Oswald SpenglerTransaction Publishers, 1 janv. 1991 - 192 pages Since its publication in 1918, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West has been the object of academic controversy and opprobrium. In their efforts to dispose of it, scholars have resorted to a variety of tactics: bitter invective, icy scorn, urbane mockery, or simply pretending that the book is not there. Yet generations of readers have refused to be warned off, finding in Spengler a prophetic voice and a source of profound intellectual excitement. H. Stuart Hughes's Oswald Spengler offers a judicious and objective reading of Spengler's works that admirably fills the gap between hypercritical invective and naïve enthusiasm. This pioneering volume makes clear why Spengler's pessimistic reading of the fate of European civilization continues to resonate with contemporary anxieties. Despite the author's self-imposed intellectual and social isolation, Spengler's work was as Hughes demonstrates, a part of the enormous effort of intellectual reevaluation that has characterized the early twentieth century. Viewing Spengler in the broadest possible perspective, the author places his thought in its cultural relationship to that of such predecessors as Giambattista Vico, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Nikolai Danilevsky and contemporaries including Benedetto Croce, Henri Bergson, and Vilfredo Pareto. A chapter of Hughes's book is devoted to Spengler's influence on later cyclical thinkers such as Arnold Toynbee and Pitirim Sorokin. Another chapter clarifies the essentially antagonistic relationship between his thought and Nazi ideology. Throughout, Hughes is carefully attuned to the complex and often bewildering shifts of Spengler's ideas and manner, providing a unified picture of the sober historian; the lofty seer; the cool, detached observer; and the impassioned participant. In his introduction to this new edition, Hughes comments on the timeliness of Spengler's message with respect to technology and environmental issues and draws some unexpected and fascinating parallels between Spengler's thought and that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Oswald Spengler offers an illuminating view of the achievements and limitations of one of the most influential and representative figures of the twentieth century. It will be of concern to intellectual historians, philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists. |
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... century , can Os- wald Spengler's The Decline of the West still speak to current con- cerns ? Four decades ago I thought so - and wrote the study of him and his work that is now being reissued . Today I am even more convinced than I was ...
... century . This polemic - for such it was - foresaw a leveling - off in theoretical scientific education ; it depicted an ambiguous struggle between man and nature ; it implied that in that conflict there was some- thing to be said in ...
... century . That cen- tury , of which Spengler felt himself to be the prophet , has now reached its half - way point . Sufficient time has passed to permit us to see Spengler in proper relation to his contemporaries and successors who ...
... century . Against his will and only because of the steady decline of the Harz mines , Oswald's father had given up the family profession and become a postal official . To this paternal inheritance , according to Spengler's friend and ...
... centuries — not years . . Thereafter I saw the present — the approaching World- War — in a quite other light . It was no longer a momentary constellation of casual facts due to national sentiments , per- sonal influences , or economic ...
Table des matières
| 1 | |
The Intellectual Temper | 14 |
The Historians and the World Outlook | 27 |
Sources and Influences | 51 |
The Morphology of Culture | 65 |
From Germany to | 89 |
The Political Phase | 98 |
Spengler and National Socialism | 120 |
The New Spenglerians | 137 |
Spengler and His Detractors | 152 |
CHRONOLOGY | 167 |
APPENDIX I | 173 |
INDEX | 189 |