Rating: 
Summary: a work of immense morphological insight
Review: "Only the sick man feels his limbs. When men construct an unmetaphysical religion in opposition to cults and dogmas; when a "natural law " is set up against historical law; when, in art, styles are invented in place of the style that can no longer be borne or mastered; when men conceive of the State as an "order of society" which not only can be but must be altered - then it is evident that something has definitely broken down. The Cosmopolis itself, the supreme Inorganic, is there, settled in the midst of the Culture-landscape, whose men it is uprooting, drawing into itself and using up." The above is a valuable passage from Spengler's book, very illustrative of his main thesis- which is not only that the world in which we exist today is barren of all impressive spiritual form and style, but must remain so.
Spengler's historical world-view is radically and quite fundamentally of a different stamp from almost any other. What sets him apart is the extraordinary impartialness of his style. Socio-political theorists are, almost without exception, liable to force entire millenia into the limited horizons of their own subjective criteria. They simply will not acknowledge that what is true for them is false or meaningless to the people of a different Culture or different age. Spengler's philosophy breaks us free from this myopic world-view. Readers and critics make more of his comparative study of Culture-cycles than they should. One needn't accept the full accuracy of the comparisons drawn between foreign cultures in order to gain a great deal of wisdom from this book. The idea that our own future can be mapped out through the comparative study of previous Cultures is a theory I'm inclined to reject, given the extreme uniqueness of the Western civilization that currently encompasses the whole planet, one which experiences physical, technological, sociopolitical, and economic conditions that are so unlike any that have come before that they can quite justifiably be called "unprecedented". Nonetheless, Spengler's basic point- that western Culture attained its highest cultural glories three centuries ago, and has been plummeting into a chaotic, irreligious stew of materialistic formlessness ever since, remains indisputably true. Spengler liberates one's historical perspective on two levels. He teaches the modern reader that the arbitrary system of cause-and-effect history, a system tacitly taken for granted by most, is neither true nor incorrect- it is simply SHALLOW, because it ignores the thread of spiritual continuity that underlies the organic working-out of a Culture. Events, which are causal only insofar as they exist in the phyical world, derive their significance in the historical world from this spiritual necessity and continuity. He also liberates us from the idea of "human destiny" or "human history". He proves that, regardless of whatever arbitrary borrowings the West may have made from foreign Cultures (such as the Arabic numeral system, for instance), the vast world-culture that we know today is an entirely Western development. Human history has nothing to with it; the world of spaceships, cell-phones, the Internet, and mass-production is simply a extensive projection, by the West in its "Civilization" phase, of the same spiritual motif that previously was realized inwardly during the Culture centuries of the West: a dynamic, space-defying tendency that ranges beyond the near-and-present and constantly has an eye to the future. But what we term "progress" is really only a quite vulgar materialization of something that the people of Gothic times understood in religious terms. Spengler points out the "uncomprehending hostility to all the traditions representative of the Culture (nobility, church, privileges, dynasties, convention in art and limits of knowledge in science)" as indicative of the absurd arrogance of the shallow Civilization phase of the Culture that has lost all connection to the blood, to tradition, and to the spirit. The shortsightedness with which we deem the past of our own Culture a mere causal development leading up from the so-called "Dark Ages" to the vast technological corpus of our times, prevents us from understanding the beauty and significance of those Culture-forms that the man of, say, the 15th century took for granted as something self-evident. We "fashion arbitrary forms into which the superficies of history can to be forced but which are entirely alien to its inner content." another passage:
"Culture and Civilization - the living body of a soul and the mummy of it. For Western existence the distinction lies at about the year 1800 - on the one side of that frontier life in fullness and sureness of itself, formed by growth from within, in one great uninterrupted evolution from Gothic childhood to Goethe and Napoleon, and on the other the autumnal, artificial, rootless life of our great cities, under forms fashioned by the intellect. Culture-man lives inwards, Civilization-man outwards in space and amongst bodies and "facts." That which the one feels as Destiny the other understands as a linkage of causes and effects, and thenceforward he is a materialist." Spengler doesn't postulate an alternative ideal to replace the shallow, spiritually bankrupt reality that immerses us. He only presents, with eagle-like sharpness of vision, a scheme of history that cannot be avoided because the inner necessities of cultural evolution have ordained that it will be so. Whether the reader accepts this view- mistakenly called by many critics "fatalistic" or "pessimistic"- is their own prerogative. However, I believe that the educated, intuitive, and non-partial reader who absorbs in depth as much of this book as possible, will be convinced, as I am, of the core truth of Spengler's argument.
Rating: 
Summary: Biological Assumption of Culture to Civilization and Back
Review: .
The theory of Spengler is as follows: Historical comparison of cultural formation, of governments, of civilizations, of art, architecture and music, of mathematics, science, philosophy, revolutions and control, of formations, destructions and deteriorations of societies and cultures; are thus interpreted to have a similarity with biological structure. Just as a sentient being is born, forms, grows, molds, progresses, digresses, deteriorates, ages, decays and dies, so it is with cultures and civilizations. In this case, a culture in its childlike creative ability solidifies into non-creative matter, stagnant, authoritarian and brittle and then dies. The ability of the "becoming" (Heraclitus) forms into the "become" (Permenes). I personally had great difficulty reading both volumes of Decline of the West. I am not a top scholar in philosophy, but have read some of the classics; Plato, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Kiergaard, Rousseau, Locke etc. Spengler is an amazing walking and talking, or in this case writing, encyclopedia, however it appears that perhaps his advanced knowledge of anything from architecture, mathematics, to some unknown internal war and the names and rank of family members relating to the King, including his mother's role in the government compared to another civilization a century before on the other side of the globe, are to say the least, very abstract (or is it exact?) and confusing and detract from his message. Perhaps after my reading another 10 years of history, science, art, philosophy and mathematics, I will have the ability to understand another ten percent of these volumes. One philosopher, Walter Kaufmann, had criticized Spengler's theory. In short, he relates that history is nothing as Hegel or Marx equates, as it does not control the destiny of man and in Spengler's case, history does not model a biological structure of aging. Rather, Kaufmann relates, historical observation of cultures and civilizations present themselves in layers, which form upon themselves and correspond in such ways that perhaps move horizontally as opposed to Spengler's vertically interpreted based direction. There is some valid truth to Spengler's assessment, being a valuable study to take seriously and contemplatively, however, it is also a limited argument, that is if you can use the word "limited" pertaining to Spengler's detailed, unlimited and exhaustive writing. While Spengler's influence of creativity in that of Goethe and Nietzsche are his most desirable qualities, yet his biological interpretation tends to loose the ambiguous nature of mysterium tremendum, the chaotic nature of Dionysus that is formed only within the values created by man. True, nihilism - the chaos of passions and relativism - the leveling of values, evolve from a once "becoming" nature, a nature of determined values and beliefs, yet the "id" or unconscious realm of man and his development thereof, cannot be scientifically explained, not by Freud, nor by Spengler, as life, awareness and sleepiness is never explanatory in conceptual terms and systemized from empirical observations of societal structures and formations.
Rating:
Summary: "The Decline of the West" is a Guiding Light of Our Time.
Review: Decline of The West is a book squarely beyond the range of typical modern literary critique.
The fact that Dr.Spengler discovered a true existence of a living form in the history- and life-cycles of civilizations has been deliberately ignored by critics. The importance of this discovery for History as a science is on a level of Copernican helio-centric (Sun-at-the-Center) discovery in spatial sciences which inaugurated the modern advance of physical science. Yet it has not brought the official recognition that is its due.
Today, as it was 500 years ago in "The Middle Ages", the ruling spirit of the establishment feels threatened by the new revolutionary discovery and is trying to find ways to live with it without the consequences and implications of Dr.Spengler's discovery presented in this book. The Roman Catholic Church tried to spread ignorance of Copernicus as well, but will its modern-day equivalents be more successful in hiding the discovery?
It is up to the interested reader not to let this crime happen any longer.
Having in mind the huge scope and distance both in Time and Space that Dr.Spengler's book covers, the enormous energy and time spent by him in creating the material presented in this book becomes even more astonishing considering that the book is so deeply involved and touching upon the daily events of the times we live in.
Dr.Spengler in his work definitely belongs to the realm of the modern "TABOO," and precisely uncovers all the important facts and ideas, that our "accepted" intellectuals of the day DARE NOT touch upon, and prefer to avoid and misinterpret and misrepresent Dr.Spengler's thought and observations---for these are all too unnerving to them and too uncomfotably revealing about the character and direction of the times we live in.
Even though the Author has died many years ago, his insight and thought is squarely present in our every day problems, troubles and uncertainties.
Seldom will one find a philosopher, political scientist and a natural scientist-all in one and yet so penetrating in his thought and truly relevant and accurate to the daily life many years after his death.
Despite our civilization's boasting about the hitherto unheard-of levels of progress, creativity and prosperity unimaginable only a few dozen years ago, "Decline of the West" deals with the significance in them. The vision, understanding and practical forecasts of Dr.Spengler's scientific discipline of History encompass all of those and go beyond, at all times maintaining the "eagle's view from above" of life.
The 20th century is known for its false prophets and broken ideologies, yet amid all the storm and dust raised in the conflicts of this century, people have not noticed that all this time there existed a profound voice of calm unshaken in his beliefs and unmistaken, unshakeable in the strength of his experience and position, always proven right by facts beyond his control.
This is Dr.Spengler, and that makes him a lone example of a true scientist of politics.
This revelation then has to tell us something profoundly significant about the nature of our Western civilization's Information Age stage and the direction it is heading in, when a person from a 100 years ago can tell us so much more intimate and relevant things about the politics, science and life of people many years after his death, than the leading historians of the day can.
The average person's inability to tell truth from faleshood in the news goes beyond mere wealth of information phenomenon, and the popular Computer represents the vehicle of the Information Age, nothing more.
Today it is easy to be unaware of the profound and deep metaphysical roots underlying our advanced technical civilization's materialistic developments, yet Dr.Spengler in this work masterfully uncovers them.
That is why this book, Decline of The West is so important, and will help the modern reader understand much better, than through any other immediate means, the true scope, understanding and meaning of the age we live in and of the age our descendants will live in.
It is a true example of the intellectual nihilism of our times when works such as those of Dr.Spengler are deliberately passed by the intellectual elite keenly aware of its inability to deal with the disturbing insights of Dr.Spengler's mind, and consequently of its inability to rise to the rank of Spengler, prefering instead to sometimes select quotations from this great thinker in order to make themselves look bigger and wiser, --thinkers such as Hughes, Fischer and Connelly are among those.
To paraphrase Spengler, nobody can escape from History's all-encompassing reach, we humans only have a luxury of pretending that we can, and like a grotesque Ostrich we bury our heads into the daily mass-circulation media training our minds, making us increasingly less capable of exercising independent thought and judgement.
In the introduction, Spengler quotes his spiritual father, poet-philosopher Goethe with the description of confidence in life:"Inward form of significant life which unaware and unobserved inspires every thought and every action." That this description is no longer adequate for the life of Western Man provides a food for thought, since everything genuine in the way of feeling and thought is left open for unrestrained dissection and criticism by the standard-bearers of the modern intellectual inquisition which stifles any richness in the modes of thought in our universities, and has assumed the role of the judge, prosecutor and the jury in Media's daily virtual courtrooms, alias mass-circulation news. Hence the public truth of the moment holds sway.
The lack of inward form in our daily personal lives should not therefore come as a surprise since we are trained daily to seek programmable inspiration from the external world of the macrocosm, shunning away from our own inbred microcosm and the wealth of inspiration it could have provided us with, had we given it a chance.
At the very least "Decline of The West" enables the interested reader to form his or her own conclusion, which is something that Spengler's past critics could not afford to do.
Rating:
Summary: Decline of The West Is The Guiding Light of Our Time
Review: Decline of The West is a book squarely beyond the range of typical modern literary critique. The fact that Dr.Spengler discovered a true existence of a living form in the history- and life-cycles of civilizations has been deliberately ignored by critics. The importance of this discovery for History as a science is on a level of Copernican helio-centric (Sun-at-the-Center) discovery in spatial sciences which inaugurated the modern advance of physical science. Yet it has not brought the official recognition that is its due. Today, as it was 500 years ago in "The Middle Ages", the ruling spirit of the establishment feels threatened by the new revolutionary discovery and is trying to find ways to live with it without the consequences and implications of Dr.Spengler's discovery presented in this book. The Roman Catholic Church tried to spread ignorance of Copernicus as well, but will its modern-day equivalents be more successful in hiding the discovery? It is up to the interested reader not to let this crime happen any longer. Having in mind the huge scope and distance both in Time and Space that Dr.Spengler's book covers, the enormous energy and time spent by him in creating the material presented in this book becomes even more astonishing considering that the book is so deeply involved and touching upon the daily events of the times we live in. Dr.Spengler in his work definitely belongs to the realm of the modern "TABOO," and precisely uncovers all the important facts and ideas, that our "accepted" intellectuals of the day DARE NOT touch upon, and prefer to avoid and misinterpret and misrepresent Dr.Spengler's thought and observations---for these are all too unnerving to them and too uncomfotably revealing about the character and direction of the times we live in. Even though the Author has died many years ago, his insight and thought is squarely present in our every day problems, troubles and uncertainties. Seldom will one find a philosopher, political scientist and a natural scientist-all in one and yet so penetrating in his thought and truly relevant and accurate to the daily life many years after his death. Despite our civilization's boasting about the hitherto unheard-of levels of progress, creativity and prosperity unimaginable only a few dozen years ago, "Decline of the West" deals with the significance in them. The vision, understanding and practical forecasts of Dr.Spengler's scientific discipline of History encompass all of those and go beyond, at all times maintaining the "eagle's view from above" of life. The 20th century is known for its false prophets and broken ideologies, yet amid all the storm and dust raised in the conflicts of this century, people have not noticed that all this time there existed a profound voice of calm unshaken in his beliefs and unmistaken, unshakeable in the strength of his experience and position, always proven right by facts beyond his control. This is Dr.Spengler, and that makes him a lone example of a true scientist of politics. This revelation then has to tell us something profoundly significant about the nature of our Western civilization's Information Age stage and the direction it is heading in, when a person from a 100 years ago can tell us so much more intimate and relevant things about the politics, science and life of people many years after his death, than the leading historians of the day can. The average person's inability to tell truth from faleshood in the news goes beyond mere wealth of information phenomenon, and the popular Computer represents the vehicle of the Information Age, nothing more. Today it is easy to be unaware of the profound and deep metaphysical roots underlying our advanced technical civilization's materialistic developments, yet Dr.Spengler in this work masterfully uncovers them. That is why this book, Decline of The West is so important, and will help the modern reader understand much better, than through any other immediate means, the true scope, understanding and meaning of the age we live in and of the age our descendants will live in. It is a true example of the intellectual nihilism of our times when works such as those of Dr.Spengler are deliberately passed by the intellectual elite keenly aware of its inability to deal with the disturbing insights of Dr.Spengler's mind, and consequently of its inability to rise to the rank of Spengler, prefering instead to sometimes select quotations from this great thinker in order to make themselves look bigger and wiser, --thinkers such as Hughes, Fischer and Connelly are among those. To paraphrase Spengler, nobody can escape from History's all-encompassing reach, we humans only have a luxury of pretending that we can, and like a grotesque Ostrich we bury our heads into the daily mass-circulation media training our minds, making us increasingly less capable of exercising independent thought and judgement. In the introduction, Spengler quotes his spiritual father, poet-philosopher Goethe with the description of confidence in life:"Inward form of significant life which unaware and unobserved inspires every thought and every action." That this description is no longer adequate for the life of Western Man provides a food for thought, since everything genuine in the way of feeling and thought is left open for unrestrained dissection and criticism by the standard-bearers of the modern intellectual inquisition which stifles any richness in the modes of thought in our universities, and has assumed the role of the judge, prosecutor and the jury in Media's daily virtual courtrooms, alias mass-circulation news. Hence the public truth of the moment holds sway. The lack of inward form in our daily personal lives should not therefore come as a surprise since we are trained daily to seek programmable inspiration from the external world of the macrocosm, shunning away from our own inbred microcosm and the wealth of inspiration it could have provided us with, had we given it a chance. At the very least "Decline of The West" enables the interested reader to form his or her own conclusion, which is something that Spengler's past critics could not afford to do.
Rating:
Summary: A book to read...
Review: Despite the historical flaws that historians may detect in this sort of "epic history", and despite the ideological criticism one may level at Spengler, who basically sees history as a continuous struggle between a Classical, static mind and a Faustian, dynamic spirit; this book is still fascinating and worthwhile to read. For one thing, it attempts analogies across disciplines and cultures, across times, and turns history into a lively presentation. Spengler's erudition is impressive, whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, and whatever the position one may take, it is still a work to contend with.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic for the Ages
Review: Dr. Spengler's book has gotten a bad rap. It's blamed for sending the blitzkrieg on its path of conquest or it's trivialized as an arcane and skeptical view of society without modern utility. It is fair to say it is a highly speculative interpretation of history, which identifies an organic psychology common to all members of a given civilization. It is not an inbred archetype per se, but an iterative internalization of the modes and beliefs of a given culture which manifests itself in a civilization's aesthetic forms and symbols. These abstract elements are the main topic of this book. The book has been said to have been born of pessimism, but this too is bad rap. The fact that all epochs have their birth, golden ages and decline has never really been in dispute. The sheer precision by which Spengler has articulated the nature and characteristics of any given period in the life of a culture, and, has anticipated the paths of modern physics and modern arts can be disconcerting. Each annihilation, however, has instigated a rebirth of a new refreshed culture, operating at higher levels of understanding and technology. This book was written in the late teens and early twenties of this century, contemporaneously with those other great speculative works of Freud and Jung. It is in this illustrious company that Spengler belongs. All have a different emphasis but their subject is this peculiar and exotic mixture of history, literature, society, psychology and philosophy. The fact that all these authors have received a share of discredit in the latter part of the century in no way limiting to the intellectual force, profound effect and importance these books have.. to our civilization.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Understanding of the World.
Review: Edify thyself, Man, with the factuity of truth.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading
Review: for the historian, anthropologist, student of philosophy, art history, theology, metaphysics, and statecraft. If there is any book that a person who is interested in all of the above fields should read, this is it. No kidding.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging but Accessible.. with some effort
Review: History ebbs and flows. The illusion that we are somehow at the 'end of history' and that civil organization and values as they now stand are beyond history's broader and deeper currents might be the great popular Myopia of our time. Spengler in this book has applied his voluminous knowledge and interpretive skills to the rise and fall of civilizations. Does the 'West' conform to the definition of a civilization in the age of global communications and entertainment? If so, are its prospects different than those of its predecessors? Schools no longer prepare the mainstream student for learning and argument at this level. Spengler's thesis hinges on the leading intellectual & aesthetic edges of the last 1000 years of our culture as compared to those of civilizations of antiquity, notably the Greco Roman. There are scholarly contrasts to Spengler's study. William McNeill's 'Rise of the West' provides a direct challenge to many of its conclusions. Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' or Werner Jaeger's 'Paedeia' (on Greek classical culture) might be good comparative reference books, but these have now been relegated in public familiarity to dusty and esoteric academic departments. Spengler's work, however, falls squarely and uniquely into the realm of a great work of the Deist tradition of Western social philosophy, from which its reputation for skepticism comes. Its apparent mysticism emanates from the deep investigation into the intellectual attitude of the Western mind. There are, of course, other traditions in the 'Western' mix which have broad and predictive implications. This opus should not be misconstrued of as a work of pessimism. Constructive action and faith are, in fact, its basis for the prospect of vigorous and sustained regeneration of the human cause. This is an exacting study. It requires a critical attitude to penetrate and to see that it has a fundamentally human and hopeful (and debatable) message. Decline of the West does in fact provide drama, grandeur, context and understanding to the sweep of history. It is accessible, though, to the determined general reader and constitutes a significant contribution to 20th Century thought. Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.
Rating:
Summary: Context, context context!
Review: I hear so many people complaining that the classics are boring and outdated. They forget to put the book in the context in which it was written. The classics are great historical pieces, regardless of today's relivance. For example, the movie "Birth of a Nation" is considered today to be one of the most racist and biting movies of all time. It was made around 1910. It is still interesting to view it and see what was going on in the minds of the people who produced it. The same goes for Decline of the West.
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