Spengler decline of the west5/20/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Think of him as a dystopian conservative version of Karl Marx, and you would not be far wrong, though there is a strange poetry to Spengler that one rarely sees in such meaty works (the German title literally translates as The Going Down of the Evening Lands). A uniquely pessimistic framework at that, one inspired by Goethe and Nietzsche, and one best remembered for Spengler’s view that grim determinism will bring an end to Western Civilisation. It is nothing less than a monumental attempt at fitting the sum of human learning and experience into a single historical framework. His interests were spectacularly broad, and he is not afraid to show it – The Decline of the West is not a history book in any conventional sense, nor is it even a philosophical text (though that is a better fit). In recent years The Decline of the West has even become strangely topical, but we’ll get to that.Īs a background, Spengler was a German polymath, moonlighting as a school teacher. But it is unquestionably interesting – arguably a forgotten classic – so I have decided to review a work few now bother with. It’s not light reading, not at all, and the sheer size of the combined volumes makes it a proverbial door-stopper. After a good fortnight’s reading, I have finished the two volume, unabridged, edition of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918-1923). ![]()
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