Editing Oswald Spengler (section)

==Views==

=== Influences ===
In the introduction to ''The Decline of the West'', Spengler cites [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Johann W. von Goethe]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] as his major influences. Goethe's vitalism and Nietzsche's cultural criticism, in particular, are highlighted in his works.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=7}}

{{blockquote|I feel urged to name once more those to whom I owe practically everything: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe gave me method, Nietzsche the questioning faculty…<ref>Spengler, Oswald. [https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n12/mode/1up ''The Decline of the West'']. V. 1, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, p. xiv.</ref>}} Spengler was also influenced by the universal and cyclical vision of [[World history (field)|world history]] proposed by the German historian [[Eduard Meyer]].{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=7}} The belief in the progression of civilizations through an evolutionary process comparable with living beings can be traced back to classical antiquity, although it is difficult to assess the extent of the influence those thinkers had on Spengler: [[Cato the Elder]], [[Cicero]], [[Seneca the Younger|Seneca]], [[Florus]], [[Ammianus Marcellinus]], and later, [[Francis Bacon]], who compared different empires with each other with the help of biological analogies.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|pp=7–8}}

===''The Decline of the West'' (1918)===
{{main|The Decline of the West}}
The concept of historical philosophy developed by Spengler is founded upon two assumptions: 
* the existence of social entities called 'Cultures' (''Kulturen'') and regarded as the largest possible actors in human history, which itself had no metaphysical sense, 
* the parallelism between the evolution of those Cultures and the evolution of living beings.

Spengler enumerates nine Cultures: [[Ancient Egypt]]ian, [[Babylonia]]n, Indian, Chinese, [[Greco-Roman world|Greco-Roman]] or 'Apollonian', 'Magian' or 'Arabic' (including early and [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine Christianity]] and Islam), Mexican, [[Western world|Western]] or 'Faustian', and Russian. They interacted with each other in time and space but were distinctive due to 'internal' attributes. According to Spengler, "Cultures are organisms, and world-history is their collective biography."{{Sfn|Engels|2019|pp= 8–9}}

{{Blockquote|'Mankind'… has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. 'Mankind' is a zoological expression, or an empty word. … I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death.<ref>Spengler, Oswald. [https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n12/mode/1up ''The Decline of the West'']. V. 1, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, p. 21.</ref>}}

Spengler also compares the evolution of Cultures to the different ages of human life, "Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age." When a Culture enters its late stage, Spengler argues, it becomes a 'Civilization' (''Zivilisation''), a petrified body characterized in the modern age by technology, imperialism, and mass society, which he expected to fossilize and decline from the 2000s onward.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=10}} The first-millennium [[Near East]] was, in his view, not a transition between [[Classical antiquity|Classical Antiquity]], [[Western Christianity]], and [[Islam]], but rather an emerging new Culture he named 'Arabian' or 'Magian', explaining messianic Judaism, [[Christianity in the 1st century|early Christianity]], [[Gnosticism]], [[Mandaeism]], [[Zoroastrianism]], and Islam as different expressions of a single Culture sharing a unique worldview.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|pp=11–12}}

The great historian of antiquity [[Eduard Meyer]] thought highly of Spengler, although he also had some criticisms of him. Spengler's obscurity, intuitiveness, and mysticism were easy targets, especially for the [[positivism|positivists]] and [[neo-Kantianism|neo-Kantians]] who rejected the possibility that there was meaning in world history. The critic and aesthete Count [[Harry Graf Kessler|Harry Kessler]] thought him unoriginal and rather inane, especially in regard to his opinion on [[Nietzsche]]. Philosopher [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], however, shared Spengler's cultural pessimism. Spengler's work became an important foundation for [[social cycle theory]].<ref name="wittgen">{{cite journal |last1=Losev |first1=Alexander |title=Morphological Investigations: Wittgenstein and Spengler |journal=Philosophia: e-Journal of Philosophy and Culture|date=2012 |volume=4 |pages=79–82 |url=https://philarchive.org/archive/LOSMIW |access-date=13 October 2022 |publisher=Sophia University |location=Sophia, Bulgaria |issn=1314-5606}}</ref>

===''Prussianism and Socialism'' (1919)===
{{Excerpt|Preussentum und Sozialismus|hat=no}}{{Excerpt|Preussentum und Sozialismus#Prussian character and socialism|hat=no}}{{Excerpt|Preussentum und Sozialismus#Rebuke of Marxism and definition of "true socialism"|hat=no}}

==== Nazism and Fascism ====
Spengler was an important influence on Nazi ideology. He "provided skeletal Nazi ideas" to the early Nazi movement "and gave them a respectable pedigree".<ref name="VQR">{{cite web |last1=Dreher |first1=Carl |title=Spengler and the Third Reich |url=https://www.vqronline.org/essay/spengler-and-third-reich |website=VQR |access-date=7 February 2023 |archive-date=7 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230207131601/https://www.vqronline.org/essay/spengler-and-third-reich |url-status=live }}</ref> Key parts of his writings were incorporated into Nazi Party ideology.<ref name="VQR"/>

Spengler's criticism of the Nazi Party was taken seriously by Hitler, and Carl Deher credited him for inspiring Hitler to carry out the [[Night of the Long Knives]] in which [[Ernst Röhm]] and other leaders of the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (SA) were executed.<ref name="VQR"/> In 1934, Spengler pronounced the funeral oration for one of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives and retired in 1935 from the board of the highly influential [[Nietzsche Archive]] which was viewed as opposition to the regime.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=6}}

Spengler considered [[Judaism]] to be a "disintegrating element" (zersetzendes Element) that acts destructively "wherever it intervenes" (wo es auch eingreift). In his view, Jews are characterized by a "cynical intelligence" (zynische Intelligenz) and their "money thinking" (Gelddenken).<ref>Ulrich Wyrwa:&nbsp;Spengler, Oswald.&nbsp;In:&nbsp;Wolfgang Benz&nbsp;(Hrsg.):&nbsp;Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Bd. 2: Personen. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009,&nbsp;{{ISBN|978-3-598-44159-2}}</ref> Therefore, they were incapable of adapting to Western culture and represented a foreign body in Europe. He also clarifies in ''The Decline of the West'' that this is a pattern shared in all civilizations: He mentions how the ancient Jew would have seen the cynical, atheistic Romans of the late Roman empire the same way Westerners today see Jews. Alexander Bein argues that with these characterizations Spengler contributed significantly to the enforcement of Jewish stereotypes in pre-WW2 German circles.<ref>Alexander Bein:&nbsp;[https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1965_2_1_bein.pdf „Der jüdische Parasit“] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309180908/https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1965_2_1_bein.pdf |date=9 March 2021 }}.&nbsp;In:&nbsp;''Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte'', 13 (1965), Heft 2, p. 150.</ref>

Spengler viewed Nazi anti-Semitism as self-defeating, and personally took an [[Ethnology|ethnological]] view of race and culture.<ref name="VQR"/> In his private papers, he remarked upon "how much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!", and arguing that "when one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic."{{Sfn|Farrenkopf|2001|pp=237–38}}

Spengler, however, regarded the transformation of ultra-capitalist mass democracies into dictatorial regimes as inevitable, and he had expressed acknowledgement for [[Benito Mussolini]] and the [[National Fascist Party|Italian Fascist]] movement as a first symptom of this development.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=6}}