and European civilizations and barely sketched the broad outlines of the
others, the effort and knowledge poured into The Decline of the West was
unequaled until Toynbee’s monumental Study of History, and Spengler’s
book made a thorough impression on his readers, even those who did not
accept his hypothesis.
Key issues and key ideas
Spengler’s historical philosophy was based on two basic assumptions.
On the one hand, Spengler assumed the existence of social entities called
“cultures” ( Kulturen) as the largest possible actors in human history which,
in itself, has no real philosophical aim or metaphysical sense:
“Mankind” . . . has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the
family of butterflies or orchids. “Mankind” is a zoological ex-
pression, or an empty word. . . . I see, in place of that empty fig-
ment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting
one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama
of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive
strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains
firmly bound throughout its whole life- cycle; each stamping its
material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own
idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own
death.28
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Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West
9
These cultures— according to Spengler, nine (the Egyptian, the Babylonian,
the Indian, the Chinese, the Greco- Roman, the “Magic” or “Arabic,” which
included early and Byzantine Christianity as well as Islam, the Mexican,
the Western, and, finally, the Russian)— coexist in time and space and
thus interact to some degree with each other, but have no real “internal”
connection with one another. Their evolution thus only follows their
own inner logic and cannot be influenced by outer factors, except for the
“Mexican culture,” literally “beheaded” by the conquistadores— a further
and sad proof for the absence of any proper “sense” in history, if one is to
believe Spengler.
Spengler’s second major hypothesis is that the inner evolution of these
cultures is essentially parallel and corresponds exactly to the evolutionary
stages of a living being, an idea deeply rooted (as we saw) not only in the
philosophy of vitalism as it developed during the nineteenth century but
ultimately going back to antiquity:
Cultures are organisms, and world- history is their collective biog-
raphy. Morphologically, the immense history of the Chinese or of
the Classical Culture is the exact equivalent of the petty history of
the individual man, or of the animal, or the tree, or the flower.29
However, Spengler does not confine his analogies to botanical images. He
also uses the paradigm of the different ages of man and even the rhythm
of the four seasons as comparative foil, tying his analysis to a string
of poignant metaphors all linked to the cycle of life, and differentiated
enough to permit a subtle and suggestive description of the different evo-
lutionary steps of each culture, as is also demonstrated through his use of
these topoi in a series of synchronoptic comparative tables. Though some-
what long, the following quotation contains not only the blueprint of the
evolution of each culture in a nutshell and brilliantly illustrates his play
with historical references and allusions but also demonstrates the literary,
nearly poetic quality Spengler tried to achieve:
Every Culture passes through the age- phases of the individual man.
Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age. It is a young
and trembling soul, heavy with misgivings, that reveals itself in the
morning of Romanesque and Gothic. It fills the Faustian landscape
from the Provence of the troubadours to the Hildesheim cathedral
of Bishop Bernward. The spring wind blows over it. . . . Childhood
10
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C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
Doric, out of early- Christian (which is really early- Arabian) art and
out of the works of the Old Kingdom in Egypt that began with the
Fourth Dynasty. . . . The more nearly a Culture approaches the noon
culmination of its being, the more virile, austere, controlled, intense
the form- language it has secured for itself, the more assured its
sense of its own power, the clearer its lineaments. In the spring all
this had still been dim and confused, tentative, filled with childish
yearning and fears— witness the ornament of Romanesque Gothic
church porches of Saxony and southern France, the early- Christian
catacombs, the Dipylon vases. But there is now the full conscious-
ness of ripened creative power that we see in the time of the early
Middle Kingdom of Egypt, in the Athens of the Pisistratids, in the
age of Justinian, in that of the Counter- Reformation, and we find
every individual trait of expression deliberate, strict, measured,
marvelous in its ease and self- confidence. And we find, too, that
everywhere, at moments, the coming fulfilment suggested itself;
in such moments were created the head of Amenemhet III (the
so- called “Hyksos Sphinx” of Tanis), the domes of Hagia Sophia,
the paintings of Titian. Still later, tender to the point of fragility,
fragrant with the sweetness of late October days, come the Cnidian
Aphrodite and the Hall of the Maidens in the Erechtheum, the
arabesques on Saracen horseshoe- arches, the Zwinger of Dresden,
Watteau, Mozart. At last, in the grey dawn of Civilization, the fire
in the Soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more,
half- successful, effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that
is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and
in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally,
weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial
Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the
darkness of protomysticism, in the womb of the mother, in the
grave.30
This description clearly defines the actual situation and imminent fu-
ture of the Western world, which has entered, since Napoleon (the rough
equivalent of Alexander), the late stage of the petrification of a culture into
a civilization ( Zivilisation), characterized by technology, expansion, impe-
rialism, and mass society, and is expected to fossilize and decline from the
year 2000 on. This dichotomy between “culture” and “civilization,” central
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Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West
11
to the understanding of Spengler’s historical philosophy, is another con-
cept deeply anchored in nineteenth- century German thought, for example
in Schiller’s 1795 treatise on naïve and sentimental poetry or in Thomas
Mann’s Reflections of an Unpolitical Man.31 Accordingly, Spengler describes
the current, “civilized” state of the West as follows:
A century of purely extensive effectiveness, excluding big artistic
and metaphysical production— let us say frankly an irreligious time
which coincides exactly with the idea of the world- city— is a time of
decline. True. But we have not chosen this time. We cannot help it
if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead
of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart
time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our des-
tiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves
about it we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in
his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation,
and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.32
One of the consequence of Spengler’s cultural monism is the debate about
the extent to which cultures and civilizations are able to influence each
other or even to merge. According to Spengler, who seems to be using
the classic German concept of the Volksgeist (national character) first de-
veloped by Herder, each of these nine cultures is characterized by a spe-
cific, inimitable “soul image” ( Seelenbild) or worldview, which is largely
inaccessible to anyone from the outside. This also explains why any real
intercultural dialog or fusion is considered as thoroughly impossible: the
takeover of the spiritual or artistic creations of other cultures can be based
only on their misinterpretation and must remain superficial, comparable
to the use of architectural remnants of bygone societies through mis-
placed spolia.33
Whereas such a monolithic hypothesis is not difficult to uphold when
it comes to describing the evolution of spatially rather isolated cultures
such as the Chinese, Egyptian, or Indian, it becomes very difficult to argue
the case for full cultural self- sufficiency for those overlapping each other,
a fact most notable in Late Antiquity. This problem prompted Spengler to
surmise that the whole first- millennium Near East was not, in fact, a mere
“transition” between Classical Antiquity, Western Christianity, and Islam,
but rather a wholly new and distinct culture (labeled “Arabian” or “Magic”)
merely borrowing its formal language partly from its Greco- Roman, partly
12
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from its Babylonian predecessor, but filling it with a totally new content, a
feature Spengler calls, in analogy to “pseudomorphosis,” a mineralogical
phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, Spengler’s endeavor to explain Messianic
Judaism, Zoroastrianism, early Christianity, and Islam as different
expressions of a unique cultural worldview distinct from that of other
cultures has provoked many criticisms, even though it prefigured, at the
same time, the attempts of recent research to focus less on the differences
than rather on the intense interactions of the first millennium as a “super-
market of religions.”34
Spengler’s determinist view of history has prompted many to label
him a “pessimist” and to consider his philosophy as ultimately promoting
fatalism and inaction. Spengler always denied such an attitude and—
influenced by Nietzsche’s heroic “Amor fati”— invited his readers to adopt
a “realistic” approach toward the limited possibilities of the aging Western
culture, to accept the inevitable outcome of the history of the next gen-
erations, and to do their best within the limits of the possible instead of
fighting a lost battle for ideals long dead, while fully realizing that “opti-
mism is cowardice.”35 Thus, in the last lines of the Decline of the West, he
refers the reader to the philosophy of Stoicism when quoting Seneca in
order to demonstrate his own view of a “heroic” pessimism, based on the
acceptance of the inevitable:
For us, however, whom a Destiny has placed in this Culture and
at this moment of its development— the moment when money
is celebrating its last victories, and the Caesarism that is to suc-
ceed approaches with quiet, firm step— our direction, willed and
obligatory at once, is set for us within narrow limits, and on any
other terms life is not worth the living. We have not the freedom
to reach to this or to that, but the freedom to do the necessary or to
do nothing. And a task that historic necessity has set will be accom-
plished with the individual or against him. Ducunt Fata volentem,
nolentem trahunt [ fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling].36
Reception
The reception of Spengler is essentially bipartite. During the 1920s, he was
one of the most discussed intellectuals of the Western world, his theory
considered either as a thorough revolutionizing of the writing of history
or as the fruit of mere dilettantism. Even though the scholarly reception
13
Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West
13
remained rather skeptical, the poetical qualities of Spengler’s work and
the suggestiveness of his pessimistic and tragic worldview made him very
popular with many artists, not only in Europe but also in America. The
Second World War proved an important hiatus: whereas the previous re-
ception had focused on his achievements as a comparatist historian of
past civilizations, his work was now reduced to its prophecy of the end of
democracy and the rise of Caesarism, and accordingly considered as illib-
eral. Only since the end of the Cold War has Spengler’s work triggered a
new interest and led to a reevaluation, which is still in full course.
Prewar reception
The early reception of Spengler’s The Decline of the West was a phenom-
enon of its own: everywhere in Europe, journalists and scholars discussed
the interest, validity, and shortcomings of Spengler’s “morphology of his-
tory.” It would take us too long to discuss different positions in detail, even
more so as the early reception has already been presented and analyzed in
detail by Manfred Schröter in 1922.37 Let us only stress that the discussion
around Spengler rapidly became not only a German or even a European
but an international phenomenon,38 given the rapidity with which his work
was translated into numerous other languages. Academic historians only
reluctantly participated in this debate and, with a few notable exceptions
such as Eduard Meyer or Ernst Kornemann, either ignored Spengler’s
work or drew attention only to selected inaccuracies related to their own
fields. Very few historians or philosophers tried to discuss the validity of
Spengler’s theory in its entirety, an endeavor rendered even more com-
plex by the intimate links between Spengler’s analysis of the past and his
claims concerning the advent of Caesarism and an inevitable impending
showdown between the German and the Anglo- Saxon model of politics
and society. This topic was mainly developed in Prussianism and Socialism,
where the conflict is seen as a mere modern variation on the wars be-
tween Rome and Carthage, Spengler’s personal sympathies lying, un-
surprisingly, on the German rather than the Anglo- Saxon side, while he
considered France as historically “finished.�
�39
With some notable exceptions such as the Hispanic philosophy of
history, where José Ortega y Gasset and Ernesto Quesada were deeply
influenced by Spengler, and the juridical profession, where Spengler’s
theory on Roman and Germanic law was heavily discussed,40 it was
mainly in the domain of literature that Spengler’s vision of a “declining”
14
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C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
West characterized by a dwindling creative impetus made the strongest
impression. This is not altogether surprising, given that Spengler fo-
cused in large part on aesthetics41 and tried to confer an inimitable
literary quality to his own work, once characterized by the German
novelist Thomas Mann as a “highly entertaining intellectual novel.”42
Outside Germany, where the book especially interested Thomas Mann
and Hermann Hesse,43 it seems to have been essentially the English-
speaking world where Spengler’s thought rapidly entered the literary
creations of writers as different as Henry Miller, Francis Scott Fitzgerald,
and H. P. Lovecraft,44 and where even some historians such as Arnold
Toynbee and Philip Bagby endeavored to develop Spengler’s approaches
further.
The rise of National Socialism in 1933 represented a hiatus in the re-
ception of Oswald Spengler. While Spengler found himself persona non
grata in Nazi Germany and was publicly attacked by the proponents of
the new regime as a “reactionary,”45 his patriotic hope (not uncommon
at that period) that Germany might constitute the nucleus of a future
European- style Roman Empire was erroneously amalgamated, abroad,
with the reigning National Socialist ideology and seen as its direct fore-
runner.46 This was only very partly justified. Admittedly, Spengler helped
to discredit the Weimar Republic because of his criticism of contempo-
rary democracy as a mere transition toward Caesarism, and the collapse
of the Weimar Republic indeed enabled Hitler’s takeover. However, from
an ideological point of view, National Socialist racial theory and the op-
timistic hope of creating a thousand- year Reich were fundamentally op-
posed to Spengler’s belief in the irremediable decline of the West, even
if under German rule, and his conviction that all human cultures were