Sedlmayr in particular dealt with Spengler's philosophy of culture in his major work, Losing the Middle (1948). The religiously motivated art historian saw the cause of such a loss less in cultural aging than in the dwindling meaning of God within the western hemisphere.

In 2013, the Belgian ancient historian and cultural critic David Engels took up Spengler's cultural morphological approach and postulated basic analogies between the crisis in the European Union at the beginning of the 21st century and the fall of the late Roman Republic based on a systematic comparison of twelve crisis indicators .

expenditure

Oswald Spengler: The decline of the occident - outlines of a morphology of world history

• Vienna: Braumüller, 1918 (Volume 1: Shape and Reality)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1923 (Volume 1: Shape and Reality)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1922 (Volume 2: World historical perspectives)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1959 (abridged edition)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1963 (complete special edition in one volume, 141th – 157th thousand of the 1st volume, 120th – 136th thousand of the 2nd volume)
• Munich: Beck, [1965] (abridged edition, 20–36 thousand)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1969 (unabridged special edition in one volume 158th – 166th thousand of the 1st and 137th – 145th thousand of the 2nd volume of the complete edition, reprint)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1973 (167th – 175th thousand of the first and 146th – 154th thousand of the second vol. Of the complete edition, reprint)
• Berlin, Darmstadt, Vienna: German Book Association, [1978] (Unabridged special edition in 1 vol.)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1979 (unabridged special edition in one volume, 176th – 195th thousand of the 1st and 155th – 174th thousand of the 2nd volume of the complete edition)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1979 (unabridged edition, 5th edition, 36th – 43th thousand)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1980 (unabridged edition, 6th edition, 44th – 51th thousand)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1980 (unabridged special edition in one volume, 196. – 208. Th. Of the 1st and 175. – 187. Th. Of the 2nd volume of the complete edition)
• Stuttgart: German Book Association, [1981]
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1986 (unabridged edition, 8th edition, 60th – 67th thousand)
• Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1988 (Unabridged edition, 9th edition, 68th – 73rd thousand)
• Gütersloh: Bertelsmann-Club, [1989] (Unabridged edition in one volume)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1990 (unabridged special edition in one volume, 224th – 229th thousand of the 1st and 203th – 208th thousand of the 2nd volume of the total edition)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1991 (Unabridged, 10th edition)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1993 (unabridged edition, 11th edition, 80th – 85th thousand)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1995 (unabridged edition, 12th edition)
• Munich: CH Beck, 1998 (unabridged special edition in one volume)
• Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, March 2006 (Unabridged, 17th edition)
• Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag (Albatros Verlag), 2007, ISBN 3-491-96190-4
• Cologne: Anaconda Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7306-0453-3

literature

• Theodor W. Adorno : Spengler after the downfall . In: The Month, May 2, 1950 , also in: ders .: Prismen, Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft , Frankfurt-Main 1969
• Antonio Aliotta: Il nuovo storicismo in Germania e gli universi formali di Spengler , Rome 1936
• Götz Briefs : Fall of the West, Christianity and Socialism. An argument with Oswald Spengler. Freiburg im Breisgau 1921
• Benedetto Croce : Marginal Notes by a Philosopher on World War I , Zurich 1922
• Alois Dempf : The Eternal Return. Ibn Chaldun and Oswald Spengler . In: Hochland 20 (1922/23) issue 1
• David Engels / Max Otte / Michael Thöndl (eds.): The long shadow of Oswald Spenglers. 100 years "Fall of the West". Manuscriptum, Lüdinghausen and Berlin, 2018 (series of publications by the Oswald Spengler Society 1).
• André Fauconnet: Oswald Spengler, le prophète du déclin de l'occident , Paris 1925
• Theodor Haering : The structure of world history, philosophical foundations for every philosophy of history in the form of a criticism of Oswald Spengler , Tübingen 1921
• Franz Köhler: Fall or rise of occidental culture. An argument with O. Spengler. Rösl & Cie, Munich 1921
• Anton Mirko Koktanek: Oswald Spengler in his time , Munich: C. H. Beck, 1968
• Wolfgang Krebs: Culture, Music and the 'Fall of the West'. Comments on Oswald Spengler's philosophy of history . In: Archives for Musicology . 55, No. 4, 1998, pp. 311-331
• Wolfgang Krebs: The imperial end times. Oswald Spengler and the future of occidental civilization , Berlin: Rhombos, 2008
• Thomas Mann : About Spengler's teaching . In: Allgemeine Zeitung, Munich March 9, 1924; From the German Republic . In: Essays Volume 2, For the new Germany, 1919–1925, S. Fischer
• Friedrich Meinecke : About Spengler's view of history . In: Wissen und Leben 16 (1922/23) Issue 12, pp. 549-561
• Eduard Meyer : Spengler's "Downfall of the Occident" . K. Curtius, Berlin 1925
• Robert Musil : Spirit and Experience. Notes for readers who escaped the fall of the West (1921). In: Musil: Gesammelte Werke (Volume 8: Essays and Speeches). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1978
• Dagmar Pöpping: Occident. Christian academics and the utopia of anti-modernism 1900–1945 . Metropol, Berlin 2002.
• Franz Rauhut : The philosophy of history Vico , Spengler and Toynbees in their togetherness . In: H. Grossmann (Ed.): The comparison. Literary and linguistic interpretations (Festschrift H. Petriconi). Hamburg 1955
• Erich Rothacker : Toynbee and Spengler . In: DVLG , 24 (1950), issue 13
• Hans-Joachim Schoeps : Spengler's forerunner. Studies on historical pessimism in the 19th century , Leiden 1955
• Karen Swassjan : The Downfall of a Westerner. Oswald Spengler and his Requiem on Europe . Heinrich, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-932458-08-7 .
• Arnold J. Toynbee : How I came to Oswald Spengler . In: Hamburger Akademische Rs , 3 (1949), pp. 309-313

Web links

Wikiquote: The Fall of the West  - Quotes

• Full texts on the Internet Archive : Volume 1 archive.org , Volume 2 archive.org
• Full text at zeno.org : The Fall of the West, Volume 1 and Volume 2
• LeMO. German Historical Museum (Kindler's New Literature Lexicon)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David Engels : Ducunt fata volentem, nolentem trahunt. Spengler, Hegel, and the Problem of Free Will in Historical Determinism . In: Saeculum 59 (2008), pp. 269-298
2. ^ Oswald Spengler: Speeches and essays . P. 63 f.
3. ↑ Oswald Spengler: The fall of the occident. Outlines of a morphology of world history . CH Beck, Munich 1923, p. 1109.
4. ↑ Anton Mirko Koktanek: Oswald Spengler in his time , Munich: C. H. Beck, 1968, p 316th
5. ↑ Alexander Bein : "The Jewish Parasite". In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 13 (1965), issue 2, p. 130 f. ( ifz-muenchen.de (PDF) accessed on January 30, 2016).
6. ^ David McNaughton: Cultural Souls reflected in their Mathematics: the Spenglerian interpretation . In: Scientific Culture , 2.1 (2016), pp. 1-6 ( dlmcn.com ) ( RTF ).
7. ↑ Anton Mirko Koktanek: The Decline of the West. Outlines of a morphology of world history . In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon im dtv . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1986, vol. 11, p. 9752.
8. ↑ Oswald Spengler: The fall of the occident . Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3406441963 , p. 954 (unabridged special edition in one volume; 1271 p.).
9. ↑ Barbara Beßlich: Fascination of decay. Thomas Mann and Oswald Spengler . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003773-3 , p. 45 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
10. ^ David McNaughton: Spengler's Philosophy, and its implication that Europe has "lost its way" . In: Comparative Civilizations Review 67 (2012), pp. 7–15 ( online ).
11. ^ Oswald Spengler: The Hour of Decision, pp. Xiv ff., Xii, 7.
12. ↑ Detlef Felken in the afterword to Beck's edition of Der Untergang des Abendlandes , CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 1204
13. ↑ Barbara Beßlich: Fascination of decay. Thomas Mann and Oswald Spengler . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003773-3 , p. 40 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
14. ↑ Ulrich Wyrwa : Spengler, Oswald. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 785 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
15. ↑ Alexander Bein: "The Jewish Parasite". In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 13 (1965), issue 2, p. 150 ( ifz-muenchen.de (PDF) accessed on January 30, 2016).
16. ^ Oswald Spengler: The Hour of Decision (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1934), pp. Xv, 18, 230
17. ↑ Friedrich Gogarten: Between the Times , reprinted in: Jürgen Moltmann (Ed.): Beginnings of dialektischen Theologie , Volume 2, Kaiser, Munich 1967, p. 98
18. ↑ Max Scheler: The German Philosophy of the Present , Collected Works Volume 7, Francke, Bern 1973, p. 323
19. ↑ Ernst Cassirer: The knowledge problem in the philosophy and science of modern times , Volume 4: From Hegel's death to the present (1832-1932), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1957, p. 286
20. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion , Complete Edition Volume 60, as well as the quotation: Nietzsche, Volume 1, Neske, Pfullingen 1961, p. 360
21. ↑ Quoted from Klaus Harpprecht: Thomas Mann, Eine Biographie , 32nd chapter
22. ↑ Thomas Mann: About Spengler's teaching. In: Thomas Mann: Collected Works in Thirteen Volumes , Volume 10, Speeches and Essays 2. Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 174
23. ↑ Barbara Beßlich: Fascination of decay. Thomas Mann and Oswald Spengler . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003773-3 , p. 36 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
24. ↑ Christian Hartmann , Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Institute for Contemporary History Munich, Berlin / Munich 2016, Volume 1, p. 760.
25. ↑ Jörg Lauster : The enchantment of the world. A cultural history of Christianity. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 16.
26. ^ FAZ: Spengler himself , August 19, 2007
27. ↑ Hans Sedlmayr: Loss of the middle. The visual arts of the 19th and 20th centuries as a symptom and symbol of the times , Otto Müller Verlag, Vienna 1948, ISBN 3-7013-0537-4 (p. 229 ff)
28. ^ David Engels: Le déclin. La crise de l'Union européenne et la chute de la République romaine. Quelques analogies . Éditions du Toucan, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-8100-0524-6 (French)