Analysis Of Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler and The Decline of the West

Mohd Faiz Mohd Zin

History of Western Science and Technology

Oswald Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) is a pessimistic German historian and philosopher, who equals or surpass Nietzsche in his own time. He propounded a new perspective for evolving cultures as a whole to explain the history of the world, which then challenged the contemporary idea of linear history. Generally, the philosophy of linear history is really a powerful assumption for people and this is very much influenced by Christianity in a way and still survived in post-Christian West. There is this common perception that we are the next step in history and this history leads to greater freedom by means of liberation, understanding, and technology. Although it is true that there are bad events throughout the journey, however that just like speed bumps to the Utopia. For example, the standpoint of technology apparently seems true to this perception, which is from medicine to automobile and communication; they all are slowly paved toward perfection. In Spengler’s cosmology of history, human cultures and civilizations very much like mythology of plant life, where they grow and dies. Great culture also can come into an end, decaying.

Spengler published volume one of The Decline of the West in 1919 when German lost the World War One. He did not care for academics and lingered around in the margin of German cultures. For ten years he become a high school teacher and gradually shaped this idea and then quit to write this book. Similar with Nietzsche, he suffered migraine in his head and he never married. He lives up until 50 years old and died from heart attack. His childhood is tormented with nightmares and at the same time an ...

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...on no longer interested in thought and shifts over to belief and spirituality. The romans in time of caesar when the republic were disintegrating, they began to revert to oracle and thinking to astrology and mystery cults all over the place. this is what we've got in stores for us in next century, between 2100 to 2200. "I can make predictions in this book more accurate than any historians based on this model"

Predictions for 2100 to 2200 are reversion to Caesarian rule, disintegration of electoral politics, the rise of force politics, this gradual fascination with occult and deep profound spirituality. our technology is coming from the soul of our culture, as we die our technological system will die along with us. not a permanent thing anymore than Greek machine to them. Lying ruins like lying aqueducts. gradual to gigantic series of ruins. wonderful pessimism.