Oswald Spengler
He describes cultures as organisms that are born, ripen and decline: the West's is in its winter.
Life
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German teacher and essayist, wrote The Decline of the West (1918-1922). In it he describes the great cultures as organisms that are born, ripen and decline, each with its own soul, and judges Western culture to have entered its late phase. This cyclical view of history strongly influenced debates on the meaning of History.
Main works
A comparative morphology of cultures seen as organisms (volume I in 1918, volume II in 1922).
A political essay on German traditions of organisation and duty.
A reflection on technology as a form of human life.
In his own words
« “Mankind,” however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. »
Aber „die Menschheit“ hat kein Ziel, keine Idee, keinen Plan, so wenig die Gattung der Schmetterlinge oder der Orchideen ein Ziel hat.
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe holds that there are no eternal truths: each culture's ideas and knowledge express its own time and cannot be carried unchanged to another.
Spengler, The Decline of the West (1918-1922)
Each culture has its own morality, born with it and dying with it: there is no moral truth valid for all.
Spengler, The Decline of the West (1918-1922), vol. 1
He sees humans as a predatory species driven by struggle, not as naturally good.
Spengler, Man and Technics (1931)