Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West | by Dr. Sebastian Ostritsch
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2023
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The course is taught by Dr. Sebastian Ostritsch who also presents this video.
Wittgenstein (in his diaries)
“Reading Spengler’s Decline [...] Much, perhaps most of it, is completely in touch with what I have often thought myself.”
I believe it corresponds to how I feel about Spengler.
I love how this project transitioned from youtube essays to private academy
This channel just gets better and better. True contemporary philosophy that absolutely peaks my interest. I’d imagine someday I will be buying your courses. Thank you all on this channel
Oswald Spengler is one of the thinkers who impressed me the most. Not easy to read, but he makes some basic and universal postulates about civilization. Love Spengler and go back to his masterpiece sometimes. Thanks for the video, 💝
Great job! Thanks!!
I think Toynbee is much more comprehensive and accessible although I do have a soft spot for Spengler.
I would like to jump into Spengler's ideas some time. Right now I'm reading Jan Patočka's heretical essays in the philosophy of history and I cannot avoid seeing some parallels between his ideas and Spengler's. Have you read Patočka? Do you have anything to say those two? Particullarly in this idea that history originates as an elevation, an uprising from decadence. History is given a chance to arise precisely when life is decadent.
This is great. Patocka has been on my list for quite some time. I hope you join the course so we can discuss this further at the seminars!
Also, Spengler and Toynbee seem like the Leibnitz and Newton of History. Furthermore, If you take Spengler and Toynbee and mix in Mandelbrot's theory of fractals- now you have something very profound.
Is this a joke post?
Long time since I wrestled with his work in German (in which certain terms come better across in my view). I remember being particularly stricken by his notion that urbanisation, the prevalence of economics and decadence go hand in hand with what Max Weber for example called "die Entzauberung der Welt," which might be loosely transalted as lacking of a soul. Weber pointed at the the functional rationality (concerning the means to an end) taking over the substantial one (corncernig values, goals/ Werte) as one of the key problems of modern society. If I remember correctly, Spengler postulated that such is an inevitability in all cultures who've transformed into civilizations through the proces of institutionalization, a process by which the goals or values are thought to be 'self evident' and thus risk becoming badly neglected.
I recal reading Stephan Zweig's "die Welt von Gestern" in which among others he described the demise of the Austrian Empire and later on the downfall of Germany's intellectual prowess under the Nazis. What Spengler described in a methodological way came so vividly to life in Zweig's account and to me, it indicated that people - even when educated in history - mostly feel powerless (and probably are) to resist surrender to a sentiment of Fin de Siècle, to apathy and defeatism on the one hand or fanatical chauvinism on the other. Something, I believe we again see today in politics in the West.
Worth mentioning as well is the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, who wrote a pamflet called "In de schaduw van morgen: over het geestelijk lijden van onze tijd" (In tomorrow's shadow; on the mental suffering of our time), in which he described two other aspects of decline: anitnoesis (the disgust of intellectual endeavour) and puérilism (the idolization of youthfulness/childishness). One only needs to take a look at what is happening in US Congress at the moment, to see how these two take center stage. And that in the face of a resurgent and revanchist Russia and the rise of the Chinese Orwellian society set to take over the world stage.
Was it Mark Twain who said that hostory never repeats itself, but that it certainly rhymes? Seems to me it does.
If that's happening, let it be
You have to been through a lot to know who's the real good guy. Like how many Eastern Europeans having Russophobia for decades after being tortured by Soviet Union for nearly 70 years.
Sometimes it takes sacrifices to learn a lesson. And more sacrifices for the lesson to be deeply engraved into your brain, or onto your descendents
@@user-wg5hd1nu7x I suffer no illusions about what's right or wrong. I am fully committed to supporting Eastern European peoples minus Orbanites or other delusional Russian apologists and do my utmost in my own country, to keep government dedicated to support Ukraine in any way it can. And every bit of spare money I have, goes to help fund the Ukranian struggle.
I have not lived under the Russian/Soviet boot, but coming from a family with vivid memories of how life was under the Nazis, resistance against apologetics and appeasement is engrained in my character. I served as a soldier with the infantry back in the 1980ies and was well aware what my comrades and I were up against had shit hit the proverbial fan. A regime that has no regard for human life or the dignity and integrity of sovereign nations. Nothing has changed in Russia, so we're back to that day and age. While our cities are crowded by Ukrainian refugees and other victims of totalitarian regimes, few recognize that not those who fled are the problem, but those who pushed them out.
We must defeat totalitarianism in whatever shape or form if our liberties are to survive. It's better to die while standing than to live on our knees.
That to me is the core of cultural criticism and historic warnings like that of Spengler. History is not a natural phenomenon, nor is decadence. It is the slipping of moral foundations and the bored tolerance of that, which undermines democracy. I for one am not into that.
@@Pincer88 that's what I'm trying to say. Most people won't learn or even remember unless the memories of being enslaved and tortured have been deeply engraved into them for generations. The deep hatred of Poland/Eastern Europe and Vietnam towards Russia and China can't be split from the fact that they have been suffering under these two hegemonies and battling them for centuries (with Vietnam can be trace back to more than 1000 years ago). The hatred and awareness have already been implanted deeply into their people, which makes them always can see through the lies and propagandas by these two. They know them too well.
@@user-wg5hd1nu7x I know and I understand, I truly do. I've spoken with a lot of Polish people (in English, since my Polish is not that great) of my and my parents' generation.
I come from a generation, that remembers the bravery of the Polish who fought at the side of western allies in WW2 all too well. And we have not forgotten what happened to general Sossabowski, who's been made the scapegoat of the failure of operation Market Garden. Our former Queen restored the British reluctance to set things right by granting him and the Polsih parachute regiment knighthood in our highest military order. Nor have we forgotten our debt to Poland or the shame we felt, when we were incapable of keeping Poland out of Stalin's hands.
Sadly, today's education does not educate young people in those facts since history has been hijacked by all kinds of ideological deluded ideas and students are more interested in making (fast) money or pursuing 'happiness' than by becoming upstanding citizens. The 'americanization' (meaning: superficiality, materialism, hedonism, self centeredness, etc.) of our society is near complete when my generation fades. Hence we see the same shit that's happening in the US happening here. The dumbest mfks having had the worst education imaginable walking after every nationalist big mouth, having no sense of our historic duty whatsoever.
I do my best to teach all of these things to my son, his freinds and girfriend in the hope that I can save at least a few of them from total idiocy. But dear Lord, it's an uphill battle.
And none want to serve in the military. Sure, I imagine that risking your life for a greater cause than your own is frightening, but who else will do that when evil has set its sights at us, our friends and allies?
I must add that when I served, I was not too happy either, since our survival estimates were measured in minutes, not hours or days. Now did I fancy having to kill Russians/Soviets. But I was deterimed to do so, since that is what it took to keep Brezhnev's hordes out.
To my shame and disgust I have got to admit, that most people in Eastern Europe have the advantage, that their memory of how it's like to live under foreign and repressive occupation is far more vivid than ours.
I think Eastern Europeans can help understand our younger generations why a willingness to serve and if necessary fight is more important than TikTok and what garbage there is out there. Not by bashing the woke crowd, but by educating them. Most of them aren't deklusional on purpose, they are just made and kept ignorant. It is up to people like you and I to build those bridges and reason with them. If we fail to do so, we end up like the US, in a state of near civil war. And that's when Putin and his fellow depots will have won.
Either way, I hope you know that not all Western Europeans are decadent, complacent or that we look down at Eastern Europe. Far from it.
Having said that, I must add that while I understand political movements like for example PiS or Orban's position, I think they are flawed and equally dangerous to democracy.
For me the very core of democracy lies in debate, not coup d'états by legal means to silence or bypass the others. For that is totalitarianism in only a diferent shape. Whatever political majority there is, if it thinks that is the justification to force one's will upon others, then democracy has already lost.
I hope you do not regard that as a 'morally superior' Westerner condescending on a Pole (or Hungarian)' for that certainly is not my intention nor how I look at Eastern Europe. I think we need to learn from each other and become stronger together.
Besides, I feel that the deepest friendships also include telling each other our honest and founded opinions without passing judgement. That to me is the basis of what I dream will become more than just a convenient alliance. Mutual trust, respect and friendship, that's what ties people and countries together. What say you?
Slava Ukraine!
he Is proving the Anglo Saxon imperialists mentality is and has always been wrong. love Spengler
Funny because when Spengler 's name would be mentioned in years past I used to joke, "Not to be confused with American stuntman, Spanky Spangler."
@@mick5137 he has been right. So just suck it up.
@@mick5137 Spanky Spengler? Wasn't he that pudgy kid in that really old series of shorts (getting close to a hundred years old), "Our Gang"?
I think that Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat are my favourites. Little fellers . . . 😄
@COMMODVS799 and he is proven right
Spengler's theories are interesting and fun, but they are extremely limited. He has a model of history that is beyond research, it is impossible to confirm his ideas as they are so 'grand' and over-reaching. He also presents a totally fatalist meta-narrative without presenting dynamics. As wrong as Marx was he presents a dynamics as to how things work. Spengler never tells us why all civilizations go through the stages he claims. Also it really hard to apply his theories, once can argue that a civilization is presently in various stages he outlines.
So he is interesting, he is fun, he makes you think, but he is not really of any value to a historian who would be trying to understand history. Though he claimed to have found the meta-narrative of all history his work failed to predict the rise of Fascism in Germany, the collapse of Empires, and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism or the rebirth of China.