The decline of the West: Vol. 1: Form and Actuality
About this ebook
In this engrossing and highly controversial philosophy of history, Spengler describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity. Guided by the philosophies of Goethe and Nietzsche, he rejects linear progression, and instead presents a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations. He argues that a culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities.
Despite Spengler's reputation today as an extreme pessimist, The Decline of the West remains essential reading for anyone interested in the history of civilization.
About the author
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history.
Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan. Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse.
Spengler is regarded as a German nationalist and a critic of republicanism, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution.
