The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler
"The Decline of the West" by Oswald Spengler is a significant philosophical work that examines the lifecycle of cultures through a historical lens. Spengler categorizes human history into eight distinct "high cultures," including Western, Classical, and Arabian civilizations, treating each as a living organism with its own stages of birth, growth, decline, and death. He distinguishes between culture—characterized by vitality and creativity—and civilization, which he sees as a stagnant phase where cultural essence diminishes. Rejecting the linear progression of history, Spengler adopts a cyclical model, suggesting that all cultures experience a similar trajectory over approximately two hundred years.
Spengler's analysis identifies the West as a unique culture, emerging around 1000 CE and reaching its peak in the 19th century, before entering a gradual decline exacerbated by the tensions leading up to World War I. He advocates for historical relativism, emphasizing that the truth varies between cultures. His reflections on religion, particularly Christianity, and the future of democracy reveal his belief in an inevitable transformation of societal structures. As a provocative thinker, Spengler's predictions about cultural decline and the rise of new orders resonate through the lens of historical cycles, offering a complex perspective on civilization’s trajectory.
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The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler
First published:Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918, in one volume; 1922, in two volumes (English translation, 1926, 1928)
Type of work: Philosophy and history
The Work:
In The Decline of the West, German philosopher and mathematician Oswald Spengler urges a new understanding of the world. In this work of historical philosophy, which was written mostly before World War I, Spengler names eight “high cultures” (the term he prefers), or civilizations, of human history: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Classical (Greek and Roman), Arabian, Western, and Mexican (Aztec/Mayan). Five of these cultures he uses as examples, but he discusses in more detail the Classical, Arabian, and Western cultures.
Spengler considers his work to be a morphology of history, meaning that he treats every culture separately, as a living organism, and tries to identify each culture’s birth, growth, decline, and death. Furthermore, to Spengler, no culture is superior. He uses the term “culture” to describe the growth and living stage, or soul, of an organism, and the term “civilization” to identify an organism’s declining stage, in which human creativity vanishes. A culture’s soul is held together by a bond of blood, and civilization actually destroys culture; with this destruction, the soul begins to die. A culture’s civilization stage could last hundreds of years in a petrified state. Because cultures are constantly changing, history is an endless series of formations and transformations. The one part of the formation that Spengler does not clearly describe is that of birth.
Three concepts are vital to understanding Spengler’s morphology of history: the unity of development in the life of each separate culture; each stage in the life cycle of all cultures lasts for about the same length of time; and every stage is contemporaneous with those of other cultures. The general pattern is that all cultures begin in a nonurban setting and then gradually move into urban developments, in which growth and materialism eventually lead to its decline.
In The Decline of the West, Spengler compares European conditions with the later years of Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Republic, ending about the time of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. Spengler recognizes the paradox of Western culture first honoring its Classical foundation then reaching out to other cultures. Classical humans had been static, but Western humans became dynamic, always looking for ways to expand their cultures.
Spengler follows the cyclical philosophy of history, in which all cultures go through a cycle of life similar to human life—birth, youth, maturity, decline, and death. The cycles follow a basic two-hundred-year pattern, although a major culture like the West might include several such cycles, one after the other. Spengler rejects the linear view of history and the use of the ancient-medieval-modern approach to the study of history. He says that every culture should be studied on its own. With this interpretation, he became an early advocate of historical relativism, the view that truth is relative to each historical period; truth for one culture might not be truth for another culture. Spengler, however, does not realize the self-contradiction inherent in this philosophy. He does not deny that cultures can have ideals, but he does deny the unlimited potential to reach those ideals. The end of a culture would be determined not by choice but by destiny, an end not unlike fate, an idea derived from the ancient Greeks.
Spengler’s coverage of religion, especially Judaism and Christianity, is confusing. He includes the beginning of Christianity in chapter 14, which covers Arabian culture—what he calls Magian—and classifies Christianity as one of the mystery religions of that region. To Spengler, religion is metaphysical, provable not by knowledge but by experience.
In The Decline of the West, Spengler defines the West as comprising western Europe and the United States. He makes no distinction between the two regions because, he argues, they both grew out of the same basic culture. He pinpoints the birth of the West to c. 1000 and to historical events such as the Norman Conquest of England. For his native Germany, the rise of the Holy Roman Empire is most significant. After minicycles such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution, Western culture reached its climax in the nineteenth century. Then, as a result of the tensions that led to World War I, the soul of the West began to die. The end, he believes, will be an unavoidable, protracted fall, not a single catastrophic event. A new culture, ruled by a modern-day Caesar, will arise from the ashes. Individualism, materialism, and democracy will disappear, but the masses will soon accept the new order.
Spengler does not oppose the principle of democracy, but he feels, somewhat like Plato, that people lack the will to fulfill their democratic responsibilities. He also believes that democracy will be subverted by the role of the press and by money in politics. In ascribing the word “Faustian” to Western culture, Spengler is arguing that Western ideals and goals are unattainable; in effect, he is arguing that the spiritual values of the West are being sacrificed for material gain.
With the takeover of Germany by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1933, Spengler’s work was seen in a new light. He initially believed that he would be exiled because of the pessimism of his works. However, a meeting with Hitler saved him from exile; his writings, though, were suppressed by the Third Reich.
The best commentary on The Decline of the West comes from Spengler himself. About two years before his death in 1936, Spengler had written in a letter to a friend that,
I can see more clearly ahead, but I feel more lonely than ever, not as if I were among the blind, but among people with their eyes bandaged so that they cannot see their house falling down.
A short time later, Spengler accurately predicts a global war:
We are standing perhaps on the threshold of the Second World War, in which the alignment of nations is unknown. . . . If we do not see our relation to the world as the most important problem which faces us, destiny—and what a destiny—will pass us by without pity.
Spengler died in 1936, so he did not witness another “gigantic conflict,” as he had termed World War I, which he had experienced first hand. This new gigantic conflict was World War II, and further decline.
Bibliography
Delacampagne, Christian. A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Translated by M. D. DeBevoise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Includes a discussion of Spengler in chapter 2, “Philosophies of the End,” because of the pessimistic nature of his work. Emphasizes his doctrine of Prussian socialism, which he had considered the answer to the deterioration of European civilization.
Farrenkopf, John. Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. A detailed analysis of The Decline of the West, its background, and its influence on interpretations of European history. Introduces the reader to the Spengler archive in Munich, Germany.
Fennelly, John F. Twilight of the Evening Lands: Oswald Spengler—A Half Century Later. New York: Brookdale Press, 1972. Gives a good definition of Spengler’s theory of cultural growth and decline. Includes an appendix, “Origins and Rationale of Twentieth Century Liberalism,” which discusses Spengler’s role in the creation of that movement.
Helps, Arthur, trans. and ed. Letters of Oswald Spengler. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Features many letters written by Spengler between 1913 and his death in 1936. Gives clear insight into his thoughts, especially during his last years after Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany, when his own writings were being censored.
Hughes, H. Stuart. Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952. An early post-World War II critique of Spengler in light of the Third Reich. Covers the influences on Spengler that led to his theories. Includes those persons Hughes calls new-Spenglerians, Arnold Toynbee and Pitirim Sorokin.
Spengler, Oswald. The Hour of Decision—Part One: Germany and World-Historical Revolution. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. 1933. Reprint. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001. This last major work of Spengler, after many years of defending and trying to explain The Decline of the West, does much to clarify his theory, as well as to express his fears in an increasingly dangerous Europe being dominated by Hitler. Provides a valuable sequel to The Decline of the West.