The Decline of the West (Volume 1): Form and Actuality - Softcover

Spengler, Oswald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1628451270 ISBN 13: 9781628451276

Publisher: Windham Press, 2013

Synopsis

The Decline of the West Volume I: Form and Actuality
By Oswald Spengler
Contents

I-Introduction
II-The Meaning of Numbers
III-The Problem of World-history--Physiognomic and Systematic
IV-The Problem of World-history--The Destiny-idea and the Causality-principle
V-Makrokosmos--The Symbolism of the World-picture and the Problem of Space
VI-Makrokosmos--Apollinian, Faustian, and Magian Soul
VII-Music and Plastic--The Arts of Form
VIII-Music and Plastic--Act and Portrait
IX-Soul-image and Life-feeling--On the Form of the Soul
X-Soul-image and Life-feeling--Buddhism, Stoicism, and Socialism
XI-Faustian and Apollinian Nature-Knowledge
Introduction

In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of predetermining history, of following the still untravelled stages in the destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfilment--the West-European-American.

Hitherto the possibility of solving a problem so far-reaching has evidently never been envisaged, and even if it had been so, the means of dealing with it were either altogether unsuspected or, at best, inadequately used.

Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something that is essentially independent of the outward forms--social, spiritual and political--which we see so clearly? Are not these actualities indeed secondary or derived from that something? Does world-history present to the seeing eye certain grand traits, again and again, with sufficient constancy to justify certain conclusions? And if so, what are the limits to which reasoning from such premisses may be pushed?

Is it possible to find in life itself--for human history is the sum of mighty life-courses which already have had to be endowed with ego and personality, in customary thought and expression, by predicating entities of a higher order like "the Classical" or "the Chinese Culture," "Modern Civilization"--a series of stages which must be traversed, and traversed moreover in an ordered and obligatory sequence? For everything organic the notions of birth, death, youth, age, lifetime are fundamentals--may not these notions, in this sphere also, possess a rigorous meaning which no one has as yet extracted? In short, is all history founded upon general biographic archetypes?

The decline of the West, which at first sight may appear, like the corresponding decline of the Classical Culture, a phenomenon limited in time and space, we now perceive to be a philosophical problem that, when comprehended...

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About this title

Review:

" Provocative and often dazzling. . . . An exciting excursion through history." - "Time"
" Audacious, profound . . . exciting and magnificent."
- "The New Republic
"" This grand panorama, this imaginative sweep, this staggering erudition, this Nietzschean prose, with its fine color and ringing force, mark a work that must endure." - "The New York Sun
"
" With monumental learning . . . Spengler surveys man's cosmic march. . . . Always forceful . . . eloquent."
- "The New York Times
"

"Provocative and often dazzling. . . . An exciting excursion through history." -"Time"
"Audacious, profound . . . exciting and magnificent."
-"The New Republic
""This grand panorama, this imaginative sweep, this staggering erudition, this Nietzschean prose, with its fine color and ringing force, mark a work that must endure." -"The New York Sun
"
"With monumental learning . . . Spengler surveys man's cosmic march. . . . Always forceful . . . eloquent."
-"The New York Times
"

Provocative and often dazzling. . . . An exciting excursion through history. Time
Audacious, profound . . . exciting and magnificent.
The New Republic
This grand panorama, this imaginative sweep, this staggering erudition, this Nietzschean prose, with its fine color and ringing force, mark a work that must endure. The New York Sun

With monumental learning . . . Spengler surveys man s cosmic march. . . . Always forceful . . . eloquent.
The New York Times
"

About the Author:

Oswald Spengler, one of the most controversial historians of the twentieth century, was born in Blankenburg, Germany, in 1880. He studied mathematics, philosophy, and history in Munich and Berlin. Except for his doctor s thesis on Heraclitus, he published nothing before the first volume of The Decline of the West, which appeared when he was thirty-eight. The Agadir crisis of 1911 provided the immediate incentive for his exhaustive investigations of the background and origins of our civilization. Spengler chose his main title in 1912, finished a draft of the first volume two years later, and published it in 1918. The second, concluding volume was published in 1922. The Decline of the West was first published in this country in 1926 (Vol. 1) and 1928 (Vol. 2); this abridged edition was first published here in 1962.
For many years Spengler lived quietly in his home in Munich, thinking, writing, and pursuing his hobbies collecting pictures and primitive weapons, listening to Beethoven quartets, and reading the comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere. He took occasional trips to the Harz Mountains and to Italy. In 1936, three weeks before his fifty-sixth birthday, he died in Munich of a heart attack."

About this edition

• Publisher: Windham Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1628451270
• ISBN 13: 9781628451276
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 462