Oswald Spengler
1880-1936 · German · Philosophy of History, Political Realism, Cultural Criticism, Philosophy of Technology
Optimism is cowardice.
By the time Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West in 1918, he had spent years as a private scholar in Munich — no university post, no patron, living on a small inheritance — convinced that Western thought had missed the fundamental shape of history. Rejected by Berlin's major publishers, the book appeared in Vienna and made him famous overnight.
Topics Oswald Spengler addresses
- the Decline of the West
- comparative morphology of world history
- cyclical theory of high cultures
- the eight high cultures
- Faustian civilization
- Apollonian civilization
- Magian civilization
- the prime symbol
- Culture and Civilization
- pseudomorphosis
- destiny
- the world as history versus the world as nature
- the physiognomic method
- analogical thinking
- the logic of time
- anti-progressivism
- rejection of Eurocentrism
- the Copernican discovery in history
- megalopolis
- plutocracy
- the fourth estate
- Caesarism
- Prussian Socialism
- imperialism
Questions to put to Oswald Spengler
The Morphology of World History
- What do you mean by the eight high cultures?
- How does the prime symbol shape a culture's entire worldview?
- What's the difference between Culture and Civilization in your system?
- Why do you call your method physiognomic rather than causal?
- How is destiny different from causality?
Faustian, Apollonian, and Magian Souls
- What is the Faustian prime symbol of infinite space?
- How does the Apollonian soul differ from the Faustian?
- What do you mean by the Magian culture?
- What is pseudomorphosis and why does it matter?
- How can you claim the Greeks and we are fundamentally different civilizations?
The Decline of the West
- Why do you think the West is in decline?
- What's the Roman analogy and how does it apply to us?
- What do you mean by the megalopolis?
- How does Caesarism replace democracy in late civilization?
- Who would be a future Western Caesar?
Against Progress and Eurocentrism
- How can you deny that history shows progress?
- What's wrong with the Antiquity-Middle Ages-Modernity scheme?
- What do you mean by the Copernican discovery in history?
- Why do you think progress is just a Faustian symptom?
- How do you answer the charge that your view leads to moral relativism?
Prussian Socialism and the Political Future
- What do you mean by Prussian Socialism?
- Why do you reject parliamentary democracy for Germany?
- How is your political realism different from saying might makes right?
- What's the argument for a Faustian Imperium Mundi?
- How do you invert Hobbes and Clausewitz?
Technology, Catastrophe, and the Roman Ethic
- What do you mean by man as the inventive beast of prey?
- Why is Faustian technology not about happiness or utility?
- How is Western technology leading to ecological catastrophe?
- What's at stake for you in the image of the Roman soldier at Pompeii?
- Why do you call optimism cowardice?
Converse with Oswald Spengler on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Oswald Spengler's own writing, cited to the page.