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The Decline of the West (平装)
by Oswald Spengler
| Category:
Social-economic, Global politics, Nonfiction |
| Market price: ¥ 208.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| 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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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
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 dis- concerting. 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. |
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Kurt Johnson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
The Decline of the West is the magnum opus of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German historian and philosopher. In it, Spengler rejects the idea that the future of the West (or indeed of any culture) is an open-ended advance from the primitive past to an ever more glorious and expansive future. Instead, cultures (including the West) experience an almost organic history of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
According to Spengler, the West moved out of its Summer period with the dawn of the nineteenth century, and into a Civilization phase. This phase is dominated by mega-cities, and money and atheism come into ascendance. And what lies in the future? Caesarism, and a long period of stagnation in the arts and sciences.
Now, the above summary is inevitably bound to be overly simplistic, even to the point of being misleading. The Decline of the West was originally published as two books, and it is a deep and erudite philosophical look at the history of the world, so any small summary is bound to be insufficient to do it justice.
Having heard this work referenced so many times, I decided to read it for myself. In fact, though it does present a deterministic view of history, it does not propose a West that is about to collapse and be swept into the dustbin of history (as some people want it to). In fact, this is a cogent, penetrating look at history, which certainly seems to accurately predict how the West has developed from the first book's initial publication in 1918.
Now, I must admit that like many scholarly books of the era, this one has a dense, thickly argued text that makes for some very heavy reading indeed. But, if you are willing to devote time to the reading of this book, and more time to digest what it has to say, you will be rewarded with one of the fascinating and thought-provoking look at the modern West. Are we at the End of History, or the end of the West? Read this book and find out. |
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