/lit/ - Literature

>>17918618
>memegler
Fuck off with this esoteric nonsense.

>>17918618
>regardless if I believe in God or not
you will end up in hell

>>17918618
I found this a really good article:

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/the-forest-faustian-soul.html

>>17918618
Bump

>>17918618
yes of course anon.
Gothic churches are incredibly profound. I assume tou must be american to have the concept that one only goes to churches for service.
Churches in Europe are always open and 95% of the people who enter them in a given week are tourists when no service is happening. Churches are the pearls of most any european city and are a must see. Often they are a art museum in themselves but as with gothics, as I agree the structure itself, the columns with the outcoves, are sublime to just be in. Plus combine that with an organ performance of Bach or whoever and you will have the most pure faustian aesthetic experience.
There are many great elaborations of Spengler in that book, though often I wondered how true they are over how I felt this sounds appealing and therefore also true. For example his differentiation between greek hades, christian heaven vs Valhalla where only the last one doesnt have a definite location, but is in infinity spread out somehow, seemed like him just fishing for more “faustian=infinity” examples. I really loved his elaboration on that though.

>>17918618
Can you post a page number? Where in volune 1 is this again?

>>17918618
So who's gonna be our first caesar? Trump had the chance, but failed to act in the crucial moment (Capitol), so clearly, we weren't quite there yet.

>>17919651
Trump was Sulla.
The caesar is supposed to be an outsider (maybe even a foreigner).
Also, he will probably give free money to plebs and soldiers to gather support.

>>17919651
Trump was like a proto-ceasar
You showed us just how easy it is for a ceasar to actually get in power in the faustian culture

>>17919673
He*

>>17919651
Yang

>>17919696
hes not military at all.
>>17919651
America is no longer of the faustian spirit. Its people have been sullied.

>>17919718
You think they're a pseudomorphosis?

>>17918628
filtered
>>17918618
>What is your favourite passage of the decline of the west
Book I:
He stated how Diophantus was not a Late Antiquity mathematician but a Magian mathematician due to uses of x and y in the Diophantine equations. Another is the Roman Pantheon as the first mosque (world-cavern).
Book II:
>"With the formed state, high history also lays itself down weary to sleep.
Man becomes a plant again, adhering to the soil, dumb and enduring. The
timeless village and the “eternal” peasant 1
reappear, begetting children and
burying seed in Mother Earth — a busy, not inadequate swarm, over which
the tempest of soldier-emperors passingly blows. In the midst of the land lie
the old world-cities, empty receptacles of an extinguished soul, in which a
historyless mankind slowly nests itself. Men live from hand to mouth, with
petty thrifts and petty fortunes, and endure. Masses are trampled on in the
conflicts of the conquerors who contend for the power and the spoil of this
world, but the survivors fill up the gaps with a primitive fertility and suffer on.
And while in high places there is eternal alternance of victory and defeat, those
in the depths pray, pray with that mighty piety of the Second Religiousness that
has overcome all doubts for ever.2
There, in the souls, world-peace, the peace
of God, the bliss of grey-haired monks and hermits, is become actual — and
there alone. It has awakened that depth in the endurance of suffering which
the historical man in the thousand years of his development has never known.
Only with the end of grand History does holy, still Being reappear. It is a
drama noble in its aimlessness, noble and aimless as the course of the stars, the
rotation of the earth, and alternance of land and sea, of ice and virgin forest
upon its face. We may marvel at it or we may lament it — but it is there."

Also why is Diocletian a Magian caliph?

>>17919651
>By the term "Caesarism" I mean that kind of government which, irrespective of any constitutional formulation that it may have, is in its inward self a return to thorough formlessness. It does not matter that Augustus in Rome, Qin Shi Huang in China, Ahmose I in Egypt, and Alp Arslan in Baghdad disguised their position under antique forms. The spirit of these forms was dead, and so all institutions, however carefully maintained, were thenceforth destitute of all meaning and weight. Real importance centred in the wholly personal power exercised by the Caesar.

>Caesarism is not dictatorship, not the result of one man's overriding ambition, not a brutal seizure of power through revolution. It is not based on a specific doctrine or philosophy. It is essentially pragmatic and untheoretical. It is a slow, centuries old, unconscious development that ends in a voluntary surrender of a free people escaping from freedom to one autocratic master.

There is no one "Caesar". You cannot look at one man and say he is a Caesar. Caesarism as a concept is a psychological phenomenon. If you really want to say who is the "first Caesar" it would be Andrew Jackson. But he was just a product of an age of increasing democratization and the growth of federal power. The same can be said of Lincoln and the two Roosevelts. By the time you get to Nixon the American president is already as powerful as an emperor, and Nixon himself as characteristically eccentric as any Roman emperor.

Trump is the first time that party politics have been completely replaced by the sway of an individual leader. The Republican party was no longer the Republican party but the Trump party. The same may be said of the Democrats, a cabal run by the Clinton-Obama-Biden triumvirate. But with Trump all gravity rested solely in him. The 2020 election was decided not by platform or policy but by one's opinion of Trump's personality. Trump didn't begin anything, he is a representative of the age and a glimpse into what American politics will look like in the years to come.

Spengler is a filthy capitalist cuck.

>>17920676
What for an anglo a capitalist is is for a prussian a socialist

>>17920758
That might be true, but then that proves how useless German thinkers are.

>>17920676
been reading a bit too much Marx, have we?

>>17920860
More like you guys are infatuated with words instead of consequences, which is typical of right-wingers.

Is being a spenglerian a thing?
Anybody continued his work?

>>17921575
>yes
>no

bump

>>17921575
There are very few who have attempted to continue Spengler's work. I'll list the ones I know of, though they're basically all literally whos. I always thought of making a chart but never bothered.

>Egon Friedell
An Austrian actor and contemporary of Spengler who wrote a 3 volume historical work called A Cultural History of the Modern Age. It's a narrative of the past 800 years of Western history that incorporates Spengler's ideas. It's beautifully written and filled with wit, highly recommended.

>Amaury de Riencourt
Frenchman who wrote a bunch of books that served to fill out areas of Spengler's history that he didn't spend much time on. The Coming Caesars is a history of the USA from the premise that America is the burgeoning Roman empire of Faustian civilization. The Soul of China and The Soul of India treat the histories of these civilizations in the same manner that Spengler treated the West and the Classical, with a notable break from Spengler with the idea that a civilization can actually rejuvenate itself, as China did with Buddhism.

>John Farrenkopf
Author of "Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics". A good biography of Spengler written in the 90s, surveys his ideas and how he anticipated the future of Western geopolitics.

>John Reilly
Now we're getting into the literally literally who stage. None of this guy's books are available as physical copies, but you can find everything he ever wrote on benespen.com. A prolific essayist who wrote a ton of stuff about history and cultural critique from a Spenglerian lens. Author of "The Perfection of the West", a collection of essays and book reviews of works relating to Spengler, titled as such to reflect a more accurate interpretation of The Decline of the West's title. He also wrote "Spengler's Future", a fun little experiment in which he tries to outline the next 7 centuries of Western history using the lifecycles of other civilizations as a guideline in a level of detail Spengler never attempted. Spengler ironically was not particularly concerned with the actual decline of the West.

>John David Ebert
Why are they all John? YouTube lecturer and author, has some good lectures about Spengler. He's a bit of a schizo however. He's really into Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and literally believes he can commune with the dead. I only read one of his books and it wasn't great. He's good at explaining Spengler though.

>Thomas Wangenheim
Only found out about this guy recently, he's a German YouTube larper who still thinks it's 1932. Has written a couple of books that actually seems to try and go beyond Spengler, as in developing a new philosophy of history that builds on Spengler's work, but I can't really understand any of it because I don't speak German.

I don't mention Yockey's Imperium because it's materialist neo-Nazi garbage that Spengler would have abhorred. Avoid.

>>17921862
>John Reilly
I was just about to post "Spengler's Future", http://www.benespen.com/spenglers-future . It really is a quick solid read but I've never seen it discussed much around here, or anywhere else.
How accurate does /spengler/ think the outline is?

Borrowed Vol 1 & 2 from the public library. Hope to force trough them. I have a rudimentary grasp on what faustian etc means.

Given the space race and especially this poster, could you say that all nations that partakes in space exploration are faustian?

"Magian" is often used as a dogfart by the stoormers. But given how relatively many jews there is in physics and astrophysics, then they must be faustian or even super-faustian. When did the shift from magian to faustian for the mainstream jewish culture happen. And is there any magian culture left today?

>>17921901
>forgot to post poster
Oh! :3

>>17921897
Well the whole thing is pretty vague, but I do think it has merit. It was written in 1993 and as of 2021 we are in the "A Comedy of Errors" section. Describing the preoccupation with domestic non-issues while China and Russia gather strength and aim to outpace the West as an age of embarrassment seems accurate to me. According to this the ongoing Culture War is equivalent to the Roman Social War. Now that's an idea I definitely agree with.

>>17921901
>could you say that all nations that partakes in space exploration are faustian?
Personally I think it's more a reaction against Western imperialism, an attempt to outdo the West at its own game. Lenin's writings all but confirm this. The doctrine of Marxism is mere clothing for the real content that is an infernal hatred of Western expansionism. Spengler probably would have agreed with this. Russia is not a "Civilized" culture in Spengler's sense of the term, and when you look back on the 20th century, the Soviet Union appears as a weak and feeble state in comparison to the West. China is very much "Civilized" but I think it's the same story here. A lot of posturing to hide a weak center. Everyone already knows China is doomed in the next 30 years when it begins experiencing a demographic collapse.

>>17922008
>Personally I think it's more a reaction against Western imperialism, an attempt to outdo the West at its own game. Lenin's writings all but confirm this. The doctrine of Marxism is mere clothing for the real content that is an infernal hatred of Western expansionism.
Good point. I haven't read Lenin's take on imperialism. But his definition seems really, really self-serving. Especially if you consider all the land grabbing Russia did for centuries.

But couldn't there been a few in the USSR that had mostly a faustian mindset?

What did Spengler say about the byzantines?
Were they continuing classical high culture or were they magean?

Spengler was just talking out of his ass

>>17919673
>>17919668
Trump was Gracchus, a model for actual Caesars to follow and a sort of proof of concept. He was just too incompetent.
Remember, Sulla was a reaction against Caesarism.
>>17921575
Toynbee and his Study of History is the main one I'm aware of.
>>17921901
>When did the shift from magian to faustian for the mainstream jewish culture happen
Probably when they were thrown out by Hadrian, the diaspora ended up in the Western crucible.
>>17922008
>>17921901
Spengler saw the Russian Revolution as the Russian Occidentophile petty bourgeoisie essentially kidnapping the emerging Russian culture by forcing the most quintessentially Western ideology of Marxism onto an unwilling peasantry. This is the origin of Russia's hatred of the West and, naturally, when all the original Old Bolsheviks died, the system collapsed. Spengler predicted this would happen at around 1990.
As for the Space Race, Spengler describes this in Man and Technics. He says non-Western countries will appropriate Western technology purely to overthrow the West, the same way a hiker picks up a walking stick to overcome a difficult climb, then discards it afterwards.
You could call the Soviet Space Program an example of this.

>>17921937
>we are
according to the timeline, the comedy starts next year
although I'd say it has already well begun, if only because we're already some years in the "age of faked antiques"

Bump

>>17921862
Tip top post.

>>17922724
>according to the timeline, the comedy starts next year

Screencap this: Biden will die or become incapacitated and Harris will take his place. Gloves will come off. Total jewish social agenda accellerationism. The reaction will be... Kanye West. He will sweep in as the conservative black savior and the public will be sufficiently gaslit and insane that they'll welcome him.

It is at this point that the Empire of the United States will fully present as the clown show it actually is.

>>17922123
Byzantine Empire was Magian.

>>17921862
I'll add on since I know a few who also continued down this line but are less related to history.

>Josphe campbell
Psychology and comparative mythology. Really started off his books (4 of them) as an attempt to explain the pre-culture non-high culture man and his cognition, an area to which Spengler leaves open to and doesn't include in his model at all given that Spengler's model on talks about high cultures. His later works are on comparative mythology and Campbell more or less was trying to lay the groundwork for the second religiousness with his most known work and should be read with that in mind.

>Samuel Huntington
Writes on International Relations, was also big on Spengler. His idea of a clash of civilizations is more or less the idea of a pseudomorphous taken in terms of geopolitics. Has a few takes that deviate heavily from Spengler such as Japan being its own high culture. His early books on military civil relations don't have much to do with Spengler at all even though he was a big Spengler fan himself.

>>17919651
Likely some mid level military leader. Close enough to the Troops to gain their loyalty and high enough to have extensive networks set up.
A man from Texas or the North East.
Caesar was killed by assassins, and they did it with knives, it will be much more tragic if he is killed with a drone or something.
Hopefully a shadow leader with a conceptual figurehead, something which can be rallied behind but not directly targeted physically.
Ideally this man would have proscription lists out on all the Epsteins/Bezos/Gates of the world and the common people would be lead by small tactical professionals.

>>17920958
as opposed to being infatuated with nonce ideas and unfalsifiable trifles.

>>17920676
oof, I was going to read his book but maybe not

>>17924320
American politics can take any shape it wants, it's inconsequential.

b

>>17919651
thank god Trump wasn't Caesar
he wasn't fucking competent you guys

What did Spengler think about Japan? And what do you think he’d believe about post occupation Japan(and perhaps South Korea too)?

>>17927404
I believe he considered japan to be part of the chinese high culture.
About modern japan, maybe he'd consider them to be a pseudomorphosis now together with south korea? As they are both adopting more and more faustian characteristics

>>17927458
He said Japan first was a pseudomorphism of Chinese culture and has since the 19th century become a pseudomorphism culture (and colony) of America.
He actually stated that for him Japan is part of the Occident. (not joking)

Korea probably falls under the same category as Japan.

>>17927404
He calls the east Asian sphere "moonlight" cast by China
>>17927475
That is just wrong

>And so in general - it is not true Culture-languages like the Greek of Sophocles or the German of Luther, but world-languages like the Greek Koine and Arabic and Babylonian and English, the outcome of daily practical usage in a world-city, which are capable of being acquired by anybody and everybody. Consequently, in all Civilizations the "modern" cities assume a more and more uniform type. Go where we may, there are Berlin, London, and New York for us, just as the Roman traveller would find his columnar architecture, his fora with their statuary, and his temples in Palmyra or Trier or Timgad or the Hellenistic cities that extended out to the Indus and the Aral. But that which was thus disseminated was no longer a style, but a taste, not genuine custom but mannerism, not national costume but the fashion. This, of course, makes it possible for remote peoples not only to accept the "permanent" gains of a Civilization, but even to re-radiate them in an independent form. Such regions of "moonlight" civilization are south China and especially Japan (which were first Sinized at the close of the Han period, about A.D. 220); Java as a relay of the Brahman Civilization; and Carthage, which obtained its forms from Babylon.

>>17927475
If i remember correctly Japan is the closest to being a European culture as a non-Wuropean culture could get and that is why they were able to westernize in the Meiji restoration period as fast as they could compared to other asian nations so it does make sense in a way.
But if they are Western/Faustian then how could they be a a pseudomorphosis now of another Faustian culture (America)?
Or do you mean the middle east/Magean civilization when you said occident and not the "Abendland"?

>>17920659
>Trump is the first time that party politics have been completely replaced by the sway of an individual leader. The Republican party was no longer the Republican party but the Trump party. The same may be said of the Democrats, a cabal run by the Clinton-Obama-Biden triumvirate. But with Trump all gravity rested solely in him. The 2020 election was decided not by platform or policy but by one's opinion of Trump's personality. Trump didn't begin anything, he is a representative of the age and a glimpse into what American politics will look like in the years to come.

You Americans put way too much weight on Trump. In my eyes, Trump is nothing more than Bush 2.0. A Ziocon who pretends he's not establishment (but he is. He wouldn't have been POTUS otherwise).

American idiots who think Trump is some kind of free messiah or Caesar are illuminated Evangelical fools. Trump is an Israeli dick sucker. He's a populist in the worst sense of the term.

>>17927505
Fuck you faggot:
>The Japanese belonged formerly to the Chinese Civilization and again belong to a Civilization -the Western - today. A Japanese Culture in the genuine sense there has never been. Japanese Americanism must, therefore, be judged otherwise than as an outgrowth of what never was there
Group of High Cultures VI - footnotes.
He mentions this before your quote.
>It is an astounding fact (to which, however, we must accustom ourselves) that the idea of immediately exploiting in practice any knowledge of natural relations that may be acquired is alien to every sort of mankind except the Faustian (and those who, like Japanese, Jews, and Russians, have to-day come under the intellectual spell of its Civilization).
and
>Modern Japan belongs to the Western Civilization no less than "modem" Carthage of the third century to the Classical.
>>17927536
>But if they are Western/Faustian then how could they be a a pseudomorphosis now of another Faustian culture (America)?
I never meant they originally were faustian.
They are faustian in the same (spenglerian) sense that Russia is (/became) faustian.
>Or do you mean the middle east/Magean civilization when you said occident and not the "Abendland"?
no.

>>17927558
That's not pseudomorphosis.

>>17927558
>I never meant they oeiginally were fastian.
Ah ok then.

>>17927577

>>17927602
>reactionimage.jpeg
Pseudomorphosis is when a young culture (in the organic Goethean sense) becomes smothered by an older one. What Spengler means by a moonlight civilization such as Japan is that it cannot be understood as an independent entity. He literally says it "A Japanese Culture in the genuine sense there has never been."

What does Spengler says about coping with being born in a post-culture world? The ossification of culture and the subsequent death of art is probably what I find the scariest about his theory.

>>17919651
i dont know who will be caesar, but i will be brutus :)

Does someone have or could they make like a map for all the high cultures? Would greatly appreciate it.

>>17927626
ok, Herr Goethe, this doesnt imply that your moonlight civilization somehow brought the foundation for a japanese culture any more than the americans brought the nips a faustian culture.
The nips are cultureless. They are neither chink, nor faustian. Thats the whole point.
The nip attempts to develope a culture where asphixiated by the chinks, then americans: the nip (empty culture and) civilization is a pseudomorphism of these alien people.
Lets not forget
Nips had many monks try and originate their own buddhism and in combination with shintoism nips definitely had the attempts to create a culture, but they were under the influence of a foreign civilization then as they are now.
Fuck you for not accepting this as an obvious pseudomorphism in both senses, jsut because you are afraid of losing face on an anonymous image board.
>>17927654
uneducated take. Should have said Cato.
>>17927646
Just read the book. He addresses your question in the fucking introduction.

>>17927679
>Should have said Cato.
no, Brutus :)

>>17927679
schizo rambling with no merit like all Spengler threads

Can a culture be under threefold pseudomorphosis?
(The balkans are both western aligned, ex communist and under ottoman goverment for centuries)

>>17927679
There is no need to be so belligerent, I simply corrected you. Again, that is not pseudomorphosis.

>>17927724
There are no limits to Spenglerian pseud ramblings

>>17927730
>, I simply corrected you.
I gave you 3 (three) quotes to your one missunderstood 1 (one).
are you a Chang?
You certainly give off a prejudiced vibe toward the issue of japan.
Weebs would never defend Nippon being chinese, so that cant be.

>17927720
>17927761
kek the illiterate is seething again

>>17927720
Go back if Spengler filtered you

>>17927761
There are no limits to knowledge using Goethe's method.
>>17927781
You are obviously not interested in rational discourse, you don't even seem to have read or attempted to understand my original post.

>>17921575
>Anybody continued his work?
Arguably Jockey, or so I've heard. But since I've never read the Imperium, I don't know how accurate that is.

>>17927806
>my original post.
being:
>That is just wrong
and then a spengler quote, I have obviously read before.
Fuck you faggot. Stop projecting your unwillingness to consider other opinions on me. You simply missrepresented an aspect of Spengler for your purposes and now don't want to admit to it.

Would germany be better of if it's goverment would be prussian socialist instead of the anglo-shit they do now?

>>17918618
>as an imitation of the primal forest that covers europe
it isn't, it's to let light in, light = divinity, God. Primal forest is supposed to be dark, that's why Varg argues that Nords have light eyes and hair

>>17927871
>Varg

>>17927806
>Goethe's method
I wish to know more.

>>17928616
Goethe believed there are two sides to knowledge. The physical manifestation of things, and how we interpret them. The scientific method as we know it is only concerned with the former, but Goethe wanted to emphasize the humanistic and artistic element. It is the old thought experiment, if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Goethe would say yes, but only a present human can perceive the sound and make meaning of it. The potential for knowledge exists in all things but it requires a human to intuit it. By doing this we are revealing the essence of nature to itself.

It is essentially what Spengler is doing and why he says he owes everything to Goethe. He takes the array of meaningless data and facts that constitute history and intuits what it all means for humans as we experience it. The forms of Spengler's thought are subjective but they are rooted in objective fact. He is attempting to reveal the essence of history to itself. Someone else is open to come along and form a new interpretation, and again, always creating a new perspective. There is no unknowable noumenal world for Goethe. For him human imagination is reality. His epistemology assigns primacy to the imagination which is potentially limitless in its insight.

>>17922398
>Probably when they were thrown out by Hadrian, the diaspora ended up in the Western crucible.
That hadn't became faustian yet. And it would be interesting if the jews had managed to keep a state of their own in the Levante.

>Spengler saw the Russian Revolution as the Russian Occidentophile petty bourgeoisie essentially kidnapping the emerging Russian culture by forcing the most quintessentially Western ideology of Marxism onto an unwilling peasantry.
IIRC, the russian intelligentsia of the 1800s that basically put Russia on the right path, albeit slowly, was quite western in their outlook.

>This is the origin of Russia's hatred of the West and, naturally, when all the original Old Bolsheviks died, the system collapsed. Spengler predicted this would happen at around 1990.
But isn't there a huge gap between the last OB dying and 1990? Anyhow, spooky correct prediction.

>As for the Space Race, Spengler describes this in Man and Technics. He says non-Western countries will appropriate Western technology purely to overthrow the West, the same way a hiker picks up a walking stick to overcome a difficult climb, then discards it afterwards.
>You could call the Soviet Space Program an example of this.
I see. Another example is the gulf states that builds skyscrapers or why not Malaysia's space program.

But can't you say that there's some kind of faustianism trough the back door? I'm not that versed on South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. But they seem to bee more western than just on a superficial level. And then there's the japanese warning stones about tsunamis that dots the coast clearly stating that people shouldn't even live below the stones. Is warning people in the future for bad things faustian or not?

>>17928933
You should simply read the book
Being faustian is not about "warning people in the future".
Its about the ur symbol, the infinite space, etc etc

Why does Spengler triggers /lit/ so much?

>>17929182
He doesn’t there are just a few anti-Spengler fags who got filtered

>>17927892
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

>>17929172
>You should simply read the book
>Being faustian is not about "warning people in the future".
>Its about the ur symbol, the infinite space, etc etc
Ok, ok.

But *in theory* anyone can become faustian, no?

Also about Old Bolsheviks. There's more than mentioned on Wikipedia, but Anastas Mikoyan (1895-1978) was forced into retirement in 1965. And I can't find anyone that died later than him. So when did the OB really lose power?

>>17928821
Can a post be more based?

>>17928821
Thank you blessed and knowledgeable effort-poster.

>>17924320
none of that will happen, let's keep this thread on track c'mon

>>17921862
Thomas Wangenheim is great if you understand German, very learned guy.

>>17931134
You know any other good german youtubers like him?

>>17931134
>er siezt seine Zuschauer
kek this guy is gonna be good.

>>17927679
>Fuck you for not accepting this as an obvious pseudomorphism in both senses, jsut because you are afraid of losing face on an anonymous image board.
I agree with you, I think they are a high culture under heavy Faustian Pseudomorphosis. Think that Spengler didn't see this since Spengler didn't have a good grasp on Eastern cultures (as India and China almost break his model.)

>>17927555
you didn't get his post at all, you unintelligent swine.
Then again you could also just be a bot