/lit/ - Literature

Spengler's morphology should be imagined like a role-playing activity or a theater play. Not surprising, since he was inspired by Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. Spengler tried to be a playwright, at some point.
In a play, you have roles and then actors. The roles come from the script, the actors fulfill that role.
In a high culture, certain archetypes arise. Not because they're born, necessarily, but because that culture has certain potentials that are being actualized. When the potential comes for a Socratic man or a Caesar man or an Alexander man, an actor or an individual person might actualize that potential. In some cases, this might be fulfilled by multiple people. And, if they fail in a sense of personality, this potentiality is actualized anonymously.
In our case, we have no true equal to Socrates. We have several types fulfilling that role. We have Rousseau, Voltaire, and other such men. In a sense, we do have a Plato (Goethe) and Aristotle (definitely Kant) and Alexander (Napoleon). But in many cases, this might happen anonymously.
In this sense, we might still have great artists fit for a different age. I'm sure there's someone living that's got the skill of Rembrandt or Beethoven, but the potentiality isn't there for something new, and for that artist to live out that role. It's already been played. And the originality is depleted, the potential exhausted. That great artist is incidental, rather than bound by destiny. This is why high art is essentially finished for the west, and perhaps philosophy, and maybe soon even science and technology.
At least this is true as far as the high culture is concerned. We do each have a private destiny, but this is mysterious and beyond us. That is, Platonic, not Aristotelian. Of Goethe, rather than Kant. To scrutinize it systematically (as in the mathematical world of the become, rather than the becoming) will give us randomness.

So looking for the American or European Caesar almost misses the point. Expecting an exact kind of thing to come along to solve or exacerbate the problem misses the point. What happens is the potentials grow. We always have men of certain ambitions, from scientific, to philosophical, to political. The time is coming for a certain potential: that of a Caesar. First had to come the birth of the metropolis.
May this give you hope for freedom. Where is your potential? Must you be a fact-man to live up the destiny of a fact-man? No. See Octavian reading omens at Actium, or Sulla taking heed the words of soothsayers. Play your role, but let the role play the actor. Be Caesar, with the soul of Christ.

Spengler's morphology should be imagined like a role-playing activity or a theater play. Not surprising, since he was inspired by Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. Spengler tried to be a playwright, at some point.
In a play, you have roles and then actors. The roles come from the script, the actors fulfill that role.
In a high culture, certain archetypes arise. Not because they're born, necessarily, but because that culture has certain potentials that are being actualized. When the potential comes for a Socratic man or a Caesar man or an Alexander man, an actor or an individual person might actualize that potential. In some cases, this might be fulfilled by multiple people. And, if they fail in a sense of personality, this potentiality is actualized anonymously.
In our case, we have no true equal to Socrates. We have several types fulfilling that role. We have Rousseau, Voltaire, and other such men. In a sense, we do have a Plato (Goethe) and Aristotle (definitely Kant) and Alexander (Napoleon). But in many cases, this might happen anonymously.
In this sense, we might still have great artists fit for a different age. I'm sure there's someone living that's got the skill of Rembrandt or Beethoven, but the potentiality isn't there for something new, and for that artist to live out that role. It's already been played. And the originality is depleted, the potential exhausted. That great artist is incidental, rather than bound by destiny. This is why high art is essentially finished for the west, and perhaps philosophy, and maybe soon even science and technology.
At least this is true as far as the high culture is concerned. We do each have a private destiny, but this is mysterious and beyond us. That is, Platonic, not Aristotelian. Of Goethe, rather than Kant. To scrutinize it systematically (as in the mathematical world of the become, rather than the becoming) will give us randomness.

So looking for the American or European Caesar almost misses the point. What happens is the potentials grow. We always have men of certain ambitions, from scientific, to philosophical, to political. The time is coming for a certain potential: that of a Caesar. First had to come the birth of the metropolis.