Spengler's "Decline of the West"

I really like Will Durant as well. I have his massive The Age of Faith (which is an excellent reference for medieval philosophy and theology) and greatly enjoyed his Story of Philosophy. You know that both Will and Ariel lived to around 100 and then died within days of each other? I think they were Angels of Learning.

I love that sort of anecdote. Wit is something that cannot be calculated. To experience these characters not just as abstract minds but human beings embedded in their historical reality -- I like the holism of historical reading. Every thing as much in context as possible.

Have finally got round to reading this. I did get the abridged version in the end, and so far it seems to read quite satisfactorily. I wonder if the abridgment is due to Spengler's elegant yet loquacious style of prose? Very beautifully written, and so far fascinating I might add, yet I think that if ever there was a need even this abridgment could be abridged. I cannot compare it to the original, but so far it is reading like a complete and holistic philosophy, and I don't feel there is anything lacking.

So far as this work being discredited, it would seem that this can be no more discredited than Plato or Leibniz in my humble opinion.

According to Nietzsche, "Every great philosophy is... a personal confession of its creator and a kind of involuntary and unperceived memoir.". Stewart affirms this maxim in his colorful reinterpretation of the lives and works of 17th-century philosophers Spinoza and Leibniz. In November 1676, the foppish courtier Leibniz, "the ultimate insider... an orthodox Lutheran from conservative Germany," journeyed to The Hague to visit the self-sufficient, freethinking Spinoza, "a double exile... an apostate Jew from licentious Holland." A prodigious polymath, Leibniz understood Spinoza's insight that "science was in the process of rendering the God of revelation obsolete; that it had already undermined the special place of the human individual in nature." Spinoza embraced this new world. Seeing the orthodox God as a "prop for theocratic tyranny," he articulated the basic theory for the modern secular state. Leibniz, on the other hand, spent the rest of his life championing God and theocracy like a defense lawyer defending a client he knows is guilty. He elaborated a metaphysics that was, at bottom, a reaction to Spinoza and collapses into Spinozism, as Stewart deftly shows. For Stewart, Leibniz's reaction to Spinoza and modernity set the tone for "the dominant form of modern philosophy"-a category that includes Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and "the whole 'postmodern' project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought." Readers of philosophy may find much to disagree with in these arguments, but Stewart's wit and profluent prose make this book a fascinating read.

You do know that Liebniz, though a very rational man, was also the original Pangloss... He was literally the model... Those people disgraced themselves... Who wants to beat a dead philosopher...Ten cents a wack...For a little price can be purchaced a great waste of time...

I've read that book.. I agree, a good book. While I do respect Spinoza, both Nietzsche and Hegel speak well of his weaknesses. And both are also quite influenced by him. Spinoza's ethics are not so far from Nietzsche, and Hegel's system can be described as a Dynamic Spinozism -- one that addresses more successfully the Christian heritage of the free historical individual. If Spinoza made Judaism rational, then Hegel did the same with Christianity. But that's a tall statement, an hyperbole that hints.

Excellent quote, too, Jeeprs.

Yes, but any man can be satirized (catch syphilis and be hanged!), whether they be a great man or not. This does not make their philosophy any more 'false', however. Philosophy has no intrinsic value - it is only man who decides which philosophy or thought has more value than another. Surely any metaphysical (and metahistorical) system cannot, due to its very nature, be proved or disproved.

Philosophy has no intrisic value if life has no intrinsic value...

Life indeed does have no value, in and of itself. Nothing does.

Man ascibes value to it. But I think we are off topic now. :perplexed:

I have read a lot of Marx, and little of Hegel... I know the legal individual is a creation of the Catholic Church...Does Hegel give a history of this invention, and the philosophy behind it???I know that Nietzsche railed at St. Paul for his contribution to the individual, and also to individual equality...Understanding the relationship between Western Law, and Roman law under the influence, and near total control of the church, I can say that the concept of the individual was part and parcel of it, and that German tribal law would never have been broken down without the united force of the church behind the individual...The details and philosophy for the most part escape me, but I do think a history of the individual and the aguments in favor of the indivdual would be great...

Yes, Hegel examines the creation of the free historic individual. Kojeve's book examines this aspect with clarity and focus. Hegel/Kojeve conceives of history as driven by the fight for recognition. The master/slave dialectic.
In pre-Christian states, man had social value to the degree that he was willing to risk his life for the prestige of the nation. This risk of life is the only proof of the transcendence of the animal. Man must put his given-being on the line for prestige, the desire for recognition -- that which divides us from animals. Now I'm not saying I 100% agree with Hegel/Kojeve. In fact, I don't. But much of it is eye-opening. The legal individual of the Roman/Christian state is a new creation where man has value in himself, not only as part of the state. Greek tragedy is full of collisions of the personal and political. Antigone for instance. She disobeys the king to obey the unwritten or sacred law that the dead should be buried. Hegel thought Christianity was the absolute religion. But he thought the afterlife must be rejected, that anthropology should replace theology. For him, the perfect state would finally transcend the master/slave dialectic, and thus end history in the sense of history as progression of this dialectic. He also saw himself as a descriptive philosopher. His own method is not dialectical, but rather the description of history which is dialectical. This is why the owl of Minerva only appears at dusk. For Hegel, Napoleon was the bringer of the ideal state. Not that his state was actually perfect but that its essence was perfect. But Hegel thought that German philosophy would complete French politics by making it all conceptually explicit. The book is on googlebooks. Good stuff. Here's a short interpretation of it.
History and Desire in Kojeve

Life indeed does have no value, in and of itself. Nothing does.

Man ascibes value to it. But I think we are off topic now. :perplexed:

Not at all. Not having read Spengler I would hazard a guess that he would atttribute the 'decline of the west ' to just such statements as this.

This completely subjectivises morality, and, utimately, any judgement of truth. Everything then becomes a matter of opinion.

Welcome to modernity.

Anyone who has read or is reading Spengler have a comment on whether he would agree with that sentiment?

"Pure Civilisation, as a historical process, consists in a progressive taking down of forms that have become inorganic or dead."

"Then a new fact-philosophy appears, which can only spare a smile for metaphysical speculation.."

"The means whereby to identify dead forms is Mathematical law. The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy."

Spengler thought that all cultures had a life-span in the same way biological organisms do. He saw philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer as transitional philosophers on the way to pragmatism. This touches Heidegger. Culture is spiritual. Civilization is practical. That's an oversimplification, of course.

Yes, this pragmatism seems to imply the moral relativism you mention. But he doesn't spend much time on it. The Decline of the West is an inevitable decline, in his eyes. All cultures exhaust their creative possibilities at some point. You might say they become fully revealed to themselves. Nothing significant in a spiritual sense remains to be discovered. He thought our Faustian culture ran dry in 19th century.

It should be stressed that Spengler is not the least bit resentful or accusative like Nietzsche. Spengler aims at an almost-godlike detachment. You might call him a biologist of civilization. He appeals to Goethe as a guiding light and as a great philosopher.