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Spengler sunset Europe summary chapter by chapter. The decline of Europe: what Oswald Spengler warned about. Why was Spengler criticized?

What is history? An endless stream of time, on the banks of which important events of the past lie, or a change of epochs that are born, exist and die, thereby opening the doors to a new generation? In The Decline of Europe, Oswald Spengler leaned towards the second scenario. He believed that there are cultures that become civilizations, and then, having outlived their own, disappear. A summary of Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" will help to understand this issue.

A little about the author

Oswald Spengler was born on May 29, 1880 in the small provincial town of Blankenburg into the family of a postal official. In 1891, the Spengler family moved to another city. Here Oswald has the opportunity to study Latin, mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences. Finishing his studies at the university, he defended his thesis "Metaphysical foundations of the philosophy of Heraclitus", received a doctorate in philosophy and began teaching in Hamburg.

At first he works as a mathematics teacher, at the same time he tries to engage in journalism, but after the Nazis came to power and confiscated one of his books, he began to lead a solitary life. He died on May 8, 1936, shortly before his death, he suggested that the Third Reich would not last even ten years. He turned out to be right.

Philosophical views

The author of The Decline of Europe, Oswald Spengler, was a unique personality in his own way. His ideas resonated in wide circles of scientists. Spengler's views concerning the historical development of nations and culture were especially popular.

The main subject of Spengler's philosophical research was the morphology of world history. He studied the originality of world cultures, which he considered as full and unique organic forms. Spengler did not want to accept the generally accepted classification of historical eras. The ancient world, the Middle Ages, the New Age - all this was too boring, wrong and simple, moreover, it gave rise to more questions than answers. And it is difficult to apply such a classification to societies of non-European origin.

Fully realizing this problem, Spengler proposed to look at world history from a different angle. The summary of "The Decline of Europe" by Oswald Spengler fully reflects his main ideas.

The scientist is sure that world history should be considered as a cluster of cultures independent of each other that exist like living organisms. They also have points of beginning and end, periods of prosperity and decline. This position of Spengler completely leveled the standard idea of ​​the historical process. He said that history has a cyclic order of formation, during which cultures independent of each other were born and died.

Ideological basis

Like representatives of classical German philosophy of the 19th century, Spengler distinguished between the sciences of nature and the spirit. He often repeated: "The means for knowing dead forms is the law, the means for understanding living ones is analogy." But Spengler was sure that only natural disciplines should be called sciences, but not history at all. He does not want to perceive the process of the formation of mankind as a linear paradigm. The history of world development is presented to the German philosopher in the form of the birth and decline of individual cultures, which he speaks about in The Decline of Europe. In the book, Spengler describes the basic principles of the relationship between culture and civilization, which can be considered the ideological basis of the work:

• Culture is the main content of history.
• Culture, like a person, has stages of growing up: childhood, youth, maturity, old age.
• Culture is human individuality at the highest level.
• Every new culture has a new worldview.
• Every culture has its own civilization.

About the book

With the work "The Decline of Europe" Spengler influenced the formation of the philosophical thought of thousands, and even millions of readers. The first publication was published in 1918, after the end of the First World War. Many researchers of Spengler's life and work note that it was the war that became the impetus that made the philosopher's ideas popular among readers. After all, no matter how you look at it, this book is prophetic in its own way. Its main idea and the predicted outcomes of events became a reality decades later. Therefore, without a brief summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe", it will be difficult to understand the ideas of the writer and philosopher, which have come true and are just as relevant in the future that has already come.

"The Decline of Europe" is a two-volume work, which contains two main ideas. The first says that the European civilization is just one of many, and it is in no way superior to the rest. The second idea is more difficult to understand: a civilization is a certain period of time describing a culture during its decline. And in order to deal with this, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with at least a summary of O. Spengler's “The Decline of Europe”.

"The Fall of Europe"

The book, published in 1918, volume 1 of "The Decline of Europe" by O. Spengler, is called "The Fall of Europe". Speaking in general terms, in this volume the author outlined the existence of the main world cultures, independent of each other. He paid special attention to the Egyptian, Indian and Chinese. In the same volume, Spengler predicts the imminent fall of European culture, which will entail the industrialization and urbanization of society.

The retelling of the summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" should begin with a description of the problem that the author poses to the reader. The first volume begins with a description of the forms of world history. Spengler brings to the attention of the public the main problem of the early twentieth century: "How to determine the historical future of mankind, if historians are forced to use a limited linear form of dividing history: the Ancient World - the Middle Ages - the New Age?".

Despite the fact that this triad of historical division was supported by the outstanding minds of mankind (including Marx and Weber), Spengler was against it. Why? First of all, because of the obvious decline of European culture at the beginning of the 20th century, which gave rise to the First World War and the revolution in Russia. Spengler declared European socialism a phase in the decline of culture. It was rationalism and the desire for political and economic power that the author considered as signs of the decline of Western European culture, that is, as Europe's transition to the stage of civilization.

Culture, history, nature, crisis

Continuing the retelling of the summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe", it is worth mentioning that the author gave answers to global questions:

• What is culture?
• What is world history?
• What is the difference between the existence of the world as history and the existence of the world as nature?
• What is the great crisis of our time?

According to Spengler's work, by culture he meant the greatest form of life, the historical superorganism, which, like all organisms, is mortal. From this definition the following emerges by itself: world history is a stream of existence of superorganisms. Spengler identifies eight main cultures. Each of them has its own forms: language, people, era, state, art, law, worldview, etc. According to Spengler, each of these cultures hides its own face, in fact, he talks about this already in the second chapter of the book “Physiognomy and systematics".

Modern ethnic groups strive to have a face unlike others. This is manifested in a zealous attitude to their language, culture, mentality. Actually, as the philosopher said 100 years ago: "All sciences will be parts of a single physiognomy of mankind." Spengler was sure that culture can be studied not only with the help of physiognomy, but also with the help of systematics, that is, a causal relationship. As for the relationship between history and nature, Spengler puts forward a version that reality becomes nature, which is history.

The tragedy of mankind and the beginning of civilization

Spengler insisted that humanity has no purpose, idea or plan. It exists like butterflies or orchids. It is born, exists and dies. According to Spengler, world history is a picture of the eternal birth, change, formation and dying of organic forms, and the philosopher considers culture to be such organic forms.

In the first volume, the author talks about his vision of civilization. In general, this word is used to denote the opposite of a barbaric and savage lifestyle. Spengler, on the other hand, believed that this was the last period of the next cultural era - each culture ends with its own civilization. To understand what the philosopher is talking about, it is worth referring to such examples as the heyday and degeneration of Ancient Rome and Egypt.

Spengler also noted that any power that appears during the development of a particular culture is a sign of imperialism, which precedes the transformation of culture into civilization. Urbanization of megacities, a clear distinction between "center" and "province" - these are the main signs of civilization, which will lead to the end of the next cultural era.

Appealing to readers, Spengler advised them to deal with technology rather than lyrics, navigation instead of painting, or politics instead of the theory of knowledge.

"World-Historical Perspectives"

In 1922, the 2nd volume of "The Decline of Europe" by Spengler was published. In this work, he continues to develop his ideas, but in a more local sense. He highlights two main themes:

1. History must be perceived morphologically.
2. European culture has been transformed into a civilization, that is, it has entered an era of decay.

It is better to consider a summary of the chapters of "The Decline of Europe" by O. Spengler, referring to the second volume of his work. Thus, in the first paragraph, "Origin and Landscape", the author draws an analogy of culture with an organic being, considering its "microcosm" and its own cosmic, bodily existence. Considers the problems of attitude and thinking of living organisms. Describes in detail the behavior of animals and plants, finding various characteristics and similarities. Talks about what thinking is and how it caused a split in human society. And in conclusion, he adds that "features of animality are possessed by everyone who does not have the ability to think." Develops the idea that world history consists of two main aspects: the existence of individual cultures and the relationship between them.

The second chapter of the second volume is called "Cities and Peoples". Here Spengler introduces such a concept as the "soul of the city." In history, you can find more than a dozen situations when the moods of the masses are revealed, which can be safely attributed to manifestations of the human soul. In addition, this sincerity can be applied not only to a particular city, but also to a particular culture. Spengler considers the concept of "people" as the most frequently used in modern historical science. Spengler assures that the people are a conscious relationship, and not scientific pseudo-realities.

In the fourth chapter, The State, Spengler examines the problem of estates, in particular the nobility and the clergy, which he identifies with the male and female currents of history. In the fifth chapter, he considers the forms of economic life and the problems of money in the development of culture.

Basic moments

Conducting a characterization of the work "The Decline of Europe" by Oswald Spengler, we can say the following:

• In the course of world historical development, eight main cultures were distinguished, which were in no way connected with each other. They arose and died, leaving behind a new civilization and prerequisites for the emergence of a new cultural environment.
• Complementing his idea of ​​different cultures, Spengler introduces the idea of ​​racial theory, according to which there are "white" and "colored" cultures. "Whites" are characterized by the emergence of various kinds of revolutions. "Colored" cultures are characteristic of peoples who have not yet come to technical development.
• Culture is a living organism.

Interpretation

Oswald Spengler painted his ideas during 1918-1922. Since that time, The Decline of Europe has been reprinted more than once. The books of the German philosopher have been translated into many languages, which causes several blocks of perception. Long before O. Spengler's 1993 "The Decline of Europe" came out into the world, the author was hailed as a prophet of his time. Thomas Mann, Fedor Stepun, Yeats, Yakov Bukshpan - they all saw in Spengler a soothsayer who predicted the decline of Western Europe.

But then reviews of the work acquire many shades, his words are interpreted in their own way, and over time, Spengler's work begins to be considered in a politicized manner. Goebbels calls Spengler's ideas racist and anti-Semitic, while he does not condemn the philosopher, but on the contrary, he tries to find adherents of racism with his help. True, at one time Spengler protested such a statement.

In Russia, the name of Spengler began to be mentioned only in connection with criticism of Western anti-capitalism. In the 50s, a new trend of interpretation began to develop: Spengler became an authoritative figure for anti-colonial movements.

“The Decline of Europe” is interpreted differently by everyone. But if Spengler saw all the possible interpretations of his work, he would just dismiss it, because you cannot predict the fate of your statement. Each proposal and theory has its own biography, and the author is absolutely not able to control their fate.

Spengler was the spirit of his time. In his work, a certain tragedy and romanticism of the story can be traced. Inspired by the ideas of Nietzsche and Goethe, Spengler created his own world, his theory, idea and reflections, thus inscribing himself on the pages of history.

"Living cultures die" - this is how O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" begins in Svasyan's translation. And already this sentence is more than enough to understand the depth of philosophical thought and the extraordinary thinking of the German philosopher.

Oswald Spengler's (1880-1936) book "The Decline of Europe" has become one of the most significant and controversial masterpieces in the field of sociology of culture, philosophy of history and philosophy of culture. "The Decline of Europe" is a work that contains the biological philosophy of history: cultures are the same living organisms that are born, grow, mature, grow old and wither. World history is an alternation and coexistence of different cultures, each of which has a unique soul.

The culturological concept of Spengler is based on a comparison and, for the most part, on the opposition of culture and civilization.

In world history, Spengler identifies eight types of cultures that have reached the fullness of their development - these are antiquity and Western Europe, Arab culture, Egypt, Babylon, India, China and Mayan culture. For Spengler, their existence at different times in the most remote territories of the planet is evidence not of a single world process, but of the unity of the manifestation of culture in all its diversity. Culture according to Spengler is a historical individual that has developed over the centuries, a historical and cultural integrity, the essence of which is formed by religion. The term civilization Spengler designates the last, inevitable phase of any culture. Civilization as an exclusively technical-mechanical phenomenon is opposed to culture as the realm of organic life. Civilization, having the same characteristics in all cultures, is an expression of the withering away of the whole as an organism, the extinction of the culture that animates it, the return of culture to non-existence.

According to Spengler, every culture is based on the soul, and culture is a symbolic body, the life embodiment of this soul. But all living things eventually die. A living being is born in order to realize his spiritual powers, which then fade away with old age and go into oblivion along with death. This is the fate of all cultures. Spengler does not explain the origins and causes of the birth of cultures, but on the other hand, their further fate is drawn by him with all possible expressiveness.

“Each culture passes through the age stages of an individual. Each has its own childhood, its own youth, its own maturity and old age.

Spengler connects the death of culture with the advent of the era of civilization. “Civilization is the inevitable fate of culture, the Future West is not an unlimited movement forward and upward, along the line of our ideals... Modernity is a phase of civilization, not culture. In this regard, a number of vital contents disappear as impossible... As soon as the goal is achieved, and all the fullness of internal possibilities is completed and implemented outside, culture suddenly freezes, it dies, its blood coagulates, its forces break - it becomes a civilization. And she, a huge withered tree in a primeval forest, can bristle her rotten branches for many centuries to come.”

Culture is based on inequality, on qualities. Civilization is imbued with a desire for equality, it wants to settle in numbers. Culture is aristocratic, civilization is democratic.

Spengler dwells on the consideration of three historical cultures: ancient, European and Arab. They correspond to three "souls" - the Apollonian, which chose the sensual body as its ideal type; the Faustian soul, symbolized by boundless space, dynamism; magical soul, expressing the constant duel between soul and body, the magical relationship between them. From this follows the content of each of the cultures. For Spengler, all cultures are equal; each of them is unique and cannot be condemned from an external position, from the position of another culture. The phenomenon of other cultures speaks a different language. For other people there are other truths. For the thinker, either all of them or none of them are valid. Having concentrated his attention not on logic, but on the soul of culture, he was able to accurately notice the uniqueness of the European soul, the image of which can (as the author himself believes) be the soul of Goethe's Faust - rebellious, striving to overcome the world with its will.

Spengler believes that each culture has not only its own art, but also its own natural science and even its own unique nature, because.

nature is perceived by man through culture. “Each culture already has a completely individual way of seeing and knowing the world - as nature”, or - one and the same thing - “each has its own, peculiar nature, which in exactly the same form cannot be possessed by any person of a different warehouse. But to an even higher degree, each culture has its own type of history, in the style of which it directly contemplates, feels and experiences general and personal, internal and external, world-historical and biographical development”1.

For Spengler, in the modern world, culture is preserved only in the peasantry, which is subjected to pressure from civilization.

“The peasantry, rooted in the soil itself, living outside the walls of large cities, which from now on - skeptical, practical, artificial - alone are representatives of civilization, this peasantry no longer counts. "People" is now considered the urban population, an inorganic mass, something fluid. The peasant is by no means a democrat - after all, this concept is also part of the mechanical urban existence - therefore, the peasant is neglected, ridiculed, despised and hated. After the disappearance of the old estates, the nobility and the clergy, he is the only organic man, the only surviving remnant of culture.

Spengler names eight great cultures: Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Classical or Apollonian (Greco-Roman), Arabic or Magical, Mexican and Western or Faustian (arising about 1000 years ago AD). He points to the possibility of the emergence of a great Russian culture. Of these cultures, the Mexican died a violent death, the Arab and Russian underwent partial suppression and destruction at an early stage of development.

Each great culture is based on its own pra-symbol, which determines its main features: the way of thinking, the nature of science and philosophy, art and beliefs.

Spengler does not answer the question about the causes of the emergence of great and driving factors in the development of cultures. In his opinion, the principle of causality is not applicable to history, and therefore the birth of great cultures is always an inexplicable secret choice made by cosmic forces and lying outside the scope of causal understanding. The development of culture is determined by the "historical logic of fate."

Spengler method

"The Decline of Europe" consists of two voluminous volumes. The first of them is called "Gestalt and Reality" or "Image and Reality", the second - "World-Historical Perspectives". As the name implies, Spengler considers the influence of social thought on the development of culture, or rather, the deployment in time of a collective image-idea that is embodied in culture. Spengler does not use such terms. He uses the term "soul", using it in a specific sense, which turns out to be surprisingly prolific, since it leads to a host of important and profound conclusions. Thought, idea, soul, according to Spengler, materializes in culture, passing through a series of life stages.

The method used by the German thinker is comparison, analogy. He considers it a means of knowing living forms, which are cultures. In modern terminology - civilizations, but Spengler distinguishes between these concepts, defining civilization as a stage in the transition of culture to that phase, which in theory Lev Gumilyov roughly corresponds to the end of the inertial period, and according to Spengler - to the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Civilization is the decline of culture. Spengler, like Nikolai Danilevsky, argues that any culture, like a living organism, goes through a number of epochs in its development, starting with birth and ending with death. They are also symbolized by the seasons, starting in spring, when new life is born, and ending in winter, when everything is a thing of the past (it is not for nothing that Spengler is referred to as the so-called philosophy of life).

According to Spengler, the basis of any culture is the soul as a kind of transpersonal idea to be realized(which in modern terms is close to the collective unconscious). "Culture is born at the moment when a great soul awakens and exfoliates from the primeval state of eternally infant humanity ... Culture dies when this soul has already realized the full sum of its capabilities in the form of peoples, languages, creeds, arts, states, sciences ... It becomes a civilization" he writes.

Spengler represents European culture in the form of its symbol - Faust, and the Faustian soul is the basis of this culture. She seeks to overcome all obstacles, strive for infinity, towards her goal - to comprehend the laws of the universe and establish her power over nature and people. "Western European natural sciences occupy a very special place, characteristic only for this culture. From the very beginning they served not theology, but the will to power through technology," the German philosopher notes.

Stages of Western Civilization

Western culture, according to Spengler, was born in the 9th century, and Nikolai Danilevsky agrees with him on this, Arnold Toynbee, Lev Gumilyov, Samuel Huntington. They all celebrate this time as the birth of Western civilization. It was at this time Europe begins to comprehend Christianity in a special way, shaping the emerging new spiritual life in the form of new dogmas.

The spiritual spring of the West, Spengler considers the period up to the XIV century, beginning in architecture with the "pre-dawn" Romanesque style and turning into "morning" gothic, and in philosophy - in high scholasticism. This is the birth and maturation of the European myth as an expression of a special feeling of God.

Spiritual summer conditionally begins in the 15th century with a protest against the great spring forms. This is the birth of Protestantism, the beginning of a purely philosophical formulation of the worldview, the birth of rationalism and the impoverishment of the religious principle. "All early art is religious," says Spengler. And the New Age in Europe undoubtedly begins with its weakening. In architecture, this corresponds to the transition from intense, stormy Gothic to calm baroque.

Spiritual autumn Spengler conditionally refers to the period from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th centuries, expressed in a relaxed style. rococo. This is the birth of English sensationalism, the ideas of enlightenment, the cult of the omnipotence of reason, comprehended in the form of great final systems - Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and others. It is hard to disagree with this, at least with regard to Kant, who summed up the rationalist philosophy of the West and, as is now clear, comprehended it as an unprovable and non-universal phenomenon.

Spiritual winter, Spengler calls the era that is considered to be the beginning of accelerated progress that started in the 19th century. This is materialism, the cult of science, personal happiness, but at the same time, emerging skepticism, pessimism and decadence, and in architecture - empty and shapeless city buildings.

Spengler traces these stages in art, philosophy and science, as well as political forms. He comprehends mathematics and its role as a mirror in the history of the West in a completely original way - as it can be traced in architecture, philosophy, and music. In its depth, it is accessible to very few, he argues. "Numbers are the structures of pure thinking freed from sensory perception," writes Spengler. With regard to Western culture, he brilliantly succeeded.

Tolerance is a sign of a decline in vitality

Spengler identifies eight great cultures in history: Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, ancient, Arabic, European. He traces their "simultaneous" epochs, although he naturally pays the most attention to Europe. He points out many signs of its decline. For example, the completion of art.

"A long game with dead forms, which are trying to preserve the illusion of living art." It is the disappearance of original authors, leaving only compilers. The disappearance of unified rational forms and the transition to sub-individual rationality (postmodern, "human rights", multiculturalism, various minorities). The movement of huge masses of the population to the city and the liberation from the land. Rejection of the family and the search for "reasons" for the birth of children. As well as the migration of huge masses of a foreign population to empty lands, which did not exist at the beginning of the 20th century, but which can be observed at the beginning of this one.

Spengler does not draw a direct parallel with the edict Caracalla 212, who granted Roman citizenship to every free citizen of the empire. But he sees it as a stage in the legalization of a foreign element in a phase of decline. Parallels arise with today's Europe, which almost openly admits the inferiority of its culture in comparison with foreigners (multiculturalism, tolerance).

By the way, Spengler mentions tolerance in the context of religious consciousness. "The degree of piety that a given era is capable of is measured by its attitude towards tolerance," he writes, arguing that tolerance manifests itself either when a culture lives on the divine, or when there is nothing like that anymore. The indifference and impotence of the people of the modern West vividly illustrates this.

In general, Spengler attaches great importance to religion as an embryo in which the soul is contained and from which all subsequent culture unfolds in time and space. Christianity, he argues, has gone through two eras of great ideological movement: in 0-500 years. in the East and in 1000-1500. in the West. The third, "simultaneous" to them, will come in the first half of the next millennium in Russian World. Indeed, there is a religious upsurge in Russia. The fact that part of society perceives it as a rollback "back" can be found in Spengler's following explanation.

Future of the Russian World

Russia of the last centuries, the German philosopher calls historical pseudomorphosis when the alien and old Western culture dominates the new Russian culture with such force that it has nothing to breathe and it is not able to create its own expressive forms and does not achieve its own self-consciousness. This period is counted from Peter the Great, which forcibly squeezes the primitive (i.e., original, childish) Russian soul into the alien forms of the late baroque, and then enlightenment, clogging the sprouts of the emerging Russian culture. It should be noted that Spengler always has in mind Russian culture as an expression of the Russian soul, i.e., speaking in a modern term, in a civilizational sense, and not in an ethnic one. In his opinion, the peculiar Russian soul itself is born with Ivan III, who finally threw power Hordes, and through the last Rurikovich leads to the first Romanov and Peter. He puts this era in line with the era Merovingian in the West, and Petra - Charlemagne. But if the latter with all his energy prevented the establishment of the dominance of the Moorish-Byzantine spirit, paving the way for European culture proper, then Peter became an evil genius for Rus' choosing imitation of the West.

"The people were squeezed into an artificial and invented history. Late arts, sciences, enlightenment, social ethics, the materialism of the cities of the world were introduced, although at that time religion was the only language in which a person could communicate with the world. In the vastness of a country that did not have cities , populated by the peasantry, cities of a foreign style grew like tumors. Everything that arose after that, the truly Russian people perceived as poison and lies, "writes Spengler, who deeply felt the drama of the Russian soul and culture of the 18th-19th centuries.

He notes that in tsarist Russia there was no bourgeoisie and no classes at all in the European sense, but only peasants and gentlemen. "Society" existed on its own, being a product of Western culture and alien to the people.

in the face Fyodor Dostoyevsky And Lev Tolstoy Spengler sees two great symbols - the young Russian soul and the late Western one. The first was a peasant in spirit, the second was a citizen of the world, obsessed with the social problems of the late civilization of cities.

"Tolstoy is an entirely great mind, "enlightened" and "socially directed." Everything that he sees around him takes on a late-city, Western form of a problem. He stands in the middle between Peter the Great and Bolshevism. This is not an apocalyptic, but a spiritual opposition. hatred of property has a political economic character, hatred of society has a socio-economic character, hatred of the state is a political theory," says Spengler.

Dostoevsky does not see this at all, since he is above everything social. His consciousness is thoroughly religious, the Bolsheviks saw their worst enemy in him, the philosopher believes, while the true Russian is a student of Dostoevsky, although he did not read it or is not able to read it at all. He himself is a part of Dostoevsky and lives by religious ideas, not by social problems. This observation, it must be admitted, is not without depth, since the key questions for Russians always come down to the metaphysical, in particular to justice, which is generally incomprehensible to the Western mind and cannot be adequately translated into European languages, because has by no means a social (contrary to popular belief) origin.

Russian life perceives thinking with money as a sin and only wants to exchange its immediate needs.

"The Russian does not fight capital, no: he does not recognize it. Whoever reads Dostoevsky will foresee young humanity here, for which there is still no money at all, but only good in relation to life, the center of which lies not on the part of the economy. "Horror surplus value" is the misunderstood literary guise of the fact that buying money with money is blasphemy, and if it is rethought on the basis of the emerging Russian religion, it is a sin," writes Spengler.

He can be credited with the fact that, as a European, he recognized Western culture, alien and imposed on Russia from above, which created within the people a "high society", Western-like and despising the people. Spengler's thoughts about the Russian consciousness are very deep and have not lost their relevance, since the problem of the Western "elite" is as acute as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, and the future of the Russian World will largely depend on its solution.

End of democracy

The West, Spengler is sure, is in an irreversible phase of decline, which has a number of signs. One of them is the primacy of money. He clearly points to the XVII-XVIII centuries. as at the time when politics begins to be done with the help of money, and he blames it on England. He does not mention the creation of the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century, but clearly notes the transformation of money into an abstraction, which exactly corresponds to the emergence of paper money and the new form of domination associated with it. In the 21st century, the introduction of electronic "money" develops this idea.

Spengler states end of western democracy, which saves only the appearance of democracy, but in fact "the center of gravity of big politics is redistributed to private circles and the will of individuals." An amazing observation for its time. He also argues that reality is entirely created by the press - or the media, as we would say today.

“The people, like a crowd of readers, are taken out into the streets, and it breaks down on them, rushes to the designated target, threatens and breaks windows. A nod to the press headquarters - and the crowd calms down and goes home,” as if he were writing about “color revolutions.”

He notes that "everyone is allowed to say what he wants; however, the press is also free to choose whether to pay attention to it or not." Spengler also notes the preservation of critical thinking in a very narrow circle of people.

"The book world, with its abundance of points of view, forcing thinking to choose and criticize, has become mainly the property of only narrow circles," the German philosopher admits.

He points to the inevitable end of democracy and the transition to a state where only force is decisive. Spengler calls this Caesarism. Here are the lines that are written as if today.

"The only morality that the logic of things allows today is the morality of a climber on a steep ridge. A moment of weakness - and it's all over. All of today's "philosophy" is nothing but internal capitulation and self-relaxation."

The now popular "philosophy" of success, comfort, relaxation, health, entertainment (and people's belief in these "values" of a "civilized world" that supposedly will last forever) very exactly corresponds to this definition. However, before our eyes, all this is being replaced by aggressive feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism and other forms - not even cultural expansion, no - a cultural war of annihilation. The natural and only counteraction to this can only be sovereignty. Spengler attaches great importance to it.

"Sovereignty, sovereignty-life symbol of the highest order. The strength of leadership is an undeniable sign of the vitality of political unity, to such an extent that the shock of existing authority turns the whole nation into the object of someone else's politics, and very often forever," he warns.

Meaning of "The Decline of Europe"

The significance of Spengler's work is enormous even a hundred years later. He is an example of contextual thinking, as opposed to supposedly universal ideas and values ​​that turn out to be Western ("the need for Western European self-awareness is to sum up a kind of final balance in one's own person"). It can be said that exposing the imaginary universality of Western ideas is one of the main tasks solved by the author. And masterfully solved by him, which is shown in hundreds of examples.

"The Decline of Europe" is valuable in that it forms figurative and symbolic thinking, practically lost by modern man, cut off both from the earth and from the culture of his ancestors. Spengler elevates the meaning of the symbol and image to the highest level and points to their ubiquity. The ability to see events as a symbol, sign, image, concentrating an era in itself, is one of the crowning tricks of the German philosopher.

Finally, Spengler's work is a deep outline of the history of the West, considered by him on an extremely large scale, but in thousands of details, which makes it expressive and attractive. It's worth it to be sure.

"FALL OF THE WEST" AND GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY
(public introduction)

A public introduction is not written for professionals.

This is an appeal to the reader who opens Spengler's book and has no prejudice. Our wish is to look at the “Contents” of “The Decline of Europe”, evaluate the scale of the topic stated in the “Introduction”, the material and the way it is presented in the next six chapters, and it will be difficult for you to disagree with N. A. Berdyaev and S. L. Frank in the fact that O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" is indisputably the most brilliant and remarkable, almost a brilliant phenomenon in European literature since Nietzsche. These words were spoken in 1922, when the phenomenal success of Spengler's book (in two years, from 1918 to 1920, 32 editions of volume 1 were published) made her idea the subject of close attention of the outstanding minds of Europe and Russia.

"Der Untergang des Abendlandes" - "The Fall of the West" (as they also translate "The Decline of Europe") was published in two volumes by Spengler in Munich in 1918-1922. Collection of articles by N. A. Berdyaev, Ya. M. Bukshpan, A. F. Stepun, S. L. Frank "Oswald Spengler and the Decline of Europe" was published by the publishing house "Bereg" in Moscow in 1922. In Russian "The Fall of the West ” sounded like “The Decline of Europe” (V. 1. “Image and Reality”). The publication, translated by N. F. Garelin, was carried out by L. D. Frenkel in 1923 (Moscow - Petrograd) with a preface by prof. A. Deborin "The Death of Europe, or the Triumph of Imperialism", which we omit.

The unusually semantic and informative “Content” of the book “The Decline of Europe” is in itself a way of presenting the author of his work to the reading public, almost forgotten in our time. This is not a list of topics, but a multidimensional, voluminous, intellectual, colorful and attractive image of precisely the “Decline” of Europe as a phenomenon of world history.

And immediately the eternal theme “The Form of World History” begins to sound, which introduces the reader to the topical problem of the 20th century: how to determine the historical future of mankind, being aware of the limitations of the visually popular division of world history by the generally accepted scheme “Ancient world - Middle Ages - New time?"

Let us note that Marx also divided world history into triads, dialectically generated by the development of productive forces and the class struggle. In the famous triad “Subjective spirit - Objective spirit - Absolute spirit” of Hegel, world history is given a modest place as one of the stages of the externally universal self-realization of the world spirit in law, morality and the state, the stage on which the absolute spirit only steps in order to appear in forms of art adequate to itself. , religion and philosophy.

However, that Hegel and Marx, Herder and Kant, M. Weber and R. Collingwood! Look through history textbooks: they still introduce world history in the same way that they did at the beginning of the 20th century. questioned Spengler and in which the New Age is only expanded by the Newest History, allegedly beginning in 1917. The newest period of world history in school textbooks is still interpreted as the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to communism.

The mystical trinity of epochs is highly attractive to the metaphysical taste of Herder, Kant and Hegel, Spengler wrote. We see that it is not only for them: it is acceptable for the historical-materialistic taste of Marx, it is also acceptable for the practical-axiological taste of Max Weber, i.e., for the authors of any philosophy of history, which they consider to be some final stage in the spiritual development of mankind. Even the great Heidegger, wondering what is the essence of the New Age, relied on the same triad.

What disgusted Spengler in this approach, why already at the beginning of the 20th century. such absolute standards and values ​​as the maturity of the mind, humanity, the happiness of the majority, economic development, enlightenment, the freedom of peoples, the scientific worldview, etc., he could not accept as principles of the philosophy of history, explaining its formational, stage, epochal division ( “like some kind of tapeworm, tirelessly building up epoch after epoch”)?

What facts did not fit into this scheme? Yes, first of all, the obvious decadence (i.e., “fall” - from cado - “I fall” (lat.)) of the great European culture in the late XIX - early XX centuries, which, according to Spengler's morphology of history, generated the First World War, erupted in the center of Europe, and the socialist revolution in Russia.

The world war as an event and the socialist revolution as a process in the Marxist formation concept are interpreted as the end of the capitalist social formation and the beginning of the communist one. Spengler interpreted both of these phenomena as signs of the fall of the West, and European socialism declared the phase of the decline of culture, identical, according to its chronological dimension, to Indian Buddhism (from 500 AD) and Hellenistic-Roman Stoicism (200 AD). .). This identification could be considered a whim (for those who did not accept Spengler's axiomatics) or a simple, formal consequence of the concept of world history as the history of higher cultures, in which each culture appears as a living organism. However, Spengler's providence regarding the fate of socialism in Europe, Russia, Asia, the definition of its essence expressed already in 1918 (“socialism - contrary to external illusions - is by no means a system of mercy, humanism, peace and care, but is a system of will to power. All the rest is self-deception”) – make us look closely at the principles of such an understanding of world history.

Today, after three quarters of the 20th century, during which European and Soviet socialism arose, developed and died out, one can evaluate in a different way both the predictions of O. Spengler and the historical arrogance (which led to a historical mistake) of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin (“No matter how the Spenglers whimper” about the decline of “old Europe,” this is just “only one of the episodes in the history of the fall of the world bourgeoisie, gorged on imperialist robbery and oppression of the majority of the world’s population.” Indeed, V. I. Lenin and K. Marx saw in the dictatorship of the proletariat an instrument of necessary state violence in the name of creating a society of socialist justice, peace and humanism, but revolutionary practice has shown that such a system of violence continuously reproduces itself as a system of such a will to power that sucks out natural resources, the vitality of peoples and destabilizes the global situation.

Almost simultaneously with The Decline of Europe (1923), Albert Schweitzer, the great humanist of the 20th century, published his article The Decay and Revival of Culture, in which the decline of European culture was also interpreted as a tragedy on a global scale, and not as an episode in the history of the fall world bourgeoisie. If, according to O. Spengler, “sunset” cannot be converted into “sunrise” at all, then A. Schweitzer believed in this “sunrise”. For this, from his point of view, it was necessary for European culture to regain a solid ethical foundation. As such a basis, he proposed his "ethics of reverence for life" and up to the 60s. practically followed it, not losing faith in it even after two world wars and all the revolutions of the 20th century.

In 1920 Max Weber's famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published. From Weber's point of view, the "fall of the West" is out of the question. The core of European culture (theories of state and law, music, architecture, literature) is universal rationalism, generated by it long ago, but which gained universal significance just in the 20th century. Rationalism is the basis of European science, and above all mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, the basis of the “rational capitalist enterprise” with its production, exchange, accounting for capital in monetary form, with the desire for continuously regenerating profits.

However, it was precisely this universal rationalism and the will to economic and political power (whether in a capitalist or in a socialist form) that Spengler considered the decline of a thousand-year-old Western European culture, i.e., its transition to the stage of civilization.

So, at least three fundamental concepts of the future of Western European culture were formed in the 1920s:

O. Spengler: rationalistic civilization is the degradation of the highest spiritual values ​​of culture, and that is doomed;

A. Schweitzer: the decline of culture has philosophical and ethical reasons, it is not fatal, and culture can be saved by pouring into it the Ethics of “reverence for life”;

M. Weber: European culture cannot be measured by the old value criteria, they were replaced by universal rationality, which changes the idea of ​​this culture, and therefore there can be no talk of its death.

Our century is coming to an end. It brought unprecedented and unthinkable in the XIX century. catastrophes, a global change in the way of existence of mankind. Rational science brought planetary technology to life. Mankind has begun space exploration. Genetic engineering, cyber-organismal technologies for changing the physical and spiritual properties of a person have been found, non-technological ones have been rediscovered and technological methods have been applied to expand the capabilities of the psyche. Apocalyptic dangers hang over mankind. In a matter of years, classical capitalism left the historical arena (giving way to the post-industrial and information society), the European socialist system perished. Environmental disasters have become commonplace. The population of the planet is rapidly approaching the critical threshold. And therefore now the only important global question is whether humanity will be able to avoid self-destruction. And here we can not do without referring to the classics - pessimists and optimists. Yes, O. Spengler predicted the decline of culture, but M. Weber and A. Schweitzer had a different opinion on this matter. It is fundamentally important which of them turned out to be more right. But let the reader solve this problem for himself. Martin Heidegger also solved a similar global problem in a series of post-war reports “Einblick in das, was ist” (“Insight into what is,” as V. V. Bibikhin translated it). Heidegger, quoting lines from Hölderlin's Patmos:

But where there is danger, there it grows
And saving ... -

made a significant conclusion: “The closer we come to danger, the brighter the paths to salvation begin to shine. The more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought.

Let us also ask, and above all Spengler, who noted that the fall of the West is, of course, a separate phenomenon of world history, but also “a philosophical theme that, if it is appreciated, contains all the great questions of being.” He referred to such questions as: What is culture? What is world history?

What is the difference between the existence of the world as history and the existence of the world as nature? What is the great crisis of our time?

So what is culture? According to our observations, no one in the literature has yet been able to define culture indisputably and definitively. Only in the academic Soviet cultural studies of recent years have been put forward regulative-activity, holistic, formational, teleological (target), essential-semantic, country-specific, production-productive, demographic, locally-typical, value, system and other approaches to the definition of the concept of culture.

The superorganic concept of culture in The cultural geography of the United States is based on the following general definition: “Culture consists of explicit and implicit forms that determine behavior, mastered and mediated through symbols; it arises as a result of the activities of groups of people, including their embodiment in means. The essential grain of culture consists of traditional (historically developed and isolated) ideas and especially the values ​​assigned to them. Cultural systems can be considered, on the one hand, as the results of activity, on the other hand, as a regulatory element of further activity. W. Zelinsky (USA) proposed to understand culture as a suprabiological organism that lives and changes according to its own internal laws. The components of culture in W. Zelinski are the same as in those of J. Huxley - artifacts, sociofacts, mentifacts. Artifacts are the basic means of life support (for a wide range of subsystems) of anthropic origin. Sociofacts are elements of the culture of interpersonal relations. Mentifacts are universal values ​​(religions, ideologies, ethics, art, philosophy) that bind together all representatives of a given culture.

In a less broad sense, culture is usually regarded as a class of things and phenomena, depending on the symbolism of supra-somatic (out-of-body) content.

In the heyday of culture, noted A. Schweitzer, it is not defined, because that culture is progress, it is clear to everyone and so. The need for a definition of culture arises where a dangerous mixture of culture and lack of culture begins. Culture is focused on the spiritual and moral perfection of man. Culture, according to Schweitzer, is composed of man's dominance over the forces of nature and over himself, when a person coordinates his thoughts and passions with the interests of society, that is, with moral requirements. A. Schweitzer was aware of the demoralization of man by society, which was in full swing. He came close to understanding "the terrible truth, which is that as the historical development of society and the progress of its economic life, the possibilities for the prosperity of culture do not expand, but narrow." And the fault of European philosophy is that this truth has remained unconscious.

But the fact of the matter is that European philosophical thought in the person of Oswald Spengler heralded this terrible truth urbi et orbi. And this is easy to verify. The price of this truth is high: culture is the highest form of life, a historical superorganism, and every organism is mortal. Human history is nothing but a stream of existence of super-organisms - "Egyptian culture", "ancient culture", "Chinese culture", etc. But in this case, European culture must also become dilapidated in due time - and there is nothing extraordinary in this. We have seen that modern scientists interpret culture as a suprabiological organism. However, they do not dare to draw the conclusion that Spengler made on the first page of his book - "living cultures die!" If they decide to do this, the decline of culture will become a great philosophical theme for them too. For what is life, and therefore also death, what is being and nothingness, what is spirit and immortality, in essence, no one knows. And in order to understand the danger that threatens cultures, is it not better to heed the arguments of Spengler than the panicked groans of the alarmists? So, if culture is an organism that has lived for about a thousand years, if in world history Spengler identifies eight cultures (Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Byzantine-Arabic, Western European, Mayan culture) ”and Predicts the birth and flourishing of Russian culture, then culture has its own forms - people, language, era, state, art, science, law, religion, worldview, economy, etc. In a word, each culture has its own face, physiognomy, and therefore the second chapter of the book begins with the paragraph “Physiognomy and systematics".

Physiognomy is the doctrine that a person expresses himself in facial features, gestures and postures, body shapes. Physiognomy is strikingly different from the doctrine of the essence, which is not directly given, which "is." The appearance of something is given visually, it cannot be reduced to one property, sign, without distorting this appearance. At the same time, external appearance is an extra-rational analogue of a categorically expressed essence. The essence is expressed rationally - Rene Descartes wrote about this 360 years ago, in "Regulae ad directionern inqenii", i.e. "Rules for the direction of the mind."

So, in order to understand the morphology of Spengler's history, you need to reflect on the subject of physiognomy, its possibilities and the possibilities of physiognomy of world history! For what? In order, said Spengler, "to survey the entire phenomenon of historical mankind with the eye of God, like a series of peaks of a mountain range on the horizon." Capacious words! They feel Nietzsche's "pathos of distance" from the crowd and the pathos of Copernicus, who rebelled against Ptolemaic geocentrism, and the pathos of proclaiming the equivalence of any cultures, fed, in particular, by Einstein's principle of relativity.

Spengler was sure that the "morphology of world history" as a way of seeing the world would still gain recognition. And he turned out to be right: let's take a look at what is happening on the planet and see that there is a struggle against the unification of values ​​and living standards, against the power of those who determine these values ​​and standards. The fierce struggle for national sovereignties on the territory of the former USSR gave rise to the "Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms", which proclaims the rights to the native language, to the preservation and development of national culture. The assertion and strengthening of the cultural authenticity of nations has been put forward as one of the four main goals of the World Decade of Culture (1988-1997), declared by UNESCO.

The desire of modern ethnic groups and cultures to have “faces with a non-common expression”, the rejection of civil, linguistic, class, religious, educational unification directly works for the following prediction of Spengler: “In a hundred years, all sciences that can still grow on our soil will be parts of a single huge physiognomy of everything human."

In contrast to living and animated matter, the morphology of culture, history and life, called their physiognomy, Spengler calls the morphology of dead (mechanical, physical) forms of nature systematics, that is, a science that discovers and brings into system the laws of nature and causal relationships. In a word, physiognomy and systematics are two ways of observing the world. Which one is more productive? Any natural scientist, a rationalist by conviction, will answer unequivocally: the most productive method is the method of revealing causal, causal determination through observation, measurement, experiment and formulating the mathematical form of the law.

However, Spengler was not satisfied with the previous methods of cognition of history - both rationalistic and axiological. Therefore, he created his own method, and various aspects of this method are revealed in The Decline of Europe.

New, original and deep, always seems strange. So Spengler demonstrates his "oddities" all the time.

The main “strangeness” is presented in the second paragraph of the chapter “The Problem of World History”, which introduces the idea of ​​two forms of cosmic necessity: causality as the fate of an organic form (culture) and causality as a physicochemical, cause-and-effect causality. The “idea of ​​fate” and the “principle of causality” are, according to Spengler, two forms of necessity that exist in our universe and are not reducible to one another; two logics - the logic of the organic and the logic of the inorganic; two ways of representation - image and law; two ways of voluminous givenness - the temporal irreversibility of fate in history, their temporal extension and finiteness, and the spatial extension of natural objects; two ways of calculation - chronological and mathematical.

Spengler argues that Nature and History are two ways of representing reality in the picture of the world.

In other words. History and Nature are two outcomes of experiencing and assimilation of the surrounding world, in the first case - as a sum of images, pictures and symbols (obtained with the help of imagination and not "objective", but only possible), in the second - as a set of laws, formulas, systems etc.

Reality becomes Nature if this becoming is regarded as having become, and then these are the worlds of Parmenides and Descartes, Kant and Newton. Reality is History, if what has become subject to becoming, considering it in images, and then the worlds of Plato and Rembrandt, Goethe and Beethoven arise.

Spengler makes a very strong statement: mathematics and the principle of causality determine the systematization of phenomena according to the method of natural science (natural science), chronology and the idea of ​​fate - according to the historical (culturology as the morphology of history). These systematizations cover the whole world. It is clear that this statement is objected to by many. So, Heidegger asked: why do we talk about the picture of the world when interpreting a certain historical epoch? Does each epoch of history have its own picture of the world and is concerned about building its own picture of the world, or is it just a new European way of representing the world? what does the picture of the world mean? After all, the world is space and history. And do nature and history necessarily exhaust the whole world? Indeed, Heidegger found vulnerabilities in the concept of "The Decline of Europe". But, perhaps, Spengler consciously limited himself to the fatalistic conclusion that follows from the idea of ​​fate - the conclusion about the inevitable fall of the West (as Arthur Schopenhauer a hundred years before him). Martin Heidegger identified the transformation of the world into its picture with the process of transformation of a person into a subject, i.e. with the beginning of such a human existence, when mastery of reality (“whole entity”) is outlined. Heidegger showed that only where the world becomes a humanized picture is humanism as such possible. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of slipping into the ugliness of subjectivism in the sense of individualism (personal, state, national). Heidegger saw “an almost absurd, but fundamental process of modern European history: the wider and more radically a person disposes of the conquered world, the more objective the object becomes, the more subjective, i. in the science of man, in anthropology. Anthropology is conceived here as moral and ethical anthropology, as humanism in the historical and philosophical sense. This is how Heidegger makes an ontological (man becomes the essence of being) generalization of the idea of ​​the Beggar's superman, the superman who masters his own mode of existence as a culture of non-deterministic biography, the world as history in the world as nature. Now you understand what worldview Oswald Spengler justified in the idea of ​​the fate of high cultures, as opposed to two forms of universal necessity - natural and historical and cultural, when life and culture, as its highest historical form, challenge natural determinism in the sense formulated by M. . Heidegger and which is taken out as an epigraph to our Public Introduction: "Being never proceeds within the framework of causal relationships."

Thus, the meaning of the connection between the geoplanetary situation in the 20th century, the image of which was created by the global problems of humanity, and the possibility for humanity, suppressed by the forces of nature and its laws (embodied in supertechnology), to become a planetary subject, shaping its own destiny in spite of the cruel rationalism of nature and intellect, becomes clearer.

At the same time, we emphasize that we should not get carried away with the modernization of the philosophy of history as a morphology of higher cultures. In fact, Spengler never for a moment thought about the possible end of human history, about the self-destruction of humanity and the destruction of the biosphere as a planetary habitat, about the possibility of subordinating humanity to the Megamachine, which Heidegger, Jaspers, Berdyaev and which the globalists of the Club of Rome no longer doubted in the early 70s. So, Aurelio Peccei appealed to humanity: the fate of man as a species is at stake, and there will be no salvation for him until he changes his human qualities! The true misfortune of the human species at this stage of its evolution is that it has been unable to adapt to the changes that it itself has brought into this world.

Global alarmism was not Spengler's style, although he said that "humanity" is an empty word, because for him there was only "the phenomenon of many powerful cultures, with primitive strength growing from the bowels of their country, to which they are strictly attached to everything throughout its existence, and each of them imposes on its material - humanity - its own form, each has its own idea, its own passions, its own life, desires and feelings, and, finally, its own death.

Only absolute conviction in the inexhaustibility of humanity as a “material” for an endless, uninterrupted process of shaping new, unique cultures allowed Spengler to reproach European thinkers with trivial optimism about the future of higher humanity and its goals. He stubbornly argued that "humanity" has no purpose, no idea, no plan, just as butterflies or orchids have no purpose. In world history, he said, I see a picture of eternal formation and change, miraculous becoming and dying of organic forms. This is a property of the living nature of Goethe, and not of the dead nature of Newton.

The inhabitants of our planet in the second half of this century fully felt the reality of what the great Europeans, humanists and rationalists could never imagine - a nuclear, ecological, civilizational apocalypse. And now Spengler's absolute conviction in the eternity of the flowering of life and culture on Earth seems just as naive as the belief of European thinkers in the infinity of the New Age.

At the end of the XX century. the idea of ​​the historical frailty of world cultures, philosophies and religions is replaced by the awareness of the very possible self-destruction of modern civilization, i.e. the possible end of history, and it is this awareness that can become the absolute consciousness of a new planetary subject - Superhumanity, the way M. Heidegger imagined it, P. Teilhard de Chardin, Nikolai Berdyaev.

The word "civilization" is now used in several meanings: as the opposite of savagery and barbarism, as the current state of Western society, as a synonym for the word "culture" to designate cultural and historical types in the historical concept of the largest modern historian Arnold Toynbee. For Spengler, civilization is the completion, the outcome of culture, each culture ends with its own civilization. That is why, in The Decline of Europe, Western civilization appears as the inevitable fate of Western culture, as its decadence.

It is easiest to understand civilization as the decadence of a given culture by looking at the examples of the degeneration of other cultures. Here Spengler writes that Roman civilization is barbarism that followed the flourishing Hellenic culture, when soulless philosophy, sensual arts are cultivated, inflaming animal passions, when law regulates relations between people and gods, when people value exclusively material things, when life moves to the "world city ”, when cold practical intellect replaces ardent and noble spirituality, when atheism supplants religions, and money becomes a universal value, devoid of a living connection with the fertility of the earth, talent and hard work - and we are convinced that these are, indeed, signs of the decline of ancient culture.

And one more paradox: power - political, economic, military, administrative-state and legal - Spengler presents as the main sign of imperialism at the stages of the transformation of any culture into civilization. Therefore, for him, the existence of Babylonian, Egyptian, Andean, Chinese, Roman imperialism is undeniable. Hence, in his opinion, the "simultaneity" of all imperialisms, no matter what centuries and countries they dominate. So what, and our "great Russian", Slavic, culture "stopped its course"? Did Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Blok, Bunin really foresee or foresee this, and Nekrasov definitely got into the “temporary object” with his “everything you could, you have already done - / Created a song like a groan; / And spiritually rested forever?” It seems so. After all, according to Spengler's method, the very bitterness about the decline of one's culture is the first sign of its decadence. Indeed, a flourishing culture is a powerful major statement of life, for example, in the poetry of the "sunny", early A. S. Pushkin. But the reflective late Pushkin is already decadent. The urbanization of mega-cities, the opposition between the "center" and the "province" are signs of civilization. The center, or "world city," as Spengler says, absorbs and concentrates the life of an entire country. Spiritual, political, economic decisions are made not by the whole country, but by three or four "world cities", which absorb the best human material of the country, and it descends to the position of a province. “In the world city,” writes Spengler, “there is no people, but there is a mass. Its inherent misunderstanding of tradition, the struggle against which is a struggle against culture, against the nobility, the church, privileges, dynasties, traditions in art, the boundaries of what is known in science, its superior peasant mind sharp and cold rationality, its naturalism of a completely new type, going much further back than Rousseau and Socrates, and directly adjoining in sexual and social questions with primitive human instincts and living conditions, that “panern et circenses”, which in our days comes to life under the guise of a struggle for wages and sporting events - all these are signs of a new in relation to the finally completed culture and to the province, late and devoid of a future, but inevitable form of human existence.

We have given in full one of Spengler's brilliant passages, which amaze with the depth of insight and at the same time cause uncontrollable resistance, rejection of this inevitability. We have yet to read a work on the Decline of Europe whose author did not rebel against this statement about the inevitability of cultural decadence, be it the culture of Europe or Russia. At the same time, the decadence of the great cultures of antiquity is perceived “free of judgment”, as M. Weber would say.

Apparently, the distance of millennia and the alienation of other cultures remove the pathos of rejection. But the invariably condescending attitude towards the "gloomy pessimist" Spengler of those who receive a charge of optimism from other philosophical, religious, ethical and socio-doctrinal sources. In our time, these "sources" trivialize, reduce to the level of "ordinary" many of the most acute global problems.

But Spengler was just as sincere when he exclaimed: who does not understand that nothing will change the inevitable, that one must either wish for this, or desire nothing at all, that one must either accept this fate, or despair in the future and in life, who rushes with with its provincial idealism and longs to resurrect the lifestyle of past times, he must give up understanding history, experiencing history, making history!

Oswald Spengler was an eminent German historian and philosopher whose expertise and knowledge spanned mathematics, the natural sciences, art theory and music. The main and most important work of Spengler is considered to be the two-volume "The Decline of Europe", his other works were not popular outside of Germany.

The article presented below focuses on the bold and ambiguous work on the historical and philosophical topics, which is The Decline of Europe. Spengler outlined the summary in the preface he wrote. However, on a few pages it is impossible to contain the whole complex of ideas and terms that are of particular interest to modern history.

Oswald Spengler

Spengler survived the First World War, which greatly influenced his philosophical views and the theory he formulated of the development of cultures and civilizations. The First World War forced to revise and partially rewrite the second volume of the main work, which at that time had already been completed by Spengler, “The Decline of Europe”. The summary of the two-volume book, written by him in the preface to the second edition, shows how large-scale hostilities and their consequences influenced the development of Spengler's theory.

The subsequent works of the philosopher focused on politics, in particular on nationalist and socialist ideals.

After Hitler's National Socialist Party came to power in Germany, the Nazis considered Spengler one of the supporters and propagandists of radical ideology. However, the subsequent evolution of the party and militaristic tendencies made Spengler doubt the future not only of the Nazis, but also of Germany. In his book "Time of Decisions" (or "Years of Decisions"), which criticized the ideology of Nazism and superiority, was completely withdrawn from print.

"The Decline of Europe"

The first independent work of the historian and philosopher Oscar Spengler is his most popular, discussed and influential work.

Understanding the uniqueness and originality of cultures is one of the main themes of the work on which Oswald Spengler worked for more than five years - "The Decline of Europe". A brief summary of the two-volume book and an introduction to the second edition written by the author will help to deal with the complexly formulated, complex theory of Spengler.

The two-volume treatise touches on many topics and offers a complete rethinking of how history is perceived in the modern world. According to the main theory, it is wrong to perceive the development of the whole world in terms of dividing eras into ancient, medieval and new eras. The Eurocentric scale of historical epochs cannot correctly describe the emergence and development of many Eastern cultures.

Spengler, The Decline of Europe. Summary of chapters. Volume One

Immediately after its publication, the book surprised the German intellectual community. One of the most innovative and provocative works that offers an argumentative critical approach to the theory of the development of cultures, which was formulated by O. Spengler, is “The Decline of Europe”. The brief content of the theory, included in the author's preface, almost completely focuses on the phenomenon of perceiving history from the point of view of morphology, that is, flow and change.

The Decline of Europe consists of two volumes. The first volume is called "Form and Reality" (or "Image and Reality") and consists of six chapters that set out the foundations of Spengler's theory. The first chapter focuses on mathematics, the perception of numbers, and how the concept of boundaries and infinity affects the perception of history and the development of cultures.

"Form and Reality" not only builds the foundation for the modern study of history, but also offers a new form of its perception. According to Spengler, with her scientific outlook, she influenced the "naturalization" of history. Thanks to the ancient Greek knowledge of the world with the help of laws and rules, history turned into a science, with which Spengler categorically disagrees.

The philosopher insists that history should be perceived "analogue", that is, focus not on what has already been created, but on what is happening and being created. That is why mathematics is given such an important role in the work. Spengler believes that with the advent of the concept of boundaries and infinity, man felt the importance of clear dates and structures.

"The Decline of Europe", a summary of the chapters. Volume two

1. History must be perceived morphologically.
2. European culture has passed from a period of development (Culture) to an era of decay (Civilization).

These are precisely the two main theses with which Oswald Spengler puzzled his contemporaries. "The Decline of Europe" (an introduction, a summary of the work and critical articles on historical topics call the above theses the "cornerstones" of Spengler's theory) is a book that turned a lot in the minds of philosophers.

The second volume is called Perspectives on World History (or Views on World History); in it the author explains in more detail his theory of the development of different cultures.

According to the theory of the emergence and development of cultures, which was formulated by the author, each of them goes through its own life cycle, similar to human life. Every culture has childhood, youth, maturity and decline. Each during its existence seeks to fulfill its purpose.

High Cultures

Spengler identified 8 main cultures:

• Babylonian;
• Egyptian;
• Indian;
• Chinese;
• Middle American and Aztecs);
• classical (Greece and Rome);
• the culture of the Magi (Arab and Jewish cultures);
• European culture.

In The Decline of Europe, the first five cultures are outside the author's focus, Spengler motivates this by the fact that these cultures did not have a direct collision and therefore did not influence the development of European culture, which, obviously, is the main theme of the work.

Spengler pays special attention to classical and Arab cultures, while drawing parallels with the European culture of individualism, reason and the desire for power.

Key ideas and terms

The difficulty of reading "The Decline of Europe" lies in the fact that Spengler not only often used familiar terms in a completely different context, but also created new ones, the meaning of which is almost impossible to explain outside the context of Spengler's historical and philosophical theory.

For example, a philosopher uses concepts (the author always writes these and some other terms in a work with a capital letter) in contrast to each other. In Spengler's theory, these are not synonyms, but to some extent antonyms. Culture is growth, development, the search for one's Goal and Destiny, while Civilization is decline, degradation and "surviving the last days." Civilization is what remains of Culture, which allowed the rational principle to win over the creative.

Another pair of synonymous-contrasting concepts is "happened" and "happening". For Spengler's theory, "becoming" is the cornerstone. According to his basic idea, history should focus not on numbers, laws and facts that describe what has already happened, but on morphology, that is, on what is happening at the moment.

Pseudomorphosis is the term Spengler uses to define underdeveloped or "off course" cultures. The most striking example of pseudomorphosis is Russian civilization, whose independent development was interrupted and changed by European culture, which was first “imposed” by Peter I. It is this undesirable interference in his culture that Spengler explains the dislike of the Russian people for “strangers”; as an example of this dislike, the author cites the burning of Moscow during Napoleon's offensive.

The course of history

Spengler's main postulate regarding history is the absence of absolute and eternal truths. What is important, meaningful, and proven in one culture may become complete nonsense in another. This does not mean that the truth is on the side of one of the cultures; rather, it says that each culture has its own truth.

In addition to a non-chronological approach to the perception of the development of the world, Spengler promoted the idea of ​​the global significance of some cultures and the lack of global influence of others. It is for this that the philosopher uses the concept of High Culture; it denotes a culture that influenced the development of the world.

Culture and Civilization

According to Spengler's theory, High Culture becomes a separate organism and is characterized by maturity and consistency, while "primitive" is characterized by instincts and a desire for basic comfort.

Civilization expands without an element of development, being in fact the “death” of Culture, but the author does not see the logical possibility of the eternal existence of anything, therefore Civilization is the inevitable withering of a Culture that has ceased to develop. While the main characteristic of Culture is the formation and development process, Civilization focuses on the established and already created.

Other important for Spengler distinctive features of these two states are metropolitan cities and provinces. Culture grows "out of the ground" and does not tend to the crowd, each small city, region or province has its own way and pace of development, which ultimately constitutes a unique historical structure. A striking example of such growth is Italy during the High Renaissance, where Rome, Florence, Venice and others were original cultural centers. Civilization is characterized by the desire for mass and "sameness".

Races and peoples

Both of these terms are used contextually by Spengler, and their meanings are different from the usual ones. Race in "The Decline of Europe" is not a biologically determined distinctive characteristic of a human species, but a conscious choice of a person throughout the existence of his Culture. Thus, in the stage of formation and growth of Culture, a person himself creates language, art and music, chooses his partners and place of residence, thereby determining everything that in the modern world is called racial differences. Thus, the Cultural concept of race is different from the Civilized one.

The concept of "people" Spengler does not associate with statehood, physical and political borders and language. In his philosophical theory, the people come from spiritual unity, association for the sake of a common goal, which does not pursue profit. The decisive factor in the formation of the people is not statehood and origin, but the inner feeling of unity, "the historical moment of lived unity."

Feeling the World and Destiny

The historical structure of the development of each Culture includes the obligatory stages - the definition of the worldview, the knowledge of one's Destiny and Purpose, and the realization of Destiny. According to Spengler, each Culture perceives the world differently and strives towards its Goal. The goal is to fulfill your Destiny.

In contrast to the lot that falls to the lot of primitive Cultures, the High ones themselves determine their path through development and formation. The fate of European Spengler considers the worldwide spread of individualistic morality, which hides the desire for power and eternity.

Money and Power

According to Spengler, democracy and freedom are closely related to money, which is the main governing force in free societies and large Civilizations. Spengler refuses to call such a development of events in negative terms (corruption, degradation, degeneration), since he considers it the natural and necessary end of democracy, and often of Civilization.

The philosopher argues that the more money individuals have at their disposal, the more clearly the war for power takes place, in which almost everything is a weapon - politics, information, freedoms, rights and obligations, principles of equality, as well as ideology, religion and even charity.

Despite the low popularity in modern philosophy and history, the main brainchild of Spengler makes you think about some of his arguments. The author uses his considerable knowledge in various fields to provide perfectly reasoned support for his own ideas.

Regardless of what you need to read - an abridged and edited version of the work "The Decline of Europe", a summary or critical articles about it, the author's brave and independent approach to changing the world's perception of history and culture is not able to leave readers indifferent.