DOSSIER: Philosophical Perspectives on Oswald Spengler

Front matter

Foreword

By Gregory Morgan Swer

Decline of the West and Dialectic of Enlightenment – Theodor W. Adorno’s Critique of Oswald Spengler’s Relativism

Jens Paulsen

Abstract: This article examines Theodor W. Adorno's critique of Oswald Spengler’s major work The Decline of the West, aiming to situate Adorno’s articles on Spengler in the broader context of his oeuvre. It specifically highlights the connection between those texts and the Dialectic of Enlightenment and argues that Adorno’s critique of Spengler mainly targets the latter’s relativism or, to be more precise, his rejection of the idea of normative truth that eventually leads him to blatantly renounce the normative ideals of Enlightenment philosophy. In fact, Adorno’s essays on Spengler strongly suggest that the Dialectic of Enlightenment should not be read as a total critique of the concept of reason, for it is precisely its bond to the notions of reason and normative truth that distinguishes not only the thought of Adorno, but that of the early Frankfurt School in general from the critique of liberalism articulated by the intellectuals of the German radical right during the interwar period.

The Vienna Circle and its Critical Reception of Oswald Spengler

Robert Reimer

Abstract: The Vienna Circle was an influential group of philosophers in the early 20th century. Its members were dedicated to do philosophy and to conduct research in accordance with the guidelines of the scientific world-conception. For some of them, Oswald Spengler was a dangerous antagonist due to the success and influence of his metaphysical philosophy of history in Der Untergang des Abenlandes and other works. In this paper, I will explore systematically the Circle’s critical reception of Spengler regarding his methodological approaches, ontological positions, and political philosophy. I will, thereby, also evaluate the criticism brought forth against Spengler.

A Copernican Revolution in Ethics: Oswald Spengler’s Cultural Ethics and their Contemporary Relevance

Jelle van Baardewijk

Abstract: This paper discusses Spengler’s cultural philosophical interpretation of ethics. Ethics is normally considered as a discipline that argues about good and bad in a manner that applies universally to all. Spengler, however, is a relativist who shows how ethical systems relate to the culture in which they emerge during a certain historical phase. This paper outlines Spengler’s key ideas on ethics and in a ‘Spenglerian way’ reveals typical Faustian traits in contemporary normative discussions with respect to Covid-19 policies, gender, capitalism and moral talk. 

“Brave Pessimism”: The Clash of Caesarism and Democracy within Spengler’s Philosophy of History

Naif Al Bidh

Abstract: In The Hour of Decision and The Decline of the West, Spengler argued that, around the turn of the third millennium, the Western (Faustian) culture would experience the formation of Caesarism. This impending appearance of force politics occurs alongside the collapse of democracy – which Spengler merely views as a tool utilized by the forces of money and cosmopolitanism. In the second volume of his magnum opus, Spengler provides us with a critique of Western forms of journalism and the political press, foreseeing the rise of contemporary hyper commercialism. Spengler envisioned a battle between what he termed “the forces of dictatorial money-economics” and the political will-to-order of the emerging Caesarism, where the latter conquers the realm of the former. The “world-cities” are the embodiment of the forces of dictatorial money, these cosmopolitan strongholds attempting to destroy the motherland of the respective culture. Spengler claimed that the soil of the motherland creates man and his respective culture; ironically, man attempts to exploit nature and enslave it, only to be enslaved by a microcosm of his own creation – money, the cosmopolitan cities, and technics. Thus, this paper will briefly shed light on the arguments concerning the second religiousness in the West and the existential threat of Faustian (Western) technics that Spengler provides in Man and Technics, as well as the emerging hatred towards money, machine, and the city – which accompanies the forthcoming Caesarism and the ecological crisis as a result of man’s war against nature. 

Spengler’s Deconstruction of Darwinism

Dylan Pammer

Abstract: This article examines Spengler’s references to Darwinism from his corpus. Therein is an initial reconstruction of his metaphysics on History and Nature, simultaneously demarcating the foregrounds required for the comprehension of and reasoning for his critique of Darwinism. Spengler’s deconstruction of and pivoting against Darwinism is a problematic of method, due to a conflation of historical and scientific claims that are in part entailed by interpretations of Goethean morphology. A biological conception of race is then discussed through examining the conception of a Darwinian from Spengler’s milieu, and then Spengler’s own, which provides a resulting nuanced perspective on race.

On Laws of History, and Other Faustian Fictions: A Fictionalist Interpretation of Spengler’s The Decline of the West

Gregory Morgan Swer

Abstract: Most interpretations of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West offer a relativist or positivist reading of his philosophy of history, with the latter being the most common. This paper argues that any positivist account of Spengler’s philosophy of history is untenable, and that only a relativist interpretation is plausible. It differs from standard arguments for the relativist interpretation by arguing that Spengler’s philosophy be understood as a form of fictionalism. However, rather than dismissing the positivistic elements of his philosophy of history, it argues that they form a separate (albeit fictional) philosophy of history within his relativist philosophy designed to serve a heuristic purpose.

Contributing Authors