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

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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