What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today’s world, even at its most problematic and paroxysimal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries. ~ Julius Evola.
Showing posts with label Oswald Spengler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oswald Spengler. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 June 2014

Oswald Spengler's Civilisation Model and the Decline of the West


  Video from the excellent Oswald Spengler Youtube channel

 

Spiritual epochs


Phase Indian from 1500 BC Classical from 1100 BC Magian (Middle Eastern) from 0 Western from 900
Spring Rural-intuitive. Great creations of the newly-awakened dream-heavy soul. Super-personal unity and fulness Birth of a myth of the Grand Style expressing a New God-feeling. World-fear. World Longing
1500–1200 BC
1100–800 BC
1–300
900–1200
Earliest mystical-metaphysical shaping of the new world-outlook. Zenith of Scholasticism
Preserved in the oldest parts of the Vedas
Summer Ripening consciousness. Earliest urban and critical stirrings. Reformation: Internal Popular Opposition to the Great Springtime Forms
10–9th century BC
7th century BC
Beginning of a purely philosophical form of the World-feeling. Opposition of idealistic and realistic systems
Preserved in the Upanishads 6–5th century BC
6–7th century
16–17th century
Formation of a new Mathematic Conception of Number as copy and Content of World-form.
Missing 540 BC
  • Algebra (the indefinite number)
  • (development not yet investigated)
Puritanism. Rationalistic-mystic Impoverishment of Religion.
Traces in the Upanishad 540 BC
  • Pythagorean society (from 640)
 650s
Autumn Intelligence of the City. Zenith of strict Intellectual creativeness "Enlightenment". Belief in the Almightiness of Reason. Cult of "Nature". "Rational" Religion
Zenith of mathematical thought. Elucidation of the Form-World of Numbers.
Zero as a number
The Great Conclusive Systems
Winter Dawn of Megalopolitan Civilization. Extinction of spiritual creative force. Life itself becomes problematical. Ethical-practical tendencies of an irreligious and unmetaphysical cosmopolitanism Materialistic World-Outlook. Cult of Science, Utility and Prosperity.
Ethical-social ideals of life. Epoch of "Unmathematical Philosophy". "Skepsis".
Tendencies in Buddha's time Movements in Islam
Inner Completion of the Mathematical Form-World. The Concluding thought.
Missing
Degradation of abstract thinking into Professional Lecture-Room Philosophy. Compendium Literature.
Schools of
Spread of Final World Sentiment
Indian Buddhism since 500 Hellenistic-Roman Stoicism since 200 The practical Fatalism in Islam since 1000 The spread of ethical Socialism from 1900

Artistic epochs


Phase Egyptian Culture Classical Culture Arabian Culture Western Culture
Pre-Cultural Period Chaos of Primitive expression forms. Mystical symbolism and Naive Imitation 2830 BC-2600 BC
1600 BC-1100 BC
500 BC-0
500-900
Culture Life-history of a style Formative of the entire inner-being. Form-language of deepest symbolic necessity Early Period Ornamentation and architecture as elementary expression of the young world-feeling: "The Primitives" 2600 BC-2200 BC
100 BC-650 BC
0-500
900-1500
Birth and Rise. Forms sprung from the Land, unconsciously shaped
2550 BC-2320 BC
11-9th century BC
1st-3rd century
11-13th century
Completion of the early form-language. Exhaustion of possibilities. Contradiction
2320 BC-2200 BC
  • 6th dynasty
  • End of pyramid and epic relief styles
  • Bloom of archaic portraits.
 8-7th century BC
4-5th century
14-15th century
Late Period Formation of a group of arts urban and conscious, in the hands of individuals: "Great Masters." Formation of a mature artistry
2130 BC-1990 BC
Perfection of an intellectualized form-language
1990 BC-1790 BC
480 BC-350 BC
7-8th century
  • Umayyad dynasty
  • Victory of architecture and picture-less arabesque art
Exhaustion of strict creativeness. Dissolution of grand form. End of style. "Classicism" and "Romanticism"
Confusion after about 1750
Civilization Existence without inner form. Metropolitan city art as a commonplace: luxury, sport, nerve excitement. Rapidly-changing fashions in art (revivals, arbitrary discoveries, borrowings) Modern art. "Art problems". Attempts to portray or to excite the metropolitan consciousness. Transformation of music, architecture and painting into mere craft-arts
1675 BC-1550 BC
Hellenism
  • Hellenistic painting modes ( veristic, bizarre, subjective)]]
  • Pergamen (theatrically)
  • Archetictual display in the cities of Diadochi
 9-10th century dynasties
19-20th century
End of form development. Meaningless, empty, artificial, pretentious architecture and ornament. Imitation of archaic an exotic motives
1550 BC-1328 BC
100 BC-100 AD
From 2000
Finale. Formation of a fixed stock of forms. Imperial display by means of material and mass. Provincial craft-art
1328 BC-1195 BC
  • Mongol Period from 1250
  • Giant building (e.g. in India)
  • "Oriental craft-art" (rugs, arms, implements)

Political epochs


Phase Egyptian Classical Chinese Western
Pre-Cultural Period Primitive folk. Tribes and their chiefs. As Yet No "Politics" and no "State" Thinite Period (MENES) 3100–2600 Mycenaean Age
(AGAMEMNON) 1600–1100		 Shang Period
1700–1300		 Frankish period
CHARLEMAGNE 500–900
Culture National groups of definite style and particular world-feeling: "nations." Working of an immanent state-idea Early Period Organic articulation of political existence. The two prime classes (noble and priests).
Feudal economics; purely agrarian values		 OLD KINGDOM 2600–2200 DORIC PERIOD 1100–650 EARLY CHOU PERIOD 1300–800 GOTHIC PERIOD 900–1500
1. Feudalism. Spirit of countryside and countryman. The "City" only a market or stronghold. Chivalric-religious ideals. Struggles of vassals amongst themselves and against overlord.
Feudal conditions of IV Dynasty
Increasing power of feudatories and priesthoods
The Pharaoh as incarnation of Ra		 The Homeric kingship
Rise of the nobility
(Ithaka, Etruria, Sparta)		 The central ruler (Wang) pressed hard by the feudal nobility Roman-German Imperial period
Crusading nobility
Empire and Papacy
2. Crisis and dissolution of patriarchal forms. From feudalism to aristocratic Stare
VI Dynasty. Breakup of the Kingdom into heritable principalities. VII and VIII Dynasties, interregnum Aristocratic synoecism
  • Dissolution of kinship into annual offices
  • Oligarchy
 934–904: I-Wang and the vassals
  • 842. Interregnum
 Territorial princes Renaissance towns. Lancaster and York
  • 1254. Interregnum
Late Period Actualizing of the matured State-idea. Town versus countryside. Rise of Third Estate (Bourgeoisie). Victory of money over landed property
MIDDLE KINGDOM 2150–1800 IONIC PERIOD 650–300 LATE CHOU PERIOD 800–500 BAROQUE PERIOD 1500–1800
3. Fashioning of a world of States of strict form. Frondes
11th Dynasty
  • Overthrow of the baronage by the rulers of Thebes
  • Centralized bureaucracy-state
 6th Century
  • First Tyrannis (Cleisthenes, Periander, Polycrates, the Tarquins)
  • The City-State
 Period of the "Protectors" (Ming-Chu 685–591) and the congresses of princes (–460) Dynastic family-power, and Fronde (Richelieu, Wallenstein, Cromwell)—circa 1630
4. Climax of the State-form ("Absolutism") Unity of town and country ("State" and "Society." The "three estates")
1990–1790: 12th Dynasty
The pure Polis (absolutism of the Demos)
590–480: Chun-Chiu period ("Spring" and "Autumn")
  • Seven powers
  • Perfection of social forms (Li)
 Ancien Regime. Rococo. Court nobility of Versailles. Cabinet politics Habsburg and Bourbon. Louis XIV. Frederick the Great
5. Break-up of the State-form (Revolution and Napoleonism). Victory of the city over the countryside (of the "people" over the privileged, of the intelligentsia over tradition, of money over policy)
1788–1680: Revolution and military government. Decay of the realm. Small potentates, in some cases sprung from the people. 4th century: Social revolution and the Second Tyrannis (Dionysus I, Jason of Pherae, Appius Claudius the Censor) Alexander 480: Beginning of the Chan-Kwo period. 441: Fall of the Chou dynasty Revolutions and annihilation-wars Napoleon
Civilization The body of the people, now essentially urban in constitution, dissolves into formless mass. Megalopolis and Provinces. The Fourth Estate ("Masses"), inorganic, cosmopolitan 1. Domination of Money ("Democracy"). Economic powers permeating the political forms and authorities
1675–1550: Hyksos period. Deepest decline. Dictatures of alien generals (Chian). After 1600, definitive victory of the rulers of Thebes 300–100: Political Hellenism. From Alexander to Hannibal and Scipio royal all-power from Cleomenes III and C. Flaminius (220) to C. Marius, radical demagogues. 480–230: Period of the "Contending States"
  • The Imperial title (288)
  • The Imperialist statesmen of Tsin
  • From 289, incorporation of the last states in the Empire.
 1800–2000
  • 19th Century: From Napoleon to World War I, "System of Great Powers," standing armies, constitutions
  • 20th Century: Transition from constitutional order to informal sway of individuals. Annihilation wars. Imperialism
2. Formation of Caesarism. Victory of force-politics over money. Increasing primitiveness of political forms. Inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually-increasing crudity of despotism
1580–1350: Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt
100 BC–100 AD: Sulla to Domitian
250 BC–26 AD: House of Wang-Cheng and Western Han Dynasty
  • 221 BC: August title (Shi) of Emperor (Hwang-ti)
  • 140–80 BC: Wu-ti
 2000–2200
3. Maturing of the final form. Private and family policies of individual leaders. The world as spoil. Egypticism, Mandarinism, Byzantinism. Historyless stiffening and enfeeblement even of the imperial machinery, against young peoples eager for spoil, or alien conquerors. Primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living
1350–1205: Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt
100–300: Trajan to Aurelian
25–320: Eastern Han Dynasty
after 2200




Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels:

Monday, 6 January 2014

Oswald Spengler - Prussian Socialism

The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes), Adolf Menzel (1872-1875)


Oswald Spengler on the nationalist form of socialism, which he termed "Prussian" - one of the most important concepts of Germany's Conservative Revolution, and one of the concepts that separates the true Right from the false one which prevails today. - John Morgan

I have now reached the point when the definitive word must be said about "Prussianism" and "Socialism." 
In 1919 I compared the two, the one a living idea and the other the catchword of a whole century, and was - I am tempted to add: "of course" - not understood. People no longer know how to read - this great art, still known in the age of Goethe, has died out. They skim printed pages "mass-wise," and, as a result, the reader demoralizes the book. I showed that in the working class, as Bebel welded it into a powerful army, in its discipline and loyal subordination, its good comradeship, its readiness for the ultimate sacrifice, there still lived that Old-Prussian "style" which first proved itself in the battles of the Seven Years' War. What mattered then was the individual Socialist as a character, his "moral imperative," not the Socialism hammered into his head, which was a wholly un-Prussian mixture of foolish ideology and vulgar greed. I pointed out also that this type of being "in form" for a task was a tradition going back to the Teutonic Order, by which in the Gothic centuries - as again today - the frontier guard of the Faustian Culture was kept up against Asia. This ethical attitude, unconscious as is every genuine life-style, and therefore to be awakened and trained only by living example and not by talk and writing, stood forth in its splendour in August 1914 - the army had trained Germany - and was betrayed by the parties in 1918 when the State went under. Since then this disciplined will has again raised its head in the National movement; not in its programs and parties, but in the ethical attitude of an elite, as individuals; and it is possible that, starting from this foundation, the German people may by perseverance be slowly trained for its difficult future. This is essential if we are not to succumb in the battles that lie ahead.

But the shallow-minded cannot get away from the Marxian thought of last
century. Throughout the world they think of Socialism not as a moral attitude of life but as economic Socialism, Labour Socialism, as a mass ideology with material aims. Program Socialism of every sort is thinking from below, building on base instincts, canonizing the herd-feeling which everywhere today lurks behind the slogan of "overcoming individualism"; it is the contrary of Prussian feeling, which has livingly experienced through exemplary leaders the necessity of disciplined devotion and possesses accordingly the inward freedom that comes with the fulfilment of duty, the ordering of oneself, command of oneself, for the sake of a great aim.

Labour-Socialism in every form, on the other hand, is, as I have already shown, definitely English in origin. It arose, about 1840, simultaneously with the victory of the joint-stock company and the rootless "financial" form of capital. Both were the expression of Free Trade Manchesterism: this "white" Bolshevism is capitalism from below, wage-capitalism, just as speculative finance-capital in respect of its method is Socialism from above, from the stock exchange. Both grew out of the same intellectual root: thinking in money, trading in money on the pavements of the world's capitals, whether as wage-levels or profits on exchange rates makes no odds. There is no contradiction between economic Liberalism and Socialism. The Labour market is the stock exchange of the organized proletariat. The trade unions are trusts for forcing up wages on the lines followed by oil, steel, and bank trusts of the Anglo-American type, whose finance-Socialism penetrates, dominates, sucks, and controls them to the point of systematic expropriation. The devastating dispossessing effect of bundles of shares and bonds, the separation of mere "credit" from the responsible directive work of the entrepreneur, who no longer knows to whom his work actually belongs, has not received anything like adequate consideration. Productive economy is in the last resort nothing but the will-less object of stock-exchange manoeuvres. It was only the rise of the share system to domination that enabled the stock exchange (formerly a mere aid to economy) to assume the decisive control of economic life. Finance-Socialists and trust magnates like Morgan and Kreuger correspond absolutely to the mass-leaders of Labour parties and the Russian economic commissars: dealer-natures with the same parvenu tastes. From both sides, today as in the days of the Gracchi, the conservative forces of the State - army, property, peasant, and manager - are being attacked.

But the Prussian style demands not only a mere precedence of higher policy over economics; it demands that the economic life should be disciplined by a powerful State, which is the precondition of free initiative in private enterprise - for, whatever else it may be, it is not a mere super-party, complete with program and ready to press organization to the point of abolishing the idea of property (Eigentum); which, precisely among Germanic peoples, denotes freedom of the economic will, and lordship over that which is one's own. "Disciplining" is the training of a racehorse by an experienced rider and not the forcing of the living economic body into the strait-jacket of an economic plan or its transformation into a press-the-button machine. "Prussian" is also the aristocratic ordering of life according to the grade of achievement. Prussian is, above all, the undisputed precedence of foreign policy, the successful steering of the State in a world of states, over internal policy, which exists solely to keep the nation in form for this task and becomes mischievous and criminal as soon as it begins to follow independently its own ideological aims. Herein lies the weakness of most revolutions, whose leaders, having risen through demagogy and learnt nothing else, are unable to find their way from thinking on party lines to thinking in terms of statesmanship. This was the case with Danton and Robespierre. Mirabeau and Lenin died too soon, Mussolini was successful. But the future belongs to the great fact-men, now that the world-improvers, who have preened themselves on the stage of world history since Rousseau, have vanished and left no trace.

Prussian is, lastly, a character which disciplines itself, such as that of Frederick the Great, which he himself paraphrased as consisting in being the First Servant of the State. Such a servant is no lackey, but when Bebel opined that the German people had the soul of a lackey, he was right as far as the majority were concerned. His own party proved it in 1918. The lackeys of success are more numerous with us than elsewhere, although they have in all ages and all nations crowded the herd of humanity. It is a matter of indifference whether Byzantinism performs its orgies before money-bags, political success, a title, or merely Gessler's hat. When Charles II landed in England, there were suddenly no Republicans left. To be a servant of the State is an aristocratic virtue, of which few are possessed. If this is "Socialistic," it is a proud and exclusive Socialism for men of race, for the elect of life. Prussianism is a very superior thing which sets itself against every sort of majority- and mob-rule; above all, against the dominance of the mass character. Moltke, the great educator of the German officer, the finest example of true Prussianism in the nineteenth century, was thus constituted. Count Schlieffen summed up his personality in the motto: "Talk little, do much, be, rather than seem."

This idea of a "Prussian" existence will be the starting-point for the ultimate
overthrowing of the World Revolution. There is no other possibility. I said, as far back as 1919: Not everyone is a Prussian who is born in Prussia; the type is possible anywhere in the white world and actually occurs, though rarely. [...] The Prussian idea is opposed to finance-Liberalism as well as to Labour-Socialism. Every description of mass and majority, everything that is "Left," it regards as suspect. [...] All really great leaders in history go "Right," however low the depths from which they have climbed. It is the mark of the born master and ruler.

-Oswald Spengler, "The Hour of Decision" (1933)
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)