The first volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West is a milestone in historiography. It is not a standard history book. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory.
Like organisms that are born, mature, and die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay, and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes an inevitable whirlwind of self-destruction.
The West is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and traditions that animated the Faustian spirit in its exuberant heyday. It is all in vain as the West has become tired of itself and is unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated.
Table des matières
Editor’s Note
Translator’s Preface
Preface to the Revised Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Index
Tables Illustrating the Comparative Morphology of History
A propos de l’auteur
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was a controversial German philosopher and historian. With his unique insights, he influenced the modern fields of sociobiology and evolutionary anthropology. Legend Books has previously published the first English translation of Spengler’s Early Days of World History, a new translation of Prussianism and Socialism, as well as a new edition of The Hour of Decision.
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