Oswald Spengler Decline Of The West Summary

[Adimar Poynter]

TheSpenglerian Theory of cultural growth and decay is not difficult to understand provided two conditions are met. First, it is necessary to grasp the unusual meanings which the author attaches to certain key words. Second, one must brush aside the smoke screen of metaphysics with which he surrounds and beclouds his approach to the subject.

Spengler describes his work as a Morphology of History. By this he means the treatment of each separate culture as a living organism which is born, grows, decays and dies within the framework of a fixed and predictable life-cycle, just like any other living organism. He employs the word Culture to describe the living and creative phase of this organism, and Civilization as the end term of every culture, a period when all genuine creativity has disappeared, and the culture approaches its final demise under the bright glare of cold, abstract reason.

These two concepts could lead us directly into the heart of Spengler's metaphysics, but discussion of this subject must be postponed until later in the study. At this point it will suffice to state that Spengler was convinced that the real essence of history could only be grasped by means of the physiognomic or intuitive approach.

In order to clear the ground for his theory of comparative cultures Spengler first launches a vigorous attack on the conventional classification of "Ancient," "Medieval" and "Modern" histories. He describes this classification as "an incredibly jejeune and meaningless scheme," an egocentric conception of our western Culture which treats all past history merely as a backdrop to present day life in Europe. This conventional treatment of history is designated as the Ptolemaic system, in which all the other cultures are made to follow orbits around western Europe as the presumed center of all world events. Spengler describes his own method as the Copernican system which admits no priority in the treatment of anyone culture in relation to all of the others.

Thus, in place of a linear concept of history leading up to and culminating in a picture of our own times, Spengler presents the story of eight separate High Cultures of the human race, no one of which is considered more important than any of the others. These eight are: the Babylonian, the Indian, the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Classical (the Culture of Greece and Rome), the Arabian (also called the Magian by Spengler), the West European (or Faustian) Culture, and finally the Mayan-Aztec Culture of Mexico.

Each of these cultures is treated as a separate living entity with a definite limited life-cycle of approximately one thousand years, during which it actualizes all of the possibilities inherent in its own particular Weltanschauung (world-outlook). The civilization phase of a culture, however, may last for hundreds or even thousands of years more, while life continues in a kind of petrified state.

With this background one can grasp Spengler's idea of the birth and development of a culture, and of the contrast between culture men and mankind as a whole. In one magnificent paragraph he sums up this philosophy:

"Mankind, however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. 'Mankind' is a zoological expression, or an empty word . . . I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one's eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle, each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death. . . . Each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. . . . I see world-history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the contrary, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding on to itself one epoch after another."

One may search the pages of the Decline in vain for a precise explanation of the birth of a culture; why it appeared, when and where it did, and why it emerged with its own particular world-outlook. It seems clear that Spengler regarded these phenomena as part of the eternal mysteries of life: "A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto-spirituality of ever-childish humanity, and detaches itself, a form from the formless, a bounded and mortal thing, from the boundless and enduring."

The author does throw some light, however, on the type of world-outlook that emerges in a particular culture by intimating that the surrounding landscape is a determining influence in shaping the soul of a culture. Thus, he sees in the hard, bright light of the Mediterranean a basic cause in shaping the Classical Culture, and the dark forests of northern Europe as a prime influence in shaping the brooding soul of Faustian man.

In the simplified and condensed explanation of Spengler's culture theories presented below, attention is concentrated very largely on only three of the eight cultures; the Classical, the Arabian or Magian, and the West European or Faustian, with occasional side glances at the others. Actually this was the course followed by Spengler himself. No one man could possibly have the breadth of knowledge sufficient to cover with equal facility and understanding all parts of the enormous area staked out in the Decline. The author was an accomplished Classical and West European scholar, with an adequate but more limited knowledge of the Magian and Egyptian Cultures. His understanding of the Babylonian, Indian and Chinese Cultures, however, was more superficial, and was practically non-existent in the case of the Mayan-Aztec Culture. As a result, a more understandable account can be presented by sticking closely to the areas in which Spengler was most proficient. Moreover, the exposition in this chapter attempts only to cover the broad phases and turning points of the growth and decline of the several cultures

The prime symbol of the Classical Culture was a concentrated concern with the point-present, the nearby and the small. The gods of Classical man were little more than human beings drawn in the large. His mathematics was the visible space geometry of Euclid. The architecture, as expressed in the Doric Temple, was wholly oriented to the external view, with its rows of columns and sculptured reliefs. The only interior was the simple cella, which was just large enough to house an heroic statue of a god or goddess, and which also faced to the exterior.

The primary art form of the Classical Culture was the free-standing nude statue of the human body. The typical nude statue was devoid of facial expression, designed deliberately to avoid revealing the personality of the original. Spengler points out that it was not until the late Roman period that human statues became at all biographical.

According to Spengler, Classical man was ahistorical, or lacking in any sense of or feeling for history. He could write brilliant accounts of contemporary events, such as Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, or Xenophon's Anabasis, but anything of the remote past became transformed into myths, such as the Homeric legends. He had little appreciation of the reckoning of time and did not create an adequate calendar until the time of Julius Caesar. Classical man would have had no understanding whatsoever of our present day interest in archaeology. Thus, when the Acropolis was rebuilt after the Persian invasion of Xerxes, the Athenian citizens merely threw the remains of the former structures over the side of the hill into a massive dump heap.

The outstanding literary form of the Classical Culture was the drama, as exemplified in the great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. These dramas were all, according to Spengler, "situation" tragedies, in which the protagonists were led to their destruction, not by their own deeds, but by the action of blind fate. Typical is the familiar story of Oedipus, which is not the tale of a hero struggling against alien forces and his own internal demons but one of a man who is led to his destruction by blind forces which he cannot attempt to combat.

An important feature of the Attic drama was its extreme formalism. Spengler points out that this effect was achieved deliberately in many different ways. In addition to the emphasis upon the so-called dramatic unities, the Greeks introduced the device of the chorus which largely dominated every scene. Masks, stilt-like shoes and padded clothing all combined to eliminate any possibility of individual characterization. This effect was further enhanced by monotonous sing-song speech delivered through a mouthpiece fixed in the mask. The result, according to Spengler, was exactly in keeping with the Attic spirit which prohibited all likeness-statuary.

The characteristic form of political organization of the Classical Culture was the Polis, or city-state-again an exemplification of the small and near. Instead of extending their frontiers by means of lateral expansion, Classical men established overseas colonies through maritime excursions. These colonies in turn became separate city-states, only loosely affiliated with the mother-city. This form of political organization was maintained rigorously throughout the Classical world and was only broken down by the emergence of the Roman Empire. Undoubtedly this spirit of separatism and exclusiveness was an important factor in causing the never-ending warfare amongst these small states.

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