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88 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating and thought-provoking, March 29, 2006
The Decline of the West is the magnum opus of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German historian and philosopher. In it, Spengler rejects the idea that the future of the West (or indeed of any culture) is an open-ended advance from the primitive past to an ever more glorious and expansive future. Instead, cultures (including the West) experience an almost organic history of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
According to Spengler, the West moved out of its Summer period with the dawn of the nineteenth century, and into a Civilization phase. This phase is dominated by mega-cities, and money and atheism come into ascendance. And what lies in the future? Caesarism, and a long period of stagnation in the arts and sciences.
Now, the above summary is inevitably bound to be overly simplistic, even to the point of being misleading. The Decline of the West was originally published as two books, and it is a deep and erudite philosophical look at the history of the world, so any small summary is bound to be insufficient to do it justice.
Having heard this work referenced so many times, I decided to read it for myself. In fact, though it does present a deterministic view of history, it does not propose a West that is about to collapse and be swept into the dustbin of history (as some people want it to). In fact, this is a cogent, penetrating look at history, which certainly seems to accurately predict how the West has developed from the first book's initial publication in 1918.
Now, I must admit that like many scholarly books of the era, this one has a dense, thickly argued text that makes for some very heavy reading indeed. But, if you are willing to devote time to the reading of this book, and more time to digest what it has to say, you will be rewarded with one of the fascinating and thought-provoking look at the modern West. Are we at the End of History, or the end of the West? Read this book and find out.
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63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Early Postmodern View of the History of the West, January 25, 2006
This postmodern chronicle of the western world by early 20th century German historian and philosopher, Oswald Spengler, offers a lot for today's reader despite its flaws. It's an incredibly rich and complex analysis, attacking the causal factors of the development of western culture on many fronts simultaneously: historically, scientifically, artistically, architecturally, ecclesiastically, and so much more. This book is capable of describing many different aspects of western culture to many different readers, depending on who they happen to be and what their interest in western history is. I will only mention three aspects of Spengler's work in my review, since these aspects are what grabbed my attention, bearing in mind that the book contains much more than what I touch on here.
A. Spengler, a westerner himself, constructs detailed accounts in describing the historical development of western Europe. One of his main theses is a distinction between culture and civilization, which he derives from a credible, if difficult to falsify model for a universal cycle of human cultural growth, followed by decline into advanced civilization. For those familiar with biological theory, Spengler's model is essentially a growth curve. The familiar biological model is the lag phase, then the log phase, followed by the stationary phase, and ending in the death phase; which repeats itself virtually ad infinitum. In Spengler's model he labels these phases, respectively, after the seasons, beginning with spring and ending with winter. The spring-time of a people is a mythical phase, where settled economic life grows from a rural peasantry. This is followed by the summer, or cultural phase of strong and dynamic growth in all important aspects of a people; of economic, religious, martial, and other relevant human impulses. Then comes the fall, where dogma forms. Where adult-like reason takes root from the innocent cultural phase and puritan oversight of national religion and government begin to set hard like concrete. Finally, the winter of a people is when the national personality and traditions lose their effectiveness. Civilized and urbane money and economic issues tend to become preimminent over the cultural issues. Technology and irreligion become rampant. This cycle is not a modern phenomena, but repeats itself as seen in ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Aztec civilizations; and again, currently in America.
B. Spengler's style in elucidating a history of the west, and developing an hypothesis of universal and collective human behavior, is punctuated by the era in which he wrote: the early 20th century. Much of the historical analysis before and after this era lacks the materialist, psychoanalytical, and structural influence that typified thinking and literature when Spengler wrote. Published in 1926, The Decline of the West contains that biting air of criticism and structuralism so fecund in those times. This critical structural analysis gives Spengler's work a sharper contrast and greater depth of field than would likely have been possible for a writer from before or after Spengler's time. This is not to take away from Spengler's native insight and acuity, which was nevertheless, likely heightened by the charged literary atmosphere of early 20th century Germany.
C. The way Spengler psychoanalyzes the structure of history through art and architecture is almost wholey absent from the majority of standard historical analyses. Reading Spengler makes one aware of this common lack. This is one of the strong points of this book, since art and architecture express so much of what a culture is and why it thinks in the ways it does.
All in all, despite the typical fallacies of sex and race Spengler repeats, once could say this is a seminal work describing western development and thought which no student of history should leave unopened. An advantage of reading this book today instead of when it was originally released is the internet. If you lack truly comprehensive powers of recall regarding the art and architecture Spengler uses to analyze his subject cultures, then using the internet to pull up the various paintings, sculptures, and architectural examples is most helpful as an active part of reading this work; turning what could otherwise be a dry, boring read into something more alive that captures what the author is trying to convey. If possible, bring up the actual images of the art and architecture Spengler describes at the moment you're reading about it. This gave me a more graphic and focused perspective of the cultures he analyzes. Reading this book was like experiencing a kaleidoscope of mind candy.
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89 of 100 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
BEWARE - THIS IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE, August 9, 2007
This paperback edition is NOT "The Decline of the West" by Ostwald Spengler. It is an abridgement of that work perpetrated by one Arthur Helps apparently from a German abrdigement by Helmut Werner and an English translation (of the original or the abridgement?) by Charles Francis Atkinson. So if you buy this, you're not buying Spengler (leave aside the issue of how much of Spengler you're getting when you have to read it in translation - who would want to give up all the literature in the world written in languages he doesn't read?). What you're buying is sort-of Spengler.
Now, in fairness, at 400+ pages this isn't exactly the Classic Comic Book retellng of Spengler's long and complex work. But it isn't that work either. And it is very hard to tell this from the Amazon announcement or description of the book. And that's simply wrong. It's a deception. I don't think it's one that was done to trick people. It's more likely the product of sloppiness or inattention.
Some people may believe that a shortened Spengler is just fine for their purposes. I have no disagreement with them. My concern is that those who, like me, would never have even considered buying an abridgement of a book like this can be misled into doing so by an inaccurate description of what the book is.
So now I have a book to return instead of to read. I hope to save someone else that inconvenience.
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