Editing Oswald Spengler (section)

===''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>