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The Decline of the West (平装)
by Oswald Spengler
| Category:
Social-economic, Global politics, Nonfiction |
| Market price: ¥ 208.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
An essential reading that will help you understand the present. To be ignorant of Spengler is to remain ignorant. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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Arthur (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
Here is one of the mighty books of the century, which, sooner or later, will be read by all who ponder the riddle of existence... it is a truly monumental work, at once depressing in its pessimism and exhilarating in its compelling challenge to our accepted ideas. |
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The New York Sun (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
This grand panorama, this imaginative sweep, this staggering erudition, this Nietzschean prose, with its fine color and ringing force, mark a work that must endure. |
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Allen (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
As one reads Spengler the thought keeps recurring, ever more insistently, that here again is one of those universal minds which we had come to think were no longer possible. |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
With monumental learning… Spengler surveys man’s cosmic march… Always forceful… eloquent. |
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Charles Beard (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
For his methods, his challenges, and his attempts to portray the mor- phology of civilization, and his flaming appeal to the imagination, Spengler should be read by all who are trying to grope their way in the dusk of evening or dawn. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
Since its first publication more than eighty years ago, The Decline of the West has ranked as one of the most widely read and talked about books of our time. A sweeping account of Western culture by a historian of legendary intellect, it is an astonishingly informed, forcefully eloquent, thrillingly controversial work that advances a world view based on the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations. |
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Earl Dennis (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
This postmodern chronicle of the western world by early 20th century German historian and philosopher, Oswald Spengler, offers a lot for today's reader despite its flaws. It's an incredibly rich and complex analysis, attacking the causal factors of the development of western culture on many fronts simultaneously: historically, scientifically, artistically, architecturally, ecclesiastically, and so much more. This book is capable of describing many different aspects of western culture to many different readers, depending on who they happen to be and what their interest in western history is. I will only mention three aspects of Spengler's work in my review, since these aspects are what grabbed my attention, bearing in mind that the book contains much more than what I touch on here.
A. Spengler, a westerner himself, constructs detailed accounts in describing the historical development of western Europe. One of his main theses is a distinction between culture and civilization, which he derives from a credible, if difficult to falsify model for a universal cycle of human cultural growth, followed by decline into advanced civilization. For those familiar with biological theory, Spengler's model is essentially a growth curve. The familiar biological model is the lag phase, then the log phase, followed by the stationary phase, and ending in the death phase; which repeats itself virtually ad infinitum. In Spengler's model he labels these phases, respectively, after the seasons, beginning with spring and ending with winter. The spring-time of a people is a mythical phase, where settled economic life grows from a rural peasantry. This is followed by the summer, or cultural phase of strong and dynamic growth in all important aspects of a people; of economic, religious, martial, and other relevant human impulses. Then comes the fall, where dogma forms. Where adult-like reason takes root from the innocent cultural phase and puritan oversight of national religion and government begin to set hard like concrete. Finally, the winter of a people is when the national personality and traditions lose their effectiveness. Civilized and urbane money and economic issues tend to become preimminent over the cultural issues. Technology and irreligion become rampant. This cycle is not a modern phenomena, but repeats itself as seen in ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Aztec civilizations; and again, currently in America.
B. Spengler's style in elucidating a history of the west, and developing an hypothesis of universal and collective human behavior, is punctuated by the era in which he wrote: the early 20th century. Much of the historical analysis before and after this era lacks the materialist, psychoanalytical, and structural influence that typified thinking and literature when Spengler wrote. Published in 1926, The Decline of the West contains that biting air of criticism and structuralism so fecund in those times. This critical structural analysis gives Spengler's work a sharper contrast and greater depth of field than would likely have been possible for a writer from before or after Spengler's time. This is not to take away from Spengler's native insight and acuity, which was nevertheless, likely heightened by the charged literary atmosphere of early 20th century Germany.
C. The way Spengler psychoanalyzes the structure of history through art and architecture is almost wholey absent from the majority of standard historical analyses. Reading Spengler makes one aware of this common lack. This is one of the strong points of this book, since art and architecture express so much of what a culture is and why it thinks in the ways it does.
All in all, despite the typical fallacies of sex and race Spengler repeats, once could say this is a seminal work describing western development and thought which no student of history should leave unopened. An advantage of reading this book today instead of when it was originally released is the internet. If you lack truly comprehensive powers of recall regarding the art and architecture Spengler uses to analyze his subject cultures, then using the internet to pull up the various paintings, sculptures, and architectural examples is most helpful as an active part of reading this work; turning what could otherwise be a dry, boring read into something more alive that captures what the author is trying to convey. If possible, bring up the actual images of the art and architecture Spengler describes at the moment you're reading about it. This gave me a more graphic and focused perspective of the cultures he analyzes. Reading this book was like experiencing a kaleidoscope of mind candy.
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An American Reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
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 Decline of the West is a major opus, indeed a masterwork, with a dense text full of mew terminology and new concepts. 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. 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. Unfortunately, and despite the book's popularity, The Decline of the West has made little impact on academic thought, which remains, at root, as shallow as it was a century ago.
One example, which I think has clearly been borne out by current events: in the aftermath of WWI, where armies with troops numbering in the millions were often too small, Spengler predicted that armies of our time would number in the hundreds of thousands, and that these small, war-keen armies were meant to be used. Everything that is happening in the world today, from American response to 9/11, to pornography, to the profess- sionalization of sports, to families not eating dinner together, is elucidated by Spengler's theory. He stated that not only was the world in which he exist barren of all impressive spiritual form and style and predicted that it must and would remain so and it has. 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 formless- ness ever since, remains indisputably true. People living in the West, and particularly America, would do well to read this moving piece of literature. It might help dispell once and for all the casual attitude which assumes that "this" is infinite.
The best analogy is a scene from The Matrix: Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will reveal the world as it truly is, which very few people actually see. The blue pill will take Neo back where he was, still fooled by the Matrix, oblivious to reality. The Decline of the West is the red pill. |
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Roberto Ferras (MSL quote), Brazil
<2007-01-10 00:00>
The Decline of the West, first published in 1917, is the major contribution of the German Oswald Spengler to Western thought. And what a contribution it was!!! First of all, the work, which this edition is an abridged version, is tainted by accusations of being pro nazi and amiable to fascism in general and to Mussolini in particular , something that tormented the author all trough his reclusive life.
But, polemics apart, The Decline of the West is a major opus, indeed a masterwork, with a dense text full of a very Spenglerianian terminology and new concepts, which added lustre to the difficult task the translator faced and settled in the best possible way. After reading the first pages, the reader realizes that he is facing the work of a man of genius, of a man endowed with a polymath knowledge and with appetite for solving the puzzles of Western History, which he revisited and intended to set to a new course. His thinker of choice is Goethe, to whom he acknowledges the foundations of his thinking, being Goethe, in Spengler's view, the first and the only one who, despite not being a philosopher in the strict sense of the world, truly understood, via the mechanism of analogies, how the Western world ascended to its present condition and would eventually fall, in the way it happened earlier with the Classic antiquity of Greece & Rome.
The myth to be atacked is that Civilization is a step forward in the development of the human race, being Civilization a word that, in Oswald Spengler's view is synonimous with decadence or rather absence of Culture. The idea that the Western world is a development of things happened in classical antiquity is, again in Spengler's views, fallacious, because the Classical Antiquity vanished altogether in the collapse of the Roman Empire and our Western World began circa 1.000 A.D. One of the important tools to be reckoned with is analogies and it is used all the time to illustrate similarities in the rise and fall of earlier cultures and ours, which is to collapse after the exhaustion provoked by the money devotion present in our Western World. As it happened earlier in this final stage, some signs are important to be noticed, being the creation of so-called megopolis, or big cities, one of them, along with the surging of a quasi mythical personnage (Napoleon, Julius Cesar, Alexander, etc...) who was to be welcome by the peoples as a leader. Exactly here lies the intersection with the figures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It is up to the reader to judge by his own parameters if this interconnection is only ideal or was something transported into the real life of nazi German or Italian fascism.
Without any exageration, I should say that this is the type of book that jump-starts you in many fields of knowledge and, specially of interest, is , in my opinion, the exgese the author does of the Theory of Mathemathics as a way of explaining the different Cultural environments of Ancient Greece, Egypt and Arabian regions.
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Alex Shah (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
The 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, The 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-encom- passing 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 The 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.
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