Spengler and the Decline of the West

Oswald Spengler is in my opinion one of the most interesting philosophers to come out of Germany in the last century or so. His philosophy is primarily one of history, world history in general but also the history of the West in particular. His most famous work is of course the two-volume The Decline of the West (or in German: Der Untergang des Abendlandes) where he speculates that the modern Western civilization has reached its peak and is now inevitably going to decline. The first volume was published in 1918 and the second in 1923, giving us a prime opportunity to examine whether some of his predictions have been born out today, 100 years later.

Spengler's basic unit of historical analysis is the culture. Just as organic life-forms, a culture is born at a point in time, it grows and it flourishes, and it has its raison d'être (reason for being) already established from the beginning, a potential that it seeks to fulfil, a distinct vision of life and truth and beauty that it seeks to realize. After some time, a culture reaches its highest potential, a "summer" phase when it is finally able to express most purely that original vision, and after this point the culture becomes inward-looking, unable to create anything new that can surpass that which has already been established. The culture then enters an "autumn" phase, and finally "winter", and during these last two phases it transforms into what Spengler simply calls "civilization". Civilization, then, is not the high point of culture, but rather a conservative, shallow, bombastic reveling in past achievements, trying to invoke them again and again by duplicating old aesthetic styles, architectural forms, cultural formulas and so on. A few examples of such high points having been achieved would be - according to Spengler - the works of Plato and Aristotle in Classical civilization, the Qur'an in "Magian" civilization and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in Western civilization, whereas in the music of Richard Wagner, for instance, Spengler already detects a sense of bombastic decadence, i.e. a beginning of that downward trajectory towards the "Civilization" phase of the West.

The central idea noticeable in Spengler's work which I have come to adopt is the exhaustion of possibilities. Something truly new can be realized only once, at least in the realm of art and religion. Such a realization constitutes a blooming to full fruition which can then only be followed by decline. For instance, it has been said that the entire history of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato - yet we do not have to go back to Plato to illustrate this idea, be it true or not. A much more recent example would be J. R. R. Tolkien's standing in the fantasy genre of literature: he essentially founded the genre, and his works have been considered the greatest by many fantasy lovers since. It would seem that his work simply cannot be surpassed, and this is not so strange a thing when you begin to ponder it. After all, if Tolkien has defined the genre itself, others who aspire to write in the same genre cannot but emulate him, follow in his footsteps, and yet they can never write exactly like him. The only way other authors could challenge Tolkien is if they bring in something entirely new, for instance twisting the genre away from high fantasy towards some variation of dark fantasy. Thus the master will always reign supreme in his domain, and no new greatness is engendered through simple imitation of already established norms.

There is certain to be more written on Spengler later on this blog. Suffice to say for now that it does seem to me that art forms are today being recycled at an unprecedented rate, that nostalgia for past epochs has taken center stage and that it does indeed seem very difficult to be creative today, for instance as an author (which I personally have aspired to). New books are being released in their thousands, yet few of them are likely to ever reach the status of classics, outliving the lives of their authors to be reprinted again and again for future generations. The same thing could be said for music and art as well, and perhaps even ethics. At the same time, the "real classics" are becoming to obscure for most and are rarely read.

Spengler also did suggest that the West would enter into some sort of "Caesarian phase" politically around the year 2000, concordant with the bombastic, degenerate quality signifying a late civilization. What with the steadily accruing power of American presidents since that time, with Trump attempting to reign as an emperor in all but name, this prediction seems to have been surprisingly close to the mark.