/lit/ - Literature

>>22763094
Just go through his named influences.

What does it mean to be Faustian man?
and what are the characteristics of other high cultures like Russian, Magian, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Azteca and Classical?

>>21326143
I'm reading the book and it just falls apart. Sure, it has solid points but only if you consider them as points, isolated from the rest of the book and its motive. At times it's really preposterous, appealing to emotions and abstract philosophical ideas such as "thymos" or "recognition". How is this guy engaged in serious political science? No, people aren't run by platonic ideas or some sense of dignity, the reason why liberal "democracy" is adopted far and wide is nothing but its industrial and cultural output. Masses in the world are bewildered and the reason why the Berlin wall fell is nothing but them wanting Michael Jackson and Coca-Cola, on all levels of society. Yeltsin went to the United States as a diplomat under Gorbachev and was impressed not with political discourse or political freedom but how stacked one of their supermarkets are. This is a brute appeal to human nature and impulses in an, as of now, spineless world. It's just that now the output is around the United States and liberal democracies, but never forget that autocratic and bourgeois France, monarchic England, briefly the Soviet Union during the Great Depression and China circa less than a decade ago were seen to be the light of the world due to their production capabilities and standard of living.

Having said that, people driven by avarice isn't something you could maintain in the long term. Everything will go to shit and fall apart but history will not end. Your great grandchildren won't have toiletpaper to wipe themselves but I can bet on history not ending any day.

>>21326459
>”winter has come for our civilization”
>”time for christmas hat”