Tim the Bore
Scholar
Spengler was one of the most primitive and misguided philosphers in the history of western thinkers. His system is based on countless contradictions, so much in fact, that even he admitted that (in the introduction to the second edition of "Der Untergang..."). The examples he used to illustrate his opinions were so wrong, he become laughing stock for everyone, who has ever seen his works. Did you actually read his books, beyond "Der Untergang..."? In "Der Mensch und die Technik" he claims that carnivores have eyes only in front of the face - while herbivorous on the sides, no exception - and because of that they only hunt in solitude. Apparently he never heard of wolves. In "Politische Pflichten..." he claims that all art should be abandoned, once and for all, because it's imposiible to create more. So according to his views even you presence here is a mistake.
Going back to "Der Untergang...", did you ever managed to understood what he meant about meaning of Wachsein and Dasein? Probably not much and you know why? Because even he couldn't do it. He wasn't the first nor the last to wrote something about the crisis of the West, he was just the loudest and most obnoxious about that. He was the one who criticized others for being to europocentric and he was the one who claimed that "muh Faustian culture" - West - was special among the others (and German nation was special among faustians) for being the only carnivorous culture that understood the meaning of "space".
Also, using his logic, majority of folks here on Codex are unable to appreciate games like, say, Pathfinder: Kingmaker or any other non-american game - because they came from different culture. In fact, enjoying this game - or even, worse, being inspired by it - would be seen as a giant mistake: you would create pseudomorphosis.
Ffs, so many smarter thinkers were forgotten by the history, and, of course, the dumbest one prevail.
So maybe instead of posting this charlatan you should actually try to be smarter than you are.
The thing with Spengler is like the thing with Freud. Freud was a charlatan, but his books are still worth reading, a) because he's a good writer, and b) because sometimes he points to deep things that aren't yet within the orbit of scientific understanding but are nevertheless real, and have to be coped with somehow.
If you think about where Freud got his stuff from, well it's mainly from the literary tradition. And the literary tradition is about noticing and savouring subtleties of human behaviour that haven't been codified, but are nevertheless real. Or again, it's like music - some of the emotions music elicits have no name, they maybe come around once in a blue moon, yet they're still solid "things" of some sort. Or like lovemaking, where the gestures and touches have an infinite range of subtlety and an unknown vocabulary of their own. There are lots of examples in life where our understanding is lacking, yet we have an intuitive sense - and we must have an intuitive sense, we have to stake our claim somewhere, because there's a truth of the matter out there, even if we haven't yet grasped it fully in conceptual terms.
So I think Spengler is like that, often wrong in details, but worth reading for a big picture take (which is necessarily going to have some details wonky).
Oh, I agree. Reading his works is a great source of information - just the sheer size of his popularty is already enough to pay attention to him. He was really good at expressing fears and worries of europeans - not even through the content of his works, but through the form itself. His main argument - that West is changing from creative culture to sterile civilisation - is persuasive and graphic as fuck. He clearly hit a sensitive spot. From historic point of view it's really worthwhile to know his stuff (that said, Spengler wasn't particularly original - he mostly combined views of others philosphers, mostly Nietzsche and Dilthey, though I guess you could say that he was the first one to do it in such a spectacular fashion. And my god, he wasn't a good writer, reading him is a road through hell. Very persuasive hell though).
But to actually consider him to be a worthwhile as a thinker and trying to apply his ideas in practice - that is absurd and that is what I was against.
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