Decline of the West

Extracted Attributes

• Concept Type

  Philosophical concept, Societal concern

• Seminal Work

  The Decline of the West

• Author of Seminal Work

  Oswald Spengler

• Core Thesis (Spengler)

  All human cultures follow a predetermined life-cycle (birth to death) over 1000-1500 years, allowing for predictions about their eventual fate.

• Elon Musk's Stated Concern

  Societal suicide, exacerbated by low birth rates.

• Elon Musk's Contrasting Philosophy

  Philosophy of Curiosity, driving ambition to make humanity a multi-planetary species.

• Original Publication Dates (Seminal Work)

  1918-01-01 (Volume 1), 1923 (Volume 2)

Timeline

• The first volume of Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' was published. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1918-01-01

• The second volume of Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' was published. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1923

• Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' became a best-seller and a widely discussed intellectual work. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1920s

• Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' was a favorite of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1950s

Web Search Results

• The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler (A Summary & Key ...

  Sign up Sign in Sign up Sign in # The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler (A Summary & Key Messages for the 21st century) Amy Balog -- 1 Listen Share The Decline of the West is a monumental and prophetic work in two volumes by German philosopher Oswald Spengler. It was first published a century ago, and it contains countless incredibly accurate predictions about our present time. It’s a mind-blowing analysis of what we’re living through right now. [...] The prognosis outlined in The Decline of the West is gloomy, but it can help us make sense of history and our current era. It can also help us understand why so many people in other parts of the world are critical and suspicious of the Western way of life and reject it wholeheartedly. [...] It may not give us much hope with regards to the future of our civilisation, but it contains immense wisdom, which is worth becoming acquainted with for its own sake. It’s beautifully written; it’s not a dry work of philosophy, but it often reads like poetry. It sits superbly at the intersection of science and art. Ultimately, Spengler encourages us to confront reality. It’s a disturbing reality, but personally, my Faustian intellect found it captivating. -- -- 1 Amy Balog Amy Balog

• Review: The Decline of the West (1918-1923) | A Phuulish Fellow

  The Decline of the West was a best-seller in the 1920s, and one of the most widely discussed intellectual works of the inter-war era – there’s at least one academic article on Spenglerian influences in The Lord of the Rings. As late as the 1950s, The Decline of the West was a favourite of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets (Kerouac took the word fellaheenfrom Spengler). But the latent pessimism – combined with some of the odder aspects of the book – put Spengler out of synch with later, more [...] As a background, Spengler was a German polymath, moonlighting as a school teacher. His interests were spectacularly broad, and he is not afraid to show it – The Decline of the West is not a history book in any conventional sense, nor is it even a philosophical text (though that is a better fit). It is nothing less than a monumental attempt at fitting the sum of human learning and experience into a single historical framework. A uniquely pessimistic framework at that, one inspired by Goethe and [...] In a nutshell, Spengler’s thesis is that all human cultures have a life-cycle, from birth to death – a predetermined cycle that works itself out over 1000-1500 years. As such, he believes that if you compare different cultures at different stages of development, one can discern similarities (or in the case of Western Civilisation, make predictions about its eventual fate). The Decline of the West is accordingly a gigantic analogy-making exercise, taking phenomena from Western Civilisation, and

• The Decline of the West - Wikipedia

  Oswald Mosley identified the book as a critical influence on his political conversion from far-left to far-right politics and his subsequent foundation of the British Union of Fascists. Ludwig Wittgenstein named Spengler as one of his philosophical influences. Camille Paglia has listed The Decline of the West as one of the influences on her 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae. William S. Burroughs referred repeatedly to Decline as a pivotal influence on his thoughts and work. [...] The Decline of the West was widely read by German intellectuals. It has been suggested that it intensified a sense of crisis in Germany following the end of World War I. George Steiner suggested that the work can be seen as one of several books that resulted from the crisis of German culture following Germany's defeat in World War I, comparable in this respect to the philosopher Ernst Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia (1918), the theologian Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption (1921), the [...] György Lukács criticized The Decline of the West in his book 1953 "The Destruction of Reason", in a chapter focusing on Oswald Spengler. Outlining Spengler as "dilettantish amateur" on factual level – and being of lesser "philosophical level" compared to the German vitalist (Lebensphilosophie) and/or irrationalist thinkers before him – Lukács saw The Decline of the West as a "victory of extreme historical relativism". Describing the work of being amateurish, pseudo-historical and exemplary of

• Review: The Decline of the West - Lotz in Translation

  _The Decline of the West_ puts forward a radically unconventional view of history. Spengler divides up world history, not into countries or epochs, but into “Cultures.” There have been only eight: the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Meso-American, the Chinese, the Indian, the Classical (Greco-Roman), the Arabian (includes the Byzantine), and the Western (European Culture, beginning around the year 1000). Each of these Cultures he conceives as a super-organism, with its own birth, middle-age, and [...] Meta Create account Log in Entries feed Comments feed WordPress.com Image 6: The Decline of the WestThe Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler My rating: 4 of 5 stars > _All genuine historical work is philosophy, unless it is mere ant-industry._ [...] The ‘decline’ that forms the title of this book is just this transition from Culture to Civilization, wherein major creative work is at an end. Civilization is, rather, the age of Caesarism, the consolidation of political power. It is the age of world cities, major metropolises filled with cosmopolitan urban intellectuals. It is the age of academics rather than geniuses, the Alexandrine Greeks instead of the Golden-Age of Athens. It is, in other words, the period that corresponds with the onset

• The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler | Goodreads

  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. 486 pages, Paperback First published January 1, 1918 ### About the author Profile Image for Oswald Spengler. #### Oswald Spengler ## Ratings & Reviews ### Friends & Following ### Community Reviews [...] 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. [...] Top Retellings of Classic Tales ### Loading... ### Der Untergang des Abendlandes #1-2 # The Decline of the West ### Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (Translator), H. Stuart Hughes (Introduction) ...more

• Instance Of

  Q482994