/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16575233]

You guys memed me, this is pretty bad.

>wrong on half the facts like claiming the romans "invented" their history pre 250bc
>arbitrary reasonings like setting each civilization cycle to 1000 years
>arbitrarily comparing artists and generals of the different times on extremely superficial similarities (napoleon was totally alexander you guys, just like pythagoras was descartes!)

He has some nice insights here and there but they all seem to stem from just plainly wrong starting points. I'm less than halfway through the book but I dont think I can keep going, it seems too bullshitty.

[man ass No.16575249]

>>16575233
In other words you don't understand it.

[Anonymous No.16575259]

>>16575233
>muh west
>oswald
>anglx saxonex tranny name
What did you expect besides shit? English speaking countries aren't Western, they are anglospheric, a place where people through their amazing basic education end up living in a different timeline from the rest of the world

[Anonymous No.16575285]

>>16575233
>i didn't read the book, but...
Then why would you assume your opinion matters?

[Anonymous No.16575289]

>>16575285
>no you see, you have to read the whole book of drivel before you can say its drivel :)

[Anonymous No.16575291]

I don't know about Spengler but everything you wrote is true of most teleological accounts of history, the supreme example being Vico. It's probably better read for small individual insights than subscription to the whole concept. Vico at least is fun, he literally believes giants walked the earth

[Anonymous No.16575293]

>>16575289
>you have to read a book to know what's in it
Yes.

[Anonymous No.16575297]

did Spengler invent "the west" (abendland)? it barely seems to exist before his time

[Anonymous No.16575308]

>>16575259

> hurr durr I just looked at the author's name and decided to start mumbling about anglos

Oswald Spengler was a kraut and he wrote Der Untergang des Abendlandes in German.

[Anonymous No.16575320]

>>16575285
>>16575249
Tell me then, what have I not understood, and what I would miss out on if I stop reading now?
I really wanted to like Spengler but right now it feels like its wading through a lot of shit to find a few nuggets of truth, while I could be reading something else. While I dont say that Spengler is entirely without worth, is he really worth reading over other stuff in my reading list that I want to get to like The Ancient City of de Coulanges or How to kill a Dragon? Why?

I made this thread to see if I can be convinced to keep reading, pretty much, and what arguments are for Spengler

[Anonymous No.16575322]

>>16575320
don't read anything

[Anonymous No.16575330]

>>16575297
Well, before the US became a big deal "the west" was simply Europe.

[Anonymous No.16575339]

>>16575233
Yeah it's a shitty meme

[Anonymous No.16575359]

>>16575320
He has some good insights but is extremely overrated and mostly wrong. This will get worse as time goes on as well, which is exactly the opposite of what we should learn from good history works.

[Anonymous No.16575401]

>>16575233

Like Plutarch, you don't read Spengler because you expect all the individual historical details to be correct. It's not that kind of stamp-collector history. You read him because his biases and unreliable analogies THEMSELVES provide important insight into his topic. Plutarch shows us what the educated elite of his time *thought* to be true, and how their vision of history informed their moral reasoning and their view of the development of their own society. Spengler shows us the same thing.

Spengler's work is now *itself* a historical source document, showing us what a certain type of intellectual of his time period would have thought about history as a process. The fact that he remember him now demonstrates that he was able to convince a good number of his contemporaries that his outlook was valid. So what does it mean, for the study of history, that a large number of Europeans in 1918 came to believe that their decline and collapse were inevitable, for the reasons Spengler gives?

[Anonymous No.16575410]

>>16575320
Start with the first page.

[Anonymous No.16575417]

>>16575410
Stop posting

[Anonymous No.16575548]

>>16575233
"I read part of the abridged version, let me now explain how the whole thing is garbage"

>wrong on half the facts like claiming the romans "invented" their history pre 250bc

Ah yes, Romulus and Remus were clearly sons of the god Mars who were suckled by a she-wolf. It's well-established historical fact and in no way invented.

>arbitrary reasonings like setting each civilization cycle to 1000 years

He doesn't arbitrarily assign that value, he says it's around that number based on the metrics he's using. At the back of volume 1 he has a timeline tracking multiple great cultures.

>arbitrarily comparing artists and generals of the different times on extremely superficial similarities (napoleon was totally alexander you guys, just like pythagoras was descartes!)

He's comparing them based on their accomplishments within their culture's world-understanding. Pythagorean mathematics was intrinsically tied to the static-ness of the Classical world-understanding (or "Number" as discussed in vol. 1) while the Cartesian plane is inseperable from Faustian understanding (Our tendency to view everything as functions/vectors, all of which exist within that coordinate system)

Return your abridged copy, get the unabridged set, and actually read the whole thing.

[Anonymous No.16575559]

>>16575249
fpbp

[Anonymous No.16575607]

>>16575548
>I read part of the abridged version
Just because I used the first image of the book I found online as a thread starter it doesnt mean Im actually reading the abridged version. If I was reading the abridged version I wouldnt complain about finishing the book and would just power through it.

>Ah yes, Romulus and Remus were clearly sons of the god Mars who were suckled by a she-wolf. It's well-established historical fact and in no way invented.
Its far from saying Romulus and Remus is made up in 753bc to saying everything 250bc is made up. Romans were obsessed with their history and due to how their traditions worked, the temples had very minute, very important lists of the consuls and priestly successions. Spengler literally just outright claims the romans invented even their consuls pre 250bc when we have pretty good sources and more showing up every day of the fasti consulares being accurate and supported by a lot of evidence.

>He's comparing them based on their accomplishments within their culture's world-understanding. Pythagorean mathematics was intrinsically tied to the static-ness of the Classical world-understanding (or "Number" as discussed in vol. 1) while the Cartesian plane is inseperable from Faustian understanding (Our tendency to view everything as functions/vectors, all of which exist within that coordinate system)
I also get that, given he explains it in like a whole chapter, I'm still not convinced its an actual good comparison, because you couldve compared a bunch of different mathematicians instead, even prepythagorean, and he couldve done the same with Descartes. He is picking and choosing artists and "great men" to accomodate his timeline rather than creating a timeline around them is what it feels like.

[Anonymous No.16575622]

>>16575259
Retard alert

[Anonymous No.16575661]

>>16575607
>He is picking and choosing artists and "great men" to accomodate his timeline rather than creating a timeline around them is what it feels like

This is Spengler's biggest failing really. What you should take from him is the methodology and ideas, but ignore the timelines, the great men he chooses and whatnot because that whole part of him is bullshit. He clearly had a preestablished idea in mind and then chose whichever actors supported it while ignoring/taking importance from the ones that didnt. The book is still important to read but it can be hard if you get bogged down in the details, most criticisms of Spengler are like encyclopedias on the myriad small facts he got wrong (or were later proven wrong, theres been 100 years of advancement in science since he wrote it) while not refuting his thesis.
What I would reccomend is just keeping an open mind and overlooking the small shit.

[Anonymous No.16575670]

Reminder only liberals, commies and deluded right-wingers disagree with Spengler

[Anonymous No.16575732]

>>16575661
he seems biased towards his findings. There's a passage where he says that western art is focused on passing time like Wagner and contrapunctus compared to the staticness of Greek statues which just seems like total bullshit.

[Anonymous No.16575754]

On a slightly unrelated note does anyone know where I can buy Imperium without having to pay $900 to import a translation from Madrid

[Anonymous No.16575761]

>>16575732
He's just too german, for him the "west" is Goethe and Wagner and just compares the entire output of greek art to a random work of either of them as proof.

[Anonymous No.16575769]

>>16575670
>only liberals, commies and deluded right-wingers disagree with Spengler
>only centrists, leftists and right wingers disagree with spengler
What's left?

[Anonymous No.16575772]

>>16575754
i think you can't just buy imperium, it is imparted by the senate

[Anonymous No.16575778]

>>16575293
No

[Anonymous No.16575781]

>>16575769
Nobody. Spengler actually discussed this

[Anonymous No.16575795]

>>16575297
I can read 1/4 of ready player one and know that it is garbage.

[Anonymous No.16575803]

>>16575795
what?

[Anonymous No.16575927]

>>16575401
Good shit. Historiography is awesome

[Anonymous No.16576225]

>>16575297
google just doesn't have many sources, this is the digital german dictionary's chart

[Anonymous No.16576539]

>>16576225
makes more sense that it existed before Spengler wrote about it