Editing German philosophy (section)

===Spengler===
[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R06610, Oswald Spengler.jpg|thumb|upright|Oswald Spengler]]
[[Oswald Spengler]] was a German [[historian]] and [[philosophy of history|philosopher of history]] whose interests included [[mathematics]], [[science]], and [[art]] and their relation to his organic theory of history. The main work of Spengler, setting out his philosophy of history, ''[[The Decline of the West]]'', was published shortly after the defeat of [[German Empire|Imperial Germany]] in [[World War I]]. In this work, Spengler predicts the inevitable collapse of the capitalist civilization, which he identifies with [[culture of Europe|European culture]]. Spengler’s philosophy is imbued with [[elitism]] and a dislike for [[democracy]]. He declared the workers (the “fourth estate”) to be “outside of culture,” “outside of history”; the mass, Spengler wrote, is the end of everything, “radical nothing.” Spengler praised the “[[Prussian virtues|Old Prussian spirit]],” the monarchy, the nobility and militarism. For him, [[war]] is “an eternal form of higher human existence.”

Spengler’s philosophy of history” is based on the denial of scientific knowledge. The historical researcher, in his opinion, is the more significant, the less he belongs to science. Spengler opposes intuition to logical, [[reason|rational]] knowledge, denying the principle of causality and regularity in social life. Spengler rejects the possibility of knowing objective truth, defending absolute [[relativism]]. Along with historical regularity, Spengler rejects the concept of historical progress, tries to prove the meaninglessness of history and the absence of development in it. Spengler contrasts the scientific understanding of natural historical development with historical fatalism – predestination, “[[destiny]].” Spengler also denies the unity of world history. His history breaks down into a number of completely independent, unique “cultures,” special organisms above and beyond, having an individual destiny and experiencing periods of emergence, flourishing and dying.

Spengler reduces the task of the philosophy of history to comprehending the “morphological structure” of each “culture,” which supposedly is based on the “soul of culture.” According to Spengler, Western European culture entered a stage of decline already starting from the 19th century, that is, with the victory of [[capitalism]]; the period of its heyday was the era of [[feudalism]]. In his work ''[[Prussianism and Socialism|Preussentum und Sozialismus]]'' Spengler advances the idea of “German socialism” against “Marxist socialism”. It has been argued that Spengler's ideas had an influence on [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] and [[German National Socialism|Nazism]]. A philosophy of history close to Spenglerian views was promoted after the Second World War by the English historian [[Arnold J. Toynbee|Arnold Toynbee]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Short Philosophical Dictionary, fifth edition|last=Rosenthal, Mark & Yudin|first=Pavel|publisher=Gospolitizdat|year=1954|publication-place=Moscow|chapter=German Philosophy|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/soviet/german-philosophy.htm|translator-last=P.|translator-first=Anton}}</ref>