The Decline of the West

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. This abridgment presents the most significant of Oswald Spengler's arguments, linked by illuminating explanatory passages. It makes available in one volume a masterpiece of grand-scale history and far-reaching prophesy that remains essential reading for anyone interested in the factors that determine the course of civilizations.

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. This abridgment presents the most significant of Oswald Spengler's arguments, linked by illuminating explanatory passages. It makes available in one volume a masterpiece of grand-scale history and far-reaching prophesy that remains essential reading for anyone interested in the factors that determine the course of civilizations.

The first volume of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a milestone in historiography. It is not a standard history book. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory. Like organisms that are born, mature, and die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay, and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes an inevitable whirlwind of self-destruction. The West is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and traditions that animated the Faustian spirit in its exuberant heyday. It is all in vain as the West has become tired of itself and is unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated.

The first volume of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a milestone in historiography. It is not a standard history book. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory. Like organisms that are born, mature, and die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay, and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes an inevitable whirlwind of self-destruction. The West is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and traditions that animated the Faustian spirit in its exuberant heyday. It is all in vain as the West has become tired of itself and is unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated.

The first volume of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a milestone in historiography. It is not a standard history book. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory. Like organisms that are born, mature, and die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay, and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes an inevitable whirlwind of self-destruction. The West is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and traditions that animated the Faustian spirit in its exuberant heyday. It is all in vain as the West has become tired of itself and is unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated.

The first volume of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a milestone in historiography. It is not a standard history book. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory. Like organisms that are born, mature, and die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay, and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes an inevitable whirlwind of self-destruction. The West is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and traditions that animated the Faustian spirit in its exuberant heyday. It is all in vain as the West has become tired of itself and is unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated.

In the second and more controversial, albeit optimistic, volume of The Decline of the West , Oswald Spengler deals with the world-historical perspectives of his comparative cultural morphology. The periodical calm surrounding the constant and eternally recurring movements, described in the first volume, is over. Spengler develops his theory of "Caesarism" - a tendency towards dictatorship peculiar to mass democracy. According to Spengler, today we live in the decadent stage of civilization. Previously, the people of culture used money for buying and selling while their main thoughts and occupations lay elsewhere. The people of civilization, however, exclusively think in terms of money and nothing else. That is why our period is also marked by rapacious oligarchs, cunning stock market manipulation, a flourishing art trade, and boundless corruption. Only the return of the eternal values of blood and race, through the coming of the Caesars, can destroy the tyranny of the financial mind. Thus Caesarism will bring the victory of strength politics over capital, breaking the pecuniary power and promoting national welfare. The scene is set for the final battle between the forces of plutocracy and chaos and the political will and order of the Caesars.

In the second and more controversial, albeit optimistic, volume of The Decline of the West , Oswald Spengler deals with the world-historical perspectives of his comparative cultural morphology. The periodical calm surrounding the constant and eternally recurring movements, described in the first volume, is over. Spengler develops his theory of "Caesarism" - a tendency towards dictatorship peculiar to mass democracy. According to Spengler, today we live in the decadent stage of civilization. Previously, the people of culture used money for buying and selling while their main thoughts and occupations lay elsewhere. The people of civilization, however, exclusively think in terms of money and nothing else. That is why our period is also marked by rapacious oligarchs, cunning stock market manipulation, a flourishing art trade, and boundless corruption. Only the return of the eternal values of blood and race, through the coming of the Caesars, can destroy the tyranny of the financial mind. Thus Caesarism will bring the victory of strength politics over capital, breaking the pecuniary power and promoting national welfare. The scene is set for the final battle between the forces of plutocracy and chaos and the political will and order of the Caesars.