Oswald Spengler Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880–1936) was a German philosopher and historian. His most renowned work is the two-volume The Decline of the West (1918–1922) in which he breaks with the Hegelian view of history as a rational process of linear progression. Spengler presented a deterministic theoretical model in which civilizations rise and decline in the same way as biological organisms, following an irreversible series of cycles. He believed that Western civilization was heading toward its final eclipse and that it would be followed by the emergence of new African and Asian powers. Although he was in favor of German hegemony in Europe and supported an organic blend of socialism and traditionalist authoritarianism, his relationship with the National Socialist regime was uneasy.

Born at Blankenburg am Hars, Spengler received a classical education and earned his PhD in 1904.The following years of his life were troubled, due to his personal poverty and loneliness and to the complex political situation of the time. The Agadir Crisis (1911), in which Germany deployed a gunboat to the Moroccan port of Agadir, and later Germany’s defeat in World War I (1914–1918) increased Spengler’s pessimism and convinced him of the inevitability of the decline of European civilization. His works The Decline (1918) and Perspectives of World History (1922) had wide readerships and placed his theses in the intellectual arena. Spengler was even offered a post at the University of Göttingen, which he declined.

A bitter critic of the Weimar Republic, Spengler made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to participate in active politics. He was approached by the National Socialists, but he objected to their racialist policies and militarist stand, engaging in a public dispute with Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg. Significantly, The Hour of Decision (1933), one of the few books critical to the regime published in Germany, was eventually condemned. Spengler died in 1936, having predicted that the fall of the Third Reich would occur in less than a decade. He also anticipated the cold war.

In The Decline of the West, which was influenced by German philosophers Johann Gottfried von Herder, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Spengler develops a biological approach to history, explicitly manifested through the four seasons of civilizational cycles: spring (birth), summer (youth), autumn (maturity), and winter (decline). From aristocratic and warrior beginnings, cultures move through a process of urbanization and intellectualization, entering their phase of decay as they embrace political ideologies as democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, or humanitarianism. Money, industrialism, and technology would be the prime factors in cultural decay, as Spengler further explained in Der Mensch und die Technik (1931). Even though he defended the idea of incommensurability between cultures, he did suggest that a “comparative morphology of history” was possible, as diverse cultures in different times but parallel “biological stages” displayed similar characteristics. But Spengler denied the scientificity of history, disregarding unilinear or causal explanations.

As a whole, Spengler’s views were, and remain, highly controversial. Even though he was vehemently criticized by the emerging neopositivist tradition, his works became very influential during the 1920s and 1930s. However, his conservative views and firm opposition to the Weimar Republic ostracized his philosophical legacy.

Bibliography:

Farrenkopf, John. Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Fischer, Klaus P. History and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West. New York: P. Lang, 1989.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, abr. ed. by Helmut Werner. Translated by F. Atkinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
First published as Der Untergang des Abenlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, 2 vols., 1918–1922.
The Hour of Decision, translated by C. F. Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1963.
Prussianism and Socialism, translated by Donald O.White. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1967.

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