/lit/ - Literature

>>18370134
its da krautz!
>>18370135
mixing niggers in with people is mixing oil with water, and spengler can account for that (e.g. latins in Carthage vs. latins in Rome, or romans in Antioch/Greece)
>>18370185
yeah this is the real reason. any kind of cultural essentialism is difficult for them. it's why Gramsci, Marx, every left-wing social theorist says that social forms have their root in productive material causes. because then you can deny the obvious self-stability and arche of what spengler calls the high cultures
>>18371826
every manifold in some way participates of unity, and so we're able to reason about other societies. but those reasonings won't be meaningful to us, because our structures of (nonrational) meaning DO have cultural roots.
think of Roger Bacon: reasoning will provide justification and truth, but only sense-data will provide certainty
>>18371870
>>18376830
possible, but >>18370185 is closer
>>18372088
lol
>>18372161
>>18376589
you're retarded
>>18372174
>Spengler takes it way too far by saying that that's all math is.
except he doesn't say this. good analogy:
if you're in a dark room, and can only see by using a flashlight, what you're able to see will be determined by where you point the flashlight. but the cave is still there and objectively pre-exists your perceiving it.
and in the same way, when spengler talks abt greeks being incapable of the infinitesimal calculus, he means that the objective structure of mathematics can't be illumined by the greek understanding of numbers.
>>18374293
>Spengler does not offer a satisfying explanation for the unfolding of the historical process
no, Spengler doesn't offer a MECHANICAL explanation for that unfolding. he offers a fine etiology.
>Which is fine, but it places the individual human as secondary in importance
this is a good point; Spengler works mutually with some other philosophies that have a heavier focus on the individual will, maybe try syncretizing those.
>Spengler's philosophy of becoming and the become is an arbitrary contradiction
true, and in later books Spengler even said "Plato stands for becoming."
Spengler's better as an anthropologist's anthropologist than a philosopher's philosopher (but he can be a philosopher's anthropologist)
>Vico's philosophy is one of pure becoming. Man must never stop striving for the truth, even as he imagines all sorts of falsehoods about the world. It is not necessary for Vico, as it is for Spengler, that civilizations die. Life is a constant becoming toward the being of God.
this is all nonsense, but he's a catholic; what can you expect?
>>18376615
this anon gets it, wrt Spengler and math
>>18376678
almost anyone could tackle the abridged version
>>18376739
+1 on >>18376763's response

>>16751720
first cause.
i'll raise you another: unmoved mover.