/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13505553]

Is Decline still worth reading, or is it outdated?

[Anonymous No.13505555]

As relevant as when it was published.

[Anonymous No.13505572]

>>13505555
Nice quads senpai

[Anonymous No.13505579]

Spengler is an incel and is used by incels today to cope with muh decline. There is no decline read Pinker's Enlightenment Now ffs. Just stop being hateful you losers.

[Anonymous No.13505594]

>>13505579
2/10

[Anonymous No.13505596]

>>13505579
I know this is bait but the fact that there are redditors who could unironically make posts like this is infuriating.

[Anonymous No.13505605]

>>13505579
?

[Anonymous No.13505606]

can someone photoshop his face onto that pirates of the caribbean picture. "you best start believing in winter. you're in it" or guenon with age of kali

[Anonymous No.13505789]

>>13505606
do it yourself senpaitachi

[Anonymous No.13506081]

>>13505579
Dilate tranny

[Anonymous No.13506320]

>>13506081
fuck off

[Anonymous No.13506390]

>>13505553
he influenced thr frankfurt school so he's worth reading for that reason

[Anonymous No.13506403]

>>13505553
His predictions were bold, and he was right on virtually all of them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190117075946/http://avery.morrow.name/blog/2014/10/oswald-spenglers-decline-of-the-west-the-100th-anniversary-update/

[Anonymous No.13506522]

>>13505553
Unironically the most important work on the philosophy of history ever.

It's mind boggling how ignored he still is; I suspect because no one could ever properly answer him.

He will probably grow to be revered in a few hundred years when he is proven right beyond a doubt.

[Anonymous No.13506570]

>>13506522
The Right ignores him because he says things will only get worse with no chance of getting better, and every notion of trying to turn back the tide is foolish and naive. The Left ignores him because he was a racialist. Only doomers, Evolan trads, and accelerationists can appreciate the genius of his work.

[Anonymous No.13506606]

>>13506570
I consider myself a traditionalist conservative if anything and I adore Spengler.

>and every notion of trying to turn back the tide is foolish and naive.
I ultimately don't take this away from Spengler. He specifically mentions how it is our job to stand against such collapse and do as much as we can, even if it seems logically pointless. He goes as far as to call it our duty.
Of course I view Spengler slightly differently because I'm an eastern euro anon and I feel that we'll at least come out alive from this whole thing. However, if I was western, I would be hopelessly pessimistic after reading Spengler.

[Anonymous No.13506657]

>>13506522
He actually specifically says that as the Faustian spirit weakens over the centuries there will be no humans left alive that will be able to comprehend Faustian culture as early as the year 2200. I think there is evidence of this happening already in the fact that nobody listens to classical music anymore. This is due to how abstract Faustian culture is especially compared to how easily Greek culture is to understand to the uninitiated ie. anyone can understand Greek culture (we teach Greek math to kids in school) but only Faustian man can understand Faustian culture.

[Anonymous No.13506669]

>>13506606
Don't get me wrong, a man who fights the good fight is of a noble and virtuous quality, but he shouldn't expect it to amount to anything. Hence, Spengler's heroic pessimism.

[Anonymous No.13506682]

>>13506657
>I think there is evidence of this happening already in the fact that nobody listens to classical music anymore.
We must not live in the same place. Where I come from classical music is still a big meme among the upper class and classical music videos have millions of viewers on youtube.

[Anonymous No.13506683]

>>13506570
How was he a racialist?

[Anonymous No.13506684]

>>13506657
>there will be no humans left alive that will be able to comprehend Faustian culture as early as the year 2200
Not sure if I *totally* agree with this part, unless he's referring specifically to the west here? There will always be remnants. Parts of faustian culture will survive somewhere, and probably in the places we'd least expect it. I expect eastern europe to probably carry at least part of this torch.

>>13506669
Agreed.

[Anonymous No.13506703]

>>13506682
yeah even the proles actually love quite a bit of classic music. It's usually a meme like AIr on G or Moonlight Sonata, but loads of videos on youtube have over a million views.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!pCXg+Sw92A9 No.13507084]

>>13505579
This but unironically. If we can manage to curb corruption and promote pluralism while avoiding protectionism and patrimonialism, than the future is bright indeed. Right wingers and lefties are just trying to cope with their lack of agency.

[Anonymous No.13507094]

>>13505553
Sounds like he is on a decline.

[Anonymous No.13507105]

It's never been worth reading

[Anonymous No.13507535]

>>13505553
It will entertain and teach you to compare and contrast civilisations. He was the first to scale those heights and it's just full of compelling historical analogies.

[Anonymous No.13507603]

He might be the most correct author I have ever read. His takes on nature, sovereignty, power and our decline are both depressing and very much accurate. Read it, faggot.

[Anonymous No.13507995]

>>13505553
https://web.archive.org/web/20190117075946/http://avery.morrow.name/blog/2014/10/oswald-spenglers-decline-of-the-west-the-100th-anniversary-update/

[Anonymous No.13508689]

>>13507995
>The intellects of the late West will recognize that the attempt to systematize or categorize anything is more of a reflection of the psychological and socio-historical paradigms that engender the imagination of such systems than it is something that really exists “out there” in Nature. Interpreting the signs and symbols of past centuries is in fact the “last Faustian philosophy” and the only possibility remaining to the Western mind (1.IV.12). [Tangent: Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game describes a post-collapse society where such interpretation has become the highest and only art-form left in the world.]

>Prediction came true: Yes. By the late 1960s, the “objective” status of the scientific observer in sociology and anthropology was already subject to some doubts. In the 1980s, the social sciences and philosophy were thoroughly wrecked by the work of Jacques Derrida. These two categories of study never recovered from this Copernican revolution but are basically running on steam. Since roughly 2005, the humanities have also made a definite turn towards what Spengler calls “physiognomical” analysis, and it is fair to assume that the hard sciences will begin to turn inward in a similar way in the coming years, especially after the failure of ITER and other mammoth experimental projects.

That's perhaps the most interesting and radical take, since it was written in 1917, an age where optimism for human reason was still high.

[Anonymous No.13509303]

>>13506657
What exactly is the Faustian spirit? Self examination, making deals with the devil, striving towards infinity?

[Anonymous No.13509310]

>>13506606
>because I'm an eastern euro anon and I feel that we'll at least come out alive from this whole thing. However, if I was western, I would be hopelessly pessimistic after reading Spengler.
I honestly want to move to ee but I dont know where. Russian is the only language I know of those and that country seems broken.

[Anonymous No.13509329]

>>13508689
god he was so fucking smart and ahead of his time

[Anonymous No.13509354]

>There are lemon yellow butterflies, there are lemon yellow Chinese. In a way, one can also say that the butterfly is the winged Central European dwarf chinaman. Butterfly and Chinese are known as symbols of lust. For the first time, someone has recognized the accordance between the great age of lepidopteran fauna and Chinese culture. That the butterfly has wings and the Chinese is wingless is merely a surface phenomenon!
Robert Musil on Spenglers style of writing.

[Anonymous No.13509442]

>>13505553
I started it recently. Absolutely worth to read. This introduction is also interesting https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.e-reading.club%2Fchapter.php%2F97744%2F1%2FShpengler_-_Zakat_Evropy._Obraz_i_deiistvitel%2527nost%2527._Tom_1.html

[Anonymous No.13509571]

>>13509354
Many contemporaries called Spengler a dilletante, even Max Weber, whose book The Protestant Ethic influenced Spengler's economic thought quite a lot. But this is only because Spengler went against the 19th century zeitgeist of progress so they dismissed him on principle for it.

[Anonymous No.13509580]

>>13509571
I think it's strange that people like Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno all cite him as an influence, though.

[Anonymous No.13509597]

>>13509571
Musil hated the 19th century Zeitgeist even more than Spengler. He simply recognized Spengler as the dilettante and charlatan he was.

[Anonymous No.13509599]

>>13509571
ye Spengler works has been defamed constantly by enlightenment philistines like Weber and esp. after WW2 when Spengler became "ideological suspicious"; even today it still has a pretty bad reputation at least in germany, so when I started reading it I rly didnt expect much and was surprised at how great it (still) is; unironically the best book I read this year; def worth a read

[Anonymous No.13509606]

>>13505553
Most of his predictions have turned out to be wrong, so it's highly likely that he was just making shit up as he went along. Don't pay attention to him.

[Anonymous No.13509629]

>>13509606
What predictions were wrong?

[Anonymous No.13510026]

>>13509629
That the West would decline at all, or that communism is really just a form of capitalism of the lower class.

[Anonymous No.13510041]

>>13505579
t. hasn't read Spengler's diary
High society disliked him because he wouldn't stop fucking random teenage girls

[Anonymous No.13510076]

>>13505579
this but unironically

[Anonymous No.13510152]

>>13505579
> x is an incel and y is used by incels today to z
best argument is no argument, right, anon?
argumentum ad metum

[Anonymous No.13510218]

>>13510026
Communism's primary goal is the movement of money, same as capitalism. A defining characteristic of a civilization in decline is that it directs its energy into political and economic matters instead of artistic and spiritual ones. This began with the French revolution, thus for Spengler the West had already begun its descent from greatness 100 years before he started writing

[Anonymous No.13510238]

>>13505579
>There is no decline read Pinker's Enlightenment Now ffs.

[Anonymous No.13510283]

Seriously how was it possible for someone to be so prophetic and intelligent. Do we have anyone alive now on his level?

I honestly believe he is totally ignored among the mainstream because he is just too blackpilled and most people cant cope with the implications of his philosophy

[Anonymous No.13510338]

>>13507084
You mean like some kinda moldbugian plural patchworkism? If so, it would fall apart once people recall imperialism and the blobs expand on the map.
The only way it'll work is in a virtual environment as some sort reaction to material techno-dystopia.

[Anonymous No.13510690]

>>13505553
This has book always had the stupidest reviews. This book has nothing to do with your faggot emotions about the word "decline". The problem is, that people only read the title to the book, then imagine what the book is about, then act like they read the whole book. It is really about combining calculus and history, finding patterns of thresholds in history, and project them into the future.

In Spengler's words its because your a bunch of stupid megalopolitan, matter of fact, mother fkers with no creativity.

The chapter on math is itself powerful, I taken its cultural perception into other fields and picked things up faster and deeper than my peers could.

[Anonymous No.13510696]

>>13510690
not a mathfag, but what makes that chapter so powerful?

[Anonymous No.13510870]

>>13510696
West, measure everything in calculus
Greeks measure everything in a circle
Asians see the path nature gives them or the tao.
Egyptians see the life of the nile river, the crocodile mouth.
Babylonians the rectangular cow vagina
Arabs the mosaic.
Jews, the light in the cave.

Look at this picture. Is that not light hitting the wall of a cave at different angles? Is this not the final Jewish expression? "You see the rock from this angle goy, I see it from another angle." In there legalese, their esoteric free mason cult, or MTV. its all two faced, this truth for you, that truth for me.

Its not just these big cultures in little cultures too, its rap music, or pokemon. born, have an idea they express, get bored and die.

But to your question, if you study something old, you cant look through the wrong lens.

[Anonymous No.13510874]

>>13510870

[Anonymous No.13511010]

>>13510283
Explain this quote please.

[Anonymous No.13511025]

>>13511010
He basically says that anyone who believes in pacifism will just put themselves at the mercy of those who believe in war.

[Anonymous No.13511167]

>>13510870
I have to travel to the mountain, how do I get there?, nature will give me the way.

[Anonymous No.13511176]

>>13508689
>in 1917, an age where optimism for human reason was still high

Read some history nigger.

[Anonymous No.13511182]

>>13505579
pathetic bait

[Anonymous No.13511191]

>>13511176
This was before Gödel and before Heisenberg, when communists still had near-religious faith in science (Heidegger rightfully called this religious faith), when it seemed we could solve every problem we had through historical critique and the human intellect. This was back when people really believed in the shining hights of socialism, before we came to know the horrors that we now know.

[Anonymous No.13511195]

>>13505579
>Pinker

[Anonymous No.13511213]

>>13510870
The west reaches to the sky like the pine tree. the german brooding in the forest, the monk, the 1800s, pushing everything to the limits.

[Anonymous No.13511219]

>>13511191
>when it seemed we could solve every problem we had through historical critique and the human intellect

Sounds very much like commies now. Aside from them, everybody else was pretty much down in the dumps in regards to human reason due to this silly world war business.

[Anonymous No.13511231]

>>13511219
But that's political, im talking about the limits of science itself. For while people saw the atrocities of WW1 as a horrible abomination, this didnt really shake the belief that we could eventually prevent such conflicts through the enlightenment of the world, which would have to be facilitated through science and education. But Spengler believed that both the social and natural sciences would eventually find their epistemic and sociological limits.

[Anonymous No.13511235]

>>13506522
>>13505553
I want to read decline but the only philosophy I've read is a good deal of Plato and some Aristotle. Will I be completely over my head?

[Anonymous No.13511239]

>>13510870
Archimedes: there is no sand/mass behind the sun, because it is outside of the circle.

[Anonymous No.13511242]

>>13511235
Nah, Spengler doesnt need much prior knowledge, besides maybe Goethe and Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.13511273]

>wanted to make a video essay on the decline of the west for youtube and keep it short and concise
>been editing and adding to it for over a month, rewrote most of it 4 times, and it's still almost 20 minutes long, and i'm still not perfectly happy with it
It's an interesting challenge trying to condense the key points of his philosophy while keeping it focused. A problem I had with Spengler lecturers like John David Ebert is that he would regularly go off on unrelated tangents about Indian mythology or something for 10 minutes.

[Anonymous No.13511286]

>>13506522
Vico is one of the most important yet ignored philosophers.

[Anonymous No.13511287]

>>13511242
You high? You need a working knowledge of the entire of Western and Greek history. Also an understanding of Kant's philosophy is expected. Really the more you know the more The Decline will make sense. He was one of the last great Western polymaths.

[Anonymous No.13511304]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSAm5g8Sz8

[Anonymous No.13511453]

>>13511273
based, onward anon

[Anonymous No.13511897]

>>13505553
Is Spengler's claim true that philosophy is now practically dead and trying to keep a corpse animated, and that only in science (although Spengler wasnt too fond of it) we can still employ creative forces?

[Anonymous No.13511941]

>>13505553
>Novelist Thomas Mann compared reading Spengler's book to reading Schopenhauer for the first time. Academics gave it a mixed reception. Sociologist Max Weber described Spengler as a "very ingenious and learned dilettante", while philosopher Karl Popper called the thesis "pointless".
Yeah I’ll PASS

[Anonymous No.13511952]

>Omg of course i decide what books i read by reading their wikipedia page!

[Anonymous No.13512014]

>>13511952
>Omg of course I decide what books to read by going on an anime website filled with edgy 19 year olds!

[Anonymous No.13512022]

>>13512014
>Facebook filename
hmmmh, you're not a redditor, are you?

[Anonymous No.13512971]

>>13510026
>he was wrong "That the West would decline at all"
Well, within the next quarter century, China will achieve absolute global supremacy. It will disregard Western ideas of international law, human rights, and fairness. It will rule the Earth as an unashamed, ethnic supremacist, nationalist hegemon.
>But at least we have gay marriage!!

[Anonymous No.13512982]

>>13511273
What word count app is that?

[Anonymous No.13513210]

>>13505579
dilate

[Anonymous No.13513496]

>>13512971
China is already declining, their birth rate is horrendous

[Anonymous No.13513569]

>>13513496
>imagine believing official PRC stats

there probably are 1.4 -1.6 billion chinks today, nobody can know this for sure

[Anonymous No.13513608]

>>13511219
Spengler finished the first volume in 1914.

[Anonymous No.13513628]

>>13513496
>>13512971
you don't understand Spengler, China isn't a unique culture that is going to somehow supersede the West, at least not anymore, China is part of the Faustian culture. Americanization of the world is the imperialism of the Faustian culture, this is our pax romana.

The culture of the West is dead, but the civilization will likely live on for much longer, having conquered the globe, albeit in increasingly sterile, desolate, consumerist, bleak, cosmopolitan conditions.

[Anonymous No.13513645]

>>13513628
brainlet here, did Spengler considered angloids part of the faustian culture? They seem like the opposite, they are nation of utilitarians, merchants and pragmatists.

[Anonymous No.13513679]

>>13506657
>already in the fact that nobody listens to classical music anymore
Not true. I'm a classical musician and the classical world isn't doing too bad.

I've actually been seeing a lot of growth now that classical music is getting on the internet. I go to nearly sold out classical concerts all the time too.

[Anonymous No.13514827]

yes

[Anonymous No.13514858]

>>13513645
Anglos were just the first Faustian nation to go imperialism mode, they were ahead of the curve.
It's kind of poetic that they were the ones that voted to leave the EU when all the other European nations are content to be subjects to EU imperialism, it shows the spirit of the British empire hasn't completely died yet

[Anonymous No.13514922]

>>13514858
>create the most extreme neo-liberal economy entirely dependent on free trade treaties
>abandon your most important partners without a single thought on how to change said system
>just watch it crash and burn
The Anglos surely are the last glimmer of hope for Western society.

[Anonymous No.13514929]

>>13514858
Anglos are deeply semetic and closer to Jews in spirit due to the Norman conquest.

[Anonymous No.13515492]

>>13513645
Yes, read Preußentum und Sozialismus. There's a lot about French, Anglo and Prussian Faustianism in there.

[Anonymous No.13515509]

>>13505579

This is correct. There is no decline in any meaningful sense. It's just a narrative passed around by bored extremists on both sides

[The Nomad !N8Yn.I/WbM No.13515786]

>>13513628
>>13513645
What is Faustianism?

[Anonymous No.13515835]

>>13511897
Yes, Heidegger was the last great philosopher we had.

[Anonymous No.13515852]

>>13505553
It's a huge cope.

[Anonymous No.13515865]

>>13514858
Wasn't imperialism started before them by the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire?

[Anonymous No.13515878]

>>13514929
>norman
>jews
I don't see the relationship quite frankly, and I say that as a Jew with Norman heritage.

[Anonymous No.13516239]

>>13515865
Colonialism is different to imperialism. Colonialism is more an expression of the wills to explore and conquer of a healthy culture, while imperialism is the decadent will to blindly impose one's culture on another due to a feeling of superiority that needs to be proved. The Holy Roman Empire was an empire in name only as the memes go, a symbolic continuation of the Roman empire. Julius Evola sheds some light on the HREs status in medieval Europe. He says that in the time when kings were truly seen as God's representatives on Earth (the Divine Right) the HRE as a state acted as a king among kings. It was the spiritual king of all Europe just like the Zhou dynasty in China, and Spengler pretty much came to the same conclusion as Evola, as Europe and ancient China became less religious and more rational in their cultural lifecycles, a state like the HRE or the Zhou was no longer needed. Napoleon's formal dismantling of the HRE was a symbolic act signaling that the spiritual age of traditional Europe was over and the age of rational imperialism had begun.

[Anonymous No.13516375]

>>13514929
oh fuck off you butthurt germoid faggt