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18751089 No.18751089 [Reply] [Original]

Talk shit about Oswald Spengler. I have an almost religious devotion to his work and I want to shake free of it.

>> No.18751106

literally malding

>> No.18751115

>>18751089
he bald

>> No.18751126

>>18751089
>and I want to shake free of it.
How do you expect to shake it when Spengler was 100% right.

>> No.18751137

>>18751089
At least in the west you have some sort of choice. The only problem is that can result in you being rekt socially.

>> No.18751150

>>18751126
AAAAAAAA fuck I know. But what about for example, opposing views about the fall of Rome, that it was caused by lead poisoning, or that it never actually fell at all and has merely persisted to the modern age?

>> No.18751162

He was a non-reader.

>> No.18751310

he rushed the last part if part 2 and it really suffers from it.

>> No.18751367

>>18751310
Really? How so? Are there specific subjects you wished he went more in depth?

>> No.18751373

>>18751089
>an almost religious devotion to his work
Did you actually read his whole corpus or just Decline of the West?

>> No.18751378

>>18751089
people make fun of retards all the time but there are still retards

>> No.18751385

>>18751310
All of part 2 is a mess, the whole beginning section just introduces this random metaphysical schema he never really defends or explains in terms of integration with the analysis of prime symbols

>> No.18751392

His mystical obsession with the Kali Yuga approach to history is retarded.

>> No.18751398

>>18751392
It's not remotely the same thing as the yuga cycles

>> No.18751399

>>18751373
Not his whole body of work just decline twice and hour, man and technics and Prussianism and socialism.

>> No.18751407

>>18751392
Whats your alternative view? I’m looking for competing ideas here

>> No.18751424

>>18751392
Please do not confuse the genius of Oswald Spengler with the sophistic nonsense of Traditionalism....

>> No.18751440

He is right about absolutely everything

>> No.18751445

>>18751089
his interpretation of history has significant empirical errors as well as claims in his categorization that is based on nothing. The idea of civilizations being nothing but expressions of symbols, while interesting, isn't something he reinforces with any evidence; it's purely metaphysical on his part. The idea that mathematics is an expression of culture is dubious, to say the least, and he chooses to ignore important material circumstances in favor of his idealistic framework.
and it doesnt matter because his predictions were and are correct anyway, and i have no idea how he managed to do it :^) Him predicting the limits of mathematics and science during an era of unbridled optimism was scarily prescient

>> No.18751450

>>18751089
baka i legit s2g im ok rn fr fr lmaoooo

>> No.18751526

>>18751445
>his categorization that is based on nothing
Wasn’t it though? I think he was in tune with intuition. It’s not surprising that he was heavily influenced by Nietzsche

>> No.18751534

>>18751089
I'm a leftist and even I think that Spengler was right about everything. As did Adorno

>> No.18751542

>>18751526
I should've said that it had no empirical base. Youre right that it was an intuitive model, which means it was more a philosophical work than a truly historical one.

>> No.18751543

>>18751089
How is it allowed to think freely now? You're not allowed to criticize Jews anywhere since WW2 and recently you can't criticize LGBT / COVID either. There's never freedom of speech.

>> No.18751575

>>18751543
>WW2
Well he died before world war 2

>> No.18751585

>>18751542
Yeah which makes sense that I like him so much because I’m more of an artist than an intellectual

>> No.18751587

>>18751398
Winter is a refurbished Kali Yuga

>> No.18751595

>>18751445
His predictions were all wrong though.

>> No.18751602

>>18751450
>>18751542
He uses Goethe's scientific method which might be called rational empiricism. Imagine there are two trees, one large, one small, one with lots of branches, one with sparse branches. Goethe arrives at the ideal form (the archetype) of the tree by discarding unnecessary details like how big the trees are or how many branches they have. The physical trees are manifestations of the ideal (in the Platonic sense) archetypal tree which bears a certain morphology that makes a tree a tree. This is what Spengler does for history, he singles out that which makes a civilization a civilization, like Western music and Gothic cathedrals and infinitesimal calculus, or Greek sculpture and Attic temples and Euclidean geometry. Which are all manifestations of the ideal archetypal civilization.

>> No.18751611

>>18751587
The civilizations are separate from each other and their life development can be cut off by one another. Once a civilization dies it does not rebirth, it's not cyclical, and each is completely different and alien to the others. It's totally different than the yugas

>> No.18751637

>>18751611
>Once a civilization dies it does not rebirth, it's not cyclical, and each is completely different and alien to the others
One of the worst takes I've seen on here yet. When the Greco-Romans collapsed, the embers of their civilization were used during the renaissance. Civilization absolutely is cyclical.

>> No.18751663

>>18751543.
>Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom
Race doesn't exist. Gender doesn't exist. We're all the same and everyone should be equal.
Welcome to the winter phase, I'll be your guide, Faggot Faggotstein, I hope you enjoy the tour.

>> No.18751664

>>18751637
>When the Greco-Romans collapsed, the embers of their civilization were used during the renaissance. Civilization absolutely is cyclical.
Spengler’s whole philosophy refutes this so you either agree or disagree with him. I tend to agree given that his arguments are compelling, especially his comparison of western and Greek mathematics. Also consider western sculpture with its exaggerated proportions vs the strict realism of Greek sculpture.

>> No.18751680
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18751680

>>18751637
All that occurred during the Renaissance was a representation of what they thought the past looked like. Like how we didn't know dinosaurs had feathers until recently. So little did Renaissance Italians understand of the ancient world that they bored pupils into the eyes of their imitative sculptures, while the Greeks simply painted them because they idealized the directionless timeless gaze of their sculptures. This is a very significant fact that Spengler points out.

>> No.18751691

>>18751637
It's not my take it's spengler's you retard. He considered greeks/Romans utterly alien to Faustian civilization, he actually said they were two of the least similar

>> No.18751717
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18751717

>>18751691
>>18751680
>>18751664
Well then Spengler is wrong. The fact that you fags are still reading Greek philosophy proves it.

>> No.18751733

>>18751717
>The fact that you fags are still reading Greek philosophy proves it.
All Spengler says is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that individuals project their meanings onto the world, and when a Faustian reads greek philosophy he perceives Faustian ideas.

>> No.18751740

>>18751717
That proves nothing, westerners obsess over eastern religions too

>> No.18751744

His philosophy seems to me necessarily self refuting simply by virtue of the fact that he’d necessarily be approaching his whole project through the lens he ascribes to his own culture. He’s at best taking a view of history as a Faustian would, not as it is.

>> No.18751749

>>18751733
The whole Faustian thing is just intellectual masturbation. The west ain't special.

>> No.18751756

>>18751749
Good god you're retarded, he never claims the west is special, each civilization is just different

>> No.18751759

>>18751744
This applies to any philosophy of history
I agree that certain biases are inherent, but you cant really say that it is self-refuting

>> No.18751768

>>18751744
This is indeed the big flaw and he only ever attempts to address it by saying Faustian culture is particularly historically minded and so suited for the task.

>> No.18751775

>>18751759
How is it not self refuting? It seems to me that if the best you could ever do is a subjective view, not an objective view, which it more or less denies, then it seems self refuting to me. It could interpreted essentially as a work of art appropriate for his culture at his time rather than philosophy in which I could derive at sort of objective truth, which is exactly what it claims to be. How can it both claim to be something which it fundamentally denies?

>> No.18751779

>>18751749
>The west ain't special.
He never says it’s special but he argues that it’s the only culture currently in the process of fulfillment (now in decline).

>> No.18751787
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18751787

>>18751749
Thats the whole fucking point of the book, retard
READ THE FUCKING BOOK BEFORE SPEAKING

>> No.18751788

>>18751768
That seems like an awfully convenient scapegoat. I guess when I think about it, it’s not necessarily self refuting but it leaves an enormous question mark. It’s like an ant trying to tell you about entomology from an objective perspective. It could objective. But it could also be totally subject and essentially nonsense that only makes sense from the point of view of an ant.

>> No.18751792

>>18751744
And therein lies the rub. The same is true even for science and mathematics; trying to describe processes of the universe in a language we developed.

>> No.18751795

>>18751756
Listen dumb-dumb, the only differentiating aspects of any particular civilization are its symbols. But there is no distinction between human civilization as a whole. Philosophy and technology might experience a time of regress, but eventually we always pick up where we left off. A new civilization taking the torch and continuing from where the old one left it.

>> No.18751806
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18751806

>>18751787
I read the wikipedia article, I ain't reading 500 pages.

>> No.18751811

>>18751768
Well that’s not possible because if there’s one thing that’s objectively, universally true it’s that fate loves irony and the most ironic thing possible would be that if he were totally wrong and this whole road goes on forever, it’s turtles all the way down, and we’re going to approach the terminus into infinity. Death is merely the act of dying, the completion of which never comes.

>> No.18751816

>>18751788
>scapegoat
Lol. But I get what you're trying to say. I agree with you I have made this same criticism of him many times before.

>> No.18751826

>>18751795
You dont even appear to know the basic premise of the book you're discussing, the entire point is specifically the distinctness of the civilizations

>> No.18751843

>>18751788
You’re oversimplifying it, and he addresses the fact that we’re now in the unique position to be able to compare cultures. The same book, had it been written in India, would certainly have a different flavor (perhaps being more reminiscent of Kali Yuga, or being centred on Kali Yuga as opposed to Goethe) but could conceivably make the same basic arguments. For example, while we all have a unique face, we also share a similar bone structure. In this way, any human should be able to make comparisons of human cultures and not be so far off. We see this through Joseph Campbells comparative mythology where we see the same motifs cropping up around the world again and again, the same human ideas. So again, while spengler has a definite Faustian flavor, I don’t think that means you can just dismiss it altogether as irrelevant.

>> No.18751855

>>18751788
From a Goethean point of view it is both subjective and objective. It's objective in that it is rooted in reality, as all art is, but subjective in that it is an artist's interpretation of reality. Goethe was a monist, he thought the artist intuits reality and reveals to it its own nature. This is what Spengler is doing with history. Subject and object are unified, the subjective and objective are synthesized.

>> No.18751869
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18751869

>>18751089
The West and Modernity in general isn't it decline, its just stripping off whatever residual humanity it had left, we're being overcome. Capitalism just keeps on chugging no matter what because its not based on some kind of cultural apparatus but a cluster of out of control mutually stimulating competitive systems where any sense of agency and all values are continually shredded in favor of self-propogation pure and simple. Pure and simple blind darwinism trumps all notions of form or purpose. Every system before this was essentially designed to keep this from happening, now it has, and we can't hope for collapse to save us. We will we replaced or otherwise converted into paperclips for the maximizer.

>> No.18751876

>>18751795
I see what you’re saying
>>18751826
I understand where he’s coming from, and ive thought myself that spenglers view is perhaps just one aspect of the truth. There is an obvious torch carrying from one civilization to another. In a way you can say history is both linear and cyclical. The way I see it, and I don’t think it conflict with Spengler at all, is that like a plant becomes fertilizer for future plans, dead cultures act as fertilizer for new cultures. Not that there is a direct continuation but there is the semblance of linear progression. And it’s fitting to think that our current civilization is literally fuelled by dead tree fossils. The death of one thing allows for the life of another.

>> No.18751884

>>18751869
>t. Atheistic rationalist of the winter time

>> No.18751888

>>18751869
What exactly does Land think the future holds? I get the gist of his philosophy but the end state seems just as vague as the Singularity. Where is capitalism going?

>> No.18751889

If what he says is true then it doesn't make sense how he should be able to write the book. He would be trapped within the relative veiwpoint of his own civilization and culture and unable to identify correctly the essenses of other great civilizaitions

>> No.18751893

>>18751869
Yeah but it runs on a biological substrate that its tearing to shreds

>> No.18751896

>>18751888
Impossible to know, thus presenting a hard limit to human reason via extinction.

>> No.18751905

>>18751893
Well either we all die via ecological collapse or we all die via conversation into paperclips so I don't see the difference from our perspective

>> No.18751913

>>18751896
What a depressing end, dying and having no idea whatsoever what happens to the abomination you created.

>> No.18751916

>>18751905
I’m writing a fantasy novel about this very question. As a species were sort of facing the crisis of the long defeat. I mean, death is always an inevitability. Why live even one individual life?

>> No.18751955
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18751955

>>18751876
>In a way you can say history is both linear and cyclical.
The term you are looking for is spiral. What you say is how I view history: it consists of action and reaction, something Spengler vehemently denied when he said that civilizations don't influence each other. He sets up Faustian and Apollonian civilizations to be polar opposites, but never considers the possibility that the entire Faustian worldview was born out of a reactionary flight from the limitations of Greek thought, which is what actually occurred during the Middle Ages through to the Scientific Revolution as the Western mind liberated itself from Plato and Aristotle even as it pretended to worship them.

But the Greek worldview was itself a reaction to the Egyptian. Gone is the two dimensional art of Egypt, enter the three dimensional Greek sculpture; gone is the obelisk and the pyramid that reaches vertically, enter the horizontal Greek temple.

History is an upward action. So says Faust when he attempts to transcribe the Bible, but is unable to write "first there was the word", replacing it instead with "first there was the deed"

>> No.18751974

>itt people who haven’t read Spengler complain about holes in the wikipedia and youtube summaries

>> No.18751991
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18751991

>>18751869
This article from Slatestarcodex pretty much sums up Nick Land's view but from the opposite side

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Of course they are both sterile rationalist cucks but they do have interesting things to say

>> No.18752004

>>18751991
You got a tl;dr? I hate reading.

>> No.18752013
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18752013

>>18751955
>The term you are looking for is spiral.
I’ve said this myself many times that pic related is actually a 2D representation of a spiral. And I agree with every point you made. In fact, I think there is a seeding process of one culture to another. For example, I think the reason that the west absorbed christianity so readily was because of the comparisons between Jesus and Caesar. I think Caesar literally “awakened” western culture with his Gallic wars, and I think it’s telling that in Dante’s work the mouth of satan contains judas, Brutus and Cassius. I read today that there’s a theory that the rape of Persephone myth likewise is actually some sort of Jungian outlining of their own “raping” from an outside culture, perhaps the minoans or egyptians. And I think that is a sort of archetypical male form of birth, the civilization birth, or handing of the torch as it was put forth, ie when a culture is old it has the urge to colonize and “spread its seed” maybe the way western culture has seeded every corner of the Earth in our time. Who knows?

>> No.18752021

>>18751991
Saved thanks.

>> No.18752033

>>18751991
Land's view is a bit more subtle than Scott's because it incorporates a bunch of continental philosophy while Scott is basically just talking about game theory.

>> No.18752069

>>18752033
Yeah but when Land tries to make his stuff exoteric on his blogs and stuff it sounds near exactly like Scott. The Philosophy only comes in when you start talking about lemurs.

>> No.18752181
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18752181

>>18752013
What concerns me is what comes after the West. This morning I watched Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a beautifully shot and scored documentary on the rock art of Chauvet Cave. For some reason it fucked me up. Here is the childhood of humanity laid bare, untouched for 30000 years and perfectly preserved. It was the time when humans first learned collectively that they existed as something different and, without any introspection of it, began to think higher than the animal life that surrounded them. The paintings do not depict humans, only animals, and their carved human figurines do not have faces, sometimes even without heads. This was the spiritual awakening of mankind's individuality, the first instance of Schiller's maxim "we are because we are" i.e. "I am this but I am not that"

If we conceive of history as the development of human individuality then this was its beginning. Prehistoric cultures spanned continents, but as time elapsed, cultures became smaller, more individuated, and more isolated. To me, Western civilization appears to be the conclusion of this development, the complete dominion of the entire world by one civilization geographically situated in western Europe. And one needs only read Spengler to see that Western civilization is the individualist civilization par excellence.

If the next wave of human civilization is to be a reaction to the West, seeded by the West as you say, then it fills me with a strange sense of foreboding to imagine it. Will it be a new Axial Age? A higher stage of human consciousness? Or will humanity, having reached the peak of abstract thought and individuality in Western civilization, return to primitivism out of hatred for the forms of the West?

>> No.18752209

>>18752181
>return to primitivism out of hatred for the forms of the West?
My money's on this. Not necessarily technological primitivism, but you can kiss your individualistic ideas goodbye.
But then all of this depends on the manner of your collapse.
And I have to do this to you bro
>A higher stage of human consciousness?
lmao

>> No.18752212

>>18751855
My point is that the Spengler renders the Goethian point of view, and his own, necessarily subjective and exclusively so without question.

>> No.18752224

>>18751843
Yeah, and he got that from Goethe but show me where in Spengler he justifies that the Goethian view, let alone the Spenglerian view, ever manages to escape its own limited perspective. You can’t because it doesn’t exist and necessarily can’t exist. He doesn’t address it.

>> No.18752225

>>18751089
I would check out Hegel's perception of Art and History.

Spengler's works are poisonous because he is partially correct about many things. It should also be mentioned that he revised his theory near the end of his life and removed the type of "moral relativism" from his idea of history, which is MUCH less blackpilled.

>> No.18752232

>>18752225
>Spengler's works are poisonous
>which is MUCH less blackpilled
pussy

>> No.18752249

>>18751089
He was a charlatan and really bad writer

>> No.18752259

>>18752232
poisonous because it's not 100% true

you also have to look into the personal life of Spengler, who was a depressed atheist manlet and a failed artist. He's simply reflecting the feeling of his own life onto all of history.

>> No.18752267

>>18752259
>He's simply reflecting the feeling of his own life onto all of history.
Doesn't mean he's wrong.
>poisonous because it's not 100% true
Such as?

>> No.18752283

>>18752259
Was he wrong that past civilizations collapsed? Seems rather obvious they did and so it's quite likely ours will too at some point rather than 'progressing' forever

>> No.18752291

>>18752267
>Doesn't mean he's wrong.
It means it's biased by something petty like personal shortcomings, which is also a reflection of the vanity of philosophers

>Such as?
I'm not going to write out an essay but what exactly is the root of his beliefs in Decline? A type of mystified darwinian atheism? Once again, he himself revised his own theories near the end of his life because it's obvious to anyone the type of neutral relativism in his theory is borderline childish

>> No.18752304

>>18752283
Well no, of course all civilizations more or less "collapse". Everyone acknowledges the reality of "collapse", even the book of Ecclesiastes in The Bible talks about this. But "collapse" can also mean a lot of things in different contexts and it isn't necessarily always a bad thing.

>> No.18752311

>>18752291
Root of his beliefs is Goethe's view of living nature

>> No.18752320

>>18752304
Why the scare quotes, do you not think the western roman empire collapsed?

>> No.18752322

>>18751869
Cringe. The biggest pseud of all time.

>> No.18752324

>>18752291
>I'm not going to write out an essay but what exactly is the root of his beliefs in Decline
Every civilization progresses, reaches the zenith of its power and potential, then it stagnates and starts to decline.
You don't have to be a philosopher to get this, all you need to do is open up a history book.

>> No.18752334

>>18752224
I just view that view as a flowering of an idea that he had and you either resonate with it or you don’t. For me, his view makes things very clear, but it might only be a tool that works for a certain perspective. For example with a telescope you can observe the laws of motion and gravity, and with a microscope you get quantum mechanics. Does it mean that there’s no merit to the theory of gravity just because it doesn’t seem to quite fit with quantum mechanics? Spengler is like a telescope, he shows the broad strokes of life, but when you zoom in it breaks down. As I mentioned in the OP, some historians argue that Rome actually never fell, and that alone refutes a major portion of Spenglers thesis. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, if his philosophy is a tool, does it work for you? I think that’s what’s most important. What works for me and my world view might not fit with yours.

>> No.18752341

>>18752291
To reiterate, it's like asking
>on what do you base your idea that living organisms are born, they grow, become old and then die
I'm starting to thinking that everything in the universe follows the same biological stages of life, including civilizations, systems of government and economic systems.
No doubt, someone has already thought this and explained it much more eloquently than I ever could.

>> No.18752342

>>18752225
I will thanks. Also great criticisms, I feel offended and challenged about my beliefs which is exactly what I was looking for

>> No.18752356

>>18752320
>do you not think the western roman empire collapsed?
Not really, maybe the "government" more or less collapsed, but the spirit of the people moved on. You also have to understand in many cases a "collapse" is a good thing, near the end of a civilization's lifespan the amount of mentally ill corruption becomes unbearable to any normal person. I'm sure the post-"collapse" people who went on to become agrarian workers much preferred that over the chronic ass-pumping faggotry of cosmopolitan Rome.

Then there's also the more conspiratorial issue around "collapse", do the sort of "power that be" ever truly go away? Or do they just restructure themselves under a new system as use "collapse" as an exit-strategy out of the "empire" scam. I would actually recommend Jaques Ellul's "Anarchy and Christianity" book for an interesting take on this topic.

>>18752311
So mystified darwinian atheism

>> No.18752365

>>18752304
Perhaps the idea of collapse pertains more to a mythological outlook of the world than a historical identifiable one, like the theme of the fall in finnegans wake, and the fact that the book itself is cyclical. I mean, maybe it’s a reflection of something psychological. For example, most of us can agree that Rome collapsed but finding dates for it is a point of contention. Maybe it’s the idea of the fall that is more important to us psychologically than the fact of it. This post is pure conjecture.

>> No.18752373

>>18752356
>collapsed?
Not really, maybe the "government" more or less collapsed, but the spirit of the people moved on. You also have to understand in many cases a "collapse" is a good thing,
Anon you are massively coping, the cities literally emptied, the population tanked, the economy disappeared, there is practically no writing from that period. The civilization absolutely collapsed for any normal definition of the word, even if you think people were better off after the collapse

>> No.18752456

>>18752373
>the cities literally emptied
Ok, based?
>the population tanked
Of course, Cosmopolitan Empire props up the growth of godless braindead NPCs, the second that system fails, all those people "go away". View the current state of western cities and the current state of NPCs as example
>there is practically no writing from that period
So? Who said an outpouring of astroturfed "writing" is a good thing? Do the Amish produce vast works of literature? Or do they just live in the present and enjoy their lives?

This also raises the question of "did this time period really exist at all?". I would look into Phantom Time Theory. People forget that history can easily be as fake as current events. The powers that be are lying about what happened last week, you don't think they'd lie about the existence of 500 years also?

>The civilization absolutely collapsed for any normal definition of the word, even if you think people were better off after the collapse
Once again, what "civilization"? and why does it matter

>> No.18752465

>>18751089
History is actually fake so trying to theorize about history isn't leading anywhere.

(that's my best effort)

>> No.18752662

>>18751991
>Every two-bit author and philosopher has to write their own utopia. Most of them are legitimately pretty nice. In fact, it’s a pretty good bet that two utopias that are polar opposites both sound better than our own world.

>It’s kind of embarrassing that random nobodies can think up states of affairs better than the one we actually live in. And in fact most of them can’t. A lot of utopias sweep the hard problems under the rug, or would fall apart in ten minutes if actually implemented.

>Every two-bit author and philosopher has to write their own utopia.
OH SHIT OH FUCK /lit/ ETERNALLY BTFO

but then he goes on to say
>– The utopia where every country’s military is 50% smaller than it is today, and the savings go into infrastructure spending.
That's cringe bruh.

>> No.18752778

>>18751543
The introduction of mass media and the moulding of a small number of global narrative spheres is historically unprecedented. You can argue that spheres of religion served the same function, but these are now disconnected entirely from the life of the people. Further, in the West they're now comprised of axiomatic truths - unquestionable but for immediate punishment - which are at direct variance with the experienced reality of most people. These narratives serve the interests of small elite groups to the direct detriment of the people. An objective public appraisal of where we are is presently impossible within individual spheres because of this divergence with reality. Eventually it may become possible, and certainly people on the outside of individual mediaspheres can see things more clearly for their oppositions (China makes very direct and unambiguous summaries of where the West is at which are basically unpublishable due to how many untouchable classes they impugn). Power and mass media are a new phenomenon and we're living through the first historical phase of it.

>> No.18752820
File: 1.08 MB, 636x845, alien.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18752820

>>18751744
>Human consciousness seems to me necessarily self refuting simply by virtue of the fact that humans would necessarily be approaching his whole project through the lens they ascribe to their own consciousness. They're at best taking a view of consciousness as a human would, not as it is.
You can literally apply this criticism to anyone and anything. This kind of shit where you find something seemingly meaningful in a directionless tangent is just an anglocentric trait of thought and a quirk of English. Its the same quirk that led society to classify covid as something dangerous through apparent meticulous analysis of data without bothering to ever look at the bigger picture. Too lost in your own heads, blinded by abstraction. Like how Satan was drifting in darkness in the first chapters of Paradise Lost trying to get to Eden. Dangerous nonsense.

>> No.18752886
File: 36 KB, 500x499, EC871elWkAAp5Sm.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18752886

>>18751150
>caused by lead poisoning
We both know that at most this was a tangential factor

>> No.18752898

>>18751595
How so

>> No.18752973

>>18752820
The criticism applies to relativism. If your system is founded on some absolute axiom it does not apply

>> No.18752978

>>18752973
Doesn't mean much if you can't even define the boundaries between the absolute and the relative without everyone and their mothers sperging out.

>> No.18752996

>hates on darwinism for being too anglo and autistic
hero desu

>> No.18753006

>>18752886
Yeah lol, I was just bringing up known hypotheses

>> No.18753022

>>18752978
I'm just saying Spengler has an emphatically relativist system, if you have one grounded in some universal, unambiguous knowledge it's a bit different, like traditionalist view of history

>> No.18753024

>>18752778
>China makes very direct and unambiguous summaries of where the West is at which are basically unpublishable due to how many untouchable classes they impugn
I’d like to read specific examples of this
>>18752973
Give an example of an absolute axiom

>> No.18753045

>>18751445
>during an era of unbridled optimism

The crisis of the foundations of mathematics were already a hot topic in academic circles when he was active, alongside with early technoskepticism.

>> No.18753070

>>18753045
NOO LET ME HAVE MY MAGIC PROPHECIES

>> No.18753107

>>18753024
second this. indeed i have heard of these texts and scientific studies but never really read.

>> No.18753281

>>18751089
i can't anon

>> No.18753433

>>18752334
Spengler could be 100% right, as could Goethe and others. I just think it’s the sharpest critique possible because the validity of the project itself undermines the validity of the project. Spengler invites to take his ideas as truthful, objective, and from a bird’s eye view but if we accept it as such, that means that the perspective he’s offered us is necessarily filtered through the lens of his own culture and/or civilization and thus isn’t actually objective at all. Even telescopes can only see certain wavelengths of light after all. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong but it is a problem. If he’s ever addressed it, I’ve not seen it.

>> No.18753445

>>18751733
>that individuals project their meanings onto the world
Does he really say this? I just don’t accept this at all.

>> No.18753713

>>18753433
Yeah fair enough
>>18753445
He never says beauty is in the eye of the beholder that’s just an easy way to convey the idea, that nothing external exists (to us) as anything else except our ideas of what it is. That’s not to say 1 + 1 is subjective, but rather that our judgements of good and bad, ie our values, are subjective. People in a culture collectively share a certain set of ideals, sort of like a shared language, and can meaningfully communicate with one another. If I make Faustian art, another Faustian can see in it what I felt in the creation process, but someone from another culture will see something completely different based on their own worldview.

>> No.18753724

>>18753713
So at most, he thinks cultures project meanings onto the world, not individuals?

>> No.18753732

>>18753724
A culture is the sum of individuals like the cells in a body. To him a culture is a super organism.

>> No.18753736

>>18753724
It's more like meanings project cultures into the world, including the worldview of anyone within one. The meaning hangs above so to speak and ordains the development of the culture along a predetermined path and with specific attributes related to its particular prime symbol. The meaning is like the conductor or composer and the orchestra is the civilization playing out through time

>> No.18753952

Read Pagan Imperialism by Julius Evola. Specifically the part against European nationalism

>> No.18753963

>>18751089
sex gifs

>> No.18753987

>>18753736
Okay but he sure seems like he’s a metaphysical and religious relativist so how does he reconcile that with what you just said?

>> No.18753990

>>18753732
But that’s not what I asked. What’s projecting the meaning here? Do I, an individual, project meaning onto the world or does my culture?

>> No.18754005

>>18753990
I did answer you

>> No.18754054

>>18751445
>The idea of civilizations being nothing but expressions of symbols
I think that's reading into it. Spengler is a metaphysician. "Nothing but" implies a reductionist approach to history and knowledge. The "prime symbol" inspired from Goethe is a much broader, and in my opinion richer idea than that. I read it from Spengler as being an essential quanta of high culture, the basic and defining principle that permeates it. And this idea is not without evidence, which Spengler gives, such as the Gothic Cathedral preceding calculus or the vanishing point of oil painting preceding the infinitesimal. The actualization and eventual exhaustion of potentials is a coherent way to explain the phenomenon of growth and decline.
I would grant that Spengler got certain things wrong in history, but some of that wasn't even his fault, and was merely what discoveries were available at the time.
For example, while his characterization of the Greeks wasn't wholly inaccurate, I'd contest his idea that the Classical civilization was "ahistoric." Especially since archeology has discovered various mobile time keeping devices (essentially sundials), which contradict Spengler's ideas that the Greek mind was timeless. While the "world as body" idea is certainly foundational to Classical culture, the timeless and ahistoric aspect is something Spengler got wrong. This might be accurate for the Indians, but not the Greco-Roman culture. They may not have been as fastidious as Faustians, but past events did color current identities. Was the Classical historian mainly concerned with his own time alone? No, that's inaccurate, as Livy attempted a long history of Rome, and Romans would make references to things like the Punic War in ways an American might call back to WW2. Livy in particular wrote about the Battle of Cannae even though it was near centuries before his time.
But those are the kinds of things I think Spengler gets wrong the most those which might hurt a secondary thesis but not the primary.

>> No.18754106

>>18754054
Even with that inaccuracy I don’t think it really hurts his argument, for example like with the Divi Julii cult, when a person died they could pass immediately into myth rather than remain purely historical figures. I think it’s moreso just an overall attitude than the fact that they didn’t keep time. He was right in saying that Pompey lost the second he fleed Rome to set up a base in the East, and the same was true for Antonius. It seems the greeks and roman really were concerned mostly with the near, the practical and the present.

>> No.18754111

>>18754005
No, you didn’t. Saying individuals project meaning onto the world and culture, even if it is the sum of individuals, projects meaning onto the world are two totally different things. I suppose I’m to take it that he does not think individuals project meaning onto the world, but cultures do.

>> No.18754125

>>18754111
I did answer you and I’m not going to repeat myself

>> No.18754236

Western civilsation actually collapsed in 1945, he didn't foresee this. He thought it would peter out over the next hundreds of years but still be fundamentally Western civilization. But everything after 1945 is not Western civilization, it is something new. Westerners referencing the Romans or Greeks didn't make those the actual fathers of Western civilization, same thing is with modern civilization (no name yet) referencing Western civilization.

>> No.18754241

>>18754236
This is western civilization petering out.
Sorry bud.

>> No.18754272

Spengler worship is a desperate attempt to intellectualize the trite right wing values you downloaded off the internet because you lack a substantial father figure. His predictions failed and now he's being dragged out of the ash heap of history only for his predictions to fail a second time. Just get into astrology.

>> No.18754313

>>18751869
In accordance with Spengler, expansion replacing innovation

>> No.18754330

>>18751089
While Spengler is very knowledgeable about the Faustian and Magian and Classical civilizations (and hence focuses all his attention on them), his knowledge about India and China is generally bad - in the very first chapters of Decline he posits that the Indians never had portraiture - even though the single most popular Indian drama (Shakuntala) which he himself mentions has a scene where the hero is painting a portrait
This small error of course matters little but couple that with the few attempts to fit China or especially India into his pattern - he mentions them very little compared to the other civs - must arouse some suspicion: just check out how many times he says something "must have happened" in relation to Chinese history

>> No.18754377

>>18751089
Wikipedia lists him as an influence for Malcom X

>> No.18754555

>>18751150
>or that it never actually fell at all and has merely persisted to the modern age?
this one is the truth. the idea of a sudden collapse and decay never happened and no one believed it happened until modernity and its historiography.

>> No.18754560

>>18751756
>the prime symbols of Magian's is desiccated foreskins
>Russian's is Vodka
>China's is a rice paddy
>And the west gets the violin
It's a joke anon; Spengler's a sperg.

>> No.18754848

>>18752181
>Or will humanity, having reached the peak of abstract thought and individuality in Western civilization, return to primitivism out of hatred for the forms of the West?
in architectural circles, a concept is already bubbling up
that concept is zero energy architecture which will inevitably conclude in the form of a mud hut

>> No.18755419

>>18753987
He has a metaphysical schema he outlines in pt 2 that is not relativist, and while each culture has a different symbol the structure of their development is the same(and metaphysically determined as in not causal). He doesn't really reconcile these two things, that's what we were talking about above

>> No.18755426

>>18754560
You also sound retarded

>> No.18755431

>>18754272
Yeah you have no idea even vaguely what you're talking about lel

>> No.18755498

>>18755426
That's true, but people are shills for a 1000 page dust-laden tomes on antiquated German metaphysics, yet not anything I've done.

>> No.18755505

>>18751089
Spengler's a smart guy, but his historical knowledge of non-Western civilizations is abysmal. Fact-check his analyses in depth with non-Western civilizations and you'll find that it barely lines up with his grand narrative. He has a good and deep descriptive insight of Western civilization, but everything beyond that he shows his dilettantism in.

>> No.18755713 [DELETED] 

>>18751680
The purity of texts and translation was a major emphasis in Renaissance philosophy. While it's true that the artists may have misunderstood the Greeks, it's wrong to put them in the same camp as the men who actually read the texts and understood

>> No.18755760

>>18751680
The purity of translation in the Greek texts was put on some emphasis in the Renaissance. While it's true that the artists may have misunderstood the Greeks, it is wrong to put them in the same camp as scribes just about as it's wrong to characterize a time period as "the Renaissance"

>> No.18755771

>>18755760
your first draft was better

>> No.18755777

>>18755760
It's also important to point out that the Fall from Eden allegory has a lot to do with historicism, something Spengler would've agreed with. The more we strayed from Plato, the more skewed his philosophy became. The Renaissance was in many ways a paradoxical revolt against its Faustian destiny
>>18755771
You will never be a woman

>> No.18756097

>>18755505
Do you think the theory is salvageable in spite of that? I honestly don't know enough about the histories and specifics of all the other cultures to judge for myself.

>> No.18756114

>>18755419
I’ve not read it but it still sounds like he personally was a metaphysical relativist? He more or less believed that the religion and metaphysics of any culture was a product of that culture, correct? He didn’t seem to have any particular metaphysical grounding himself and so I don’t see how he can make any of the claims he makes. If it’s all just relative to the culture in the end, then nothing you say can be said to be true or valid.

>> No.18756135

>>18756114
>e didn’t seem to have any particular metaphysical grounding himself
He does, read the first chapter of pt 2 if you want to know what it is. It's not a very thoroughly thought out or defended system but it is a system, and antecedent to the different cultural understandings of reality, indeed it explains the nature of the cultures in a larger sense.

>> No.18756421

>>18756135
>It's not a very thoroughly thought out or defended
He didn’t give a fuck about that. I almost feel like he was more than a poet larping as a philosopher

>> No.18756432

>>18756421
Was more of a***
Also I don’t mean that like it’s a bad thing.