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Concept
Oswald Spengler
Summary
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (ˈɔsvalt ˈʃpɛŋlɐ; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.
Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‐death emergency whose countering would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse.
Spengler is regarded as a German nationalist and a critic of republicanism, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution. Although he had voted for Hitler over Hindenburg in the 1932 German presidential election and the Nazis had viewed his writings as a means to provide a "respectable pedigree" to their ideology, Spengler later criticized Nazism due to its excessive racialist elements, which led to him and his work being censored in his final years. He saw Benito Mussolini, and entrepreneurial types, like the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, as examples of the impending Caesars of Western cultureshowcasing his stark criticism of Mussolini's colonialist adventures.
He strongly influenced other historians, including Franz Borkenau and especially Arnold J. Toynbee, and other successors including Francis Parker Yockey, Carroll Quigley, Samuel P. Huntington, and Oswald Mosley. John Calvert notes that Oswald Spengler's criticism of Western civilisation remains popular among Islamists.
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born on 29 May 1880 in Blankenburg, Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire, the oldest surviving child of Bernhard Spengler (1844–1901) and Pauline Spengler (1840–1910), née Grantzow, the descendant of an artistic family.
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