Spengler

Spengler, Oswald, 1880-1936, German historian and philosopher. His studies covered many fields, among them mathematics, science, philosophy, history, and art. His major work, The Decline of the West (2 vol., 1918-22; tr. 1926-28), brought him worldwide fame. Spengler maintained that every culture passes a life cycle from youth through maturity and old age to death. Western culture, he believed, had proceeded through this same cycle and had entered the period of decline, from which there was no escape. Spengler upheld the ideal of obedience to the state and supported German hegemony in Europe. His refusal to support Nazi theories of racial superiority led to his ostracism after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

(born May 29, 1880, Blankenburg, Ger.—died May 8, 1936, Munich) German philosopher. A schoolmaster before he turned to writing, Spengler is remembered for his influential The Decline of the West, 2 vol. (1918–22), a study in the philosophy of history. He contended that civilizations pass through a life cycle, blossoming and decaying like natural organisms, and that Western culture is irreversibly past its creative stage and headed into eclipse. Though acclaimed by a public disillusioned in the wake of World War I, his work was criticized by both professional scholars and the Nazi Party, despite some affinities with its dogma.

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(born May 29, 1880, Blankenburg, Ger.—died May 8, 1936, Munich) German philosopher. A schoolmaster before he turned to writing, Spengler is remembered for his influential The Decline of the West, 2 vol. (1918–22), a study in the philosophy of history. He contended that civilizations pass through a life cycle, blossoming and decaying like natural organisms, and that Western culture is irreversibly past its creative stage and headed into eclipse. Though acclaimed by a public disillusioned in the wake of World War I, his work was criticized by both professional scholars and the Nazi Party, despite some affinities with its dogma.

Learn more about Spengler, Oswald with a free trial on Britannica.com.

This is a diagram of Oswald Spengler's civilization model, adapted with the help of machine translation from the German version of this Wikipedia article. It appears as three tables, each in a three-page long folded sheet, inserted between pages 68 and 69 of the first volume of his Der Untergand des Abendlandes, in the definitive edition published under the author's care by C. H. Beck in Munich, in 1931. Page numbers slightly changed from the previous German editions, yet were always placed immediately after the end of the Introduction. Placement is the same in the Spanish translation by philosopher Manuel García Morente with prologue by José Ortega y Gasset (Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1936). In contrast, the English traduction published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York in 1936 as The decline of the West, vol. 1, carries these tables at the end of the volume (after page 444). For their meaning and significance, see the main article.

Spiritual epochs

Phase	Indian Culture since 1500 BC	Classical Culture since 1100 BC	Mid-Eastern Culture since 1	Western Culture since 900
Spring Intuition, powerful cultural creation from awakening souls, unity and abundance.	Birth of a grand myth signifying a new conception of God. Fear and longing for the world.
	1500 BC-1200 BC the Vedas the Aryans	1100 BC-800 BC Hellenic culture Olympia Greek mythology Homer Heracles Theseus	1-300 Early Christianity Mandaeanism Marcion of Sinope Gnosticism Syncretism Mithras Baal the Gospels Apocalypse Christianity Zoroastrianism Paganism	900-1200 German Catholicism Edda Baldur Bernard of Clairvaux Joachim of Fiore Francis of Assisi Sigurd Holy Grail Epic poetry Hagiography
	Earliest metaphysical organization of the world. High scholasticism.
	Contained in the oldest parts of the Vedas	Orphic cults Etruscan civilization Hesiod Cosmogony	Origen (254) Plotinus (269) Mani (276) Iamblichus (330) Talmud Church Fathers	Thomas Aquinas (1274) Duns Scotus (1308) Dante Alighieri (1321) Meister Eckhart (1329) Mysticism Scholasticism
Summer Maturing consciousness. Earliest urban-civil society and critical thought.	Reformation: revolt of the religious moderates against the early religion.
	10-9th century BC Brahmana Oldest elements of the Upanishad	7th century BC Dionysus Religion of Numa Pompilius	Augustine of Hippo (430) Nestorianism (c. 430) Monophysitism (c. 450) Mazdak (c. 500)	Nicholas of Cusa (1464) Jan Hus (1415) Girolamo Savonarola Andreas Karlstadt Martin Luther John Calvin (1564)
	Beginnings of a purely philosophical movement. Contrasting idealistic and realistic systems
	Contained in the Upanishads	6-5th century BC Pre-Socratic philosophy	6-7th century Byzantium Judaism Syriac church Coptic Christianity Persian literature	16-17th century Galileo Galilei Francis Bacon René Descartes Giordano Bruno Jakob Böhme Gottfried Leibniz
	Mathematical breakthroughs leading to a new conception of the world.
	Missing	540 BC The number as a measure Geometry Arithmetic Pythagoreans	The indefinite number Algebra	Function Mathematical analysis René Descartes Blaise Pascal Pierre de Fermat (c. 1630) Isaac Newton Gottfried Leibniz (c. 1670)
	Rationalism. The depletion of mysticism from religion.
	Traces in the Upanishad	540 BC Pythagorean Federation	650s Muhammad Iconoclasm Paulicians	Puritans (since 1620) Jansenists (since 1640)
Fall Urban rise. High point of disciplined organizational strength.	Faith in the omnipotence of rationality. Cult of Nature.
	Sutra Samkhya Buddha The newer elements in the Upanishad	Sophism (5th century BC) Socrates (399 BC) Democritus (c. 360 BC)	Mutazilite Sufism Ibrahim al-Nazzam Al-Kindi	Sensualism John Locke Encyclopedie Voltaire Jean Jacques Rousseau
	The height of mathematical thought.
	Zero as a number	Archytas Plato Eudoxus of Cnidus Conic section	Number theory Spherical trigonometry	Leonhard Euler (1783) Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1813) Pierre-Simon Laplace (1827)
	The last idealists. Theories of knowledge and logic.
	Vedanta Vaisheshika Nyaya	Plato (346 BC) Aristotle (322 BC)	Al-Farabi (950 Avicenna (c. 1000)	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Immanuel Kant Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Winter Coming fissure in the world-urban civilization. Exhaustion of mental organization strength. Irreligioussness rises.	Materialism: Cults of science, utility, and luck.
	Samkhya Cārvāka	Cynic Cyrenaics the last Sophist, Pyrrho	Communism Atheism Epicureanism Abbasid sect	Jeremy Bentham Auguste Comte Charles Darwin Herbert Spencer Max Stirner Karl Marx Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
	Ethical-social ideals: philosophy without mathematics, skepticism.
	Elements of Buddhism	Hellenism Epicurus (270 BC) Zeno of Citium (265 BC)	Elements of Islam	Arthur Schopenhauer Friedrich Nietzsche Oswald Spengler Socialism Anarchism Friedrich Hebbel Richard Wagner Henrik Ibsen
	The last mathematical thinkers.
	Missing	Euclid Apollonius of Perga (300 BC) Archimedes (250 BC)	Al-Khwarizmi (800) Thabit ibn Qurra (850) Al-Karaji Al-Biruni (10th century)	Carl Friedrich Gauss (1855) Augustin Louis Cauchy (1857) Bernhard Riemann (1866)
	Decline of abstract thinkers, and the rise of specialized academic philosophy.
	Six schools of thought	the Academy Peripatetics Stoicism Epicurianism	Schools of Baghdad Basra	Kantianism Logic Psychology
	Spread of the last ideas.
	Indian Buddhism since 500	Roman Stoicism since 200	The practical Fatalism of Islam since 1000	The spread of ethical Socialism since 1900
	Second religiousness (in the masses only).
	The success of Islam in India after 1150	The rise of Christianity in Rome and the suppression of polytheism after about 400	Syncretism in Islam under the Seljuq dynasty	The increasing importance of fundamentalist ideas around the world

Artistic epochs

Phase		Egyptian Culture	Classical Culture	Arab Culture	Western Culture
Prehistory A chaos of primitive styles. Mystical symbolism and naïve imitation.		2830 BC-2600 BC Early Dynastic Period of Egypt Sumer	1600 BC-1100 BC Mycenae Minoan civilization Babylonia	500 BC-0 Persia Seleucid dynasty Hellenes Aryan	500-900 Merovingian Carolingian Moors Byzantine Empire
Culture The dominant stylistic idiom which fundamentally underpins the life of a culture is formed from necessity.	Early Period Ornamentation and architecture are the first basic expression of the recent world-historical consciousness.	2600 BC-2200 BC Old Kingdom	100 BC-650 BC Dorians	0-500 Sassanid dynasty Byzantine Empire Armenia Syria Sheba Hellenes Christianity	900-1500 Gothic
		Birth and ascent. Artistic forms are not consciously arising, but reflect the spirit of the landscape.
		2550 BC-2320 BC 4-5th dynasties Egyptian pyramids Bas relief	11-9th century BC Wooden architecture Doric order Architrave	1st-3rd century Ritual interiors Basilica Dome Mosque Sarcophagus	11-13th century Romanesque architecture Gothic architecture Dome Stained glass
		Completion of the early stylistic idiom. Exhaustion of its possibilities leading to contradiction.
		2320 BC-2200 BC 6th dynasty End of pyramid and epic relief styles Bloom of archaic portraits.	8-7th century BC End of Dorian and Etruscan styles Corinth Attica Greek mythology	4-5th century End of Persian, Syrian, and Coptic arts Mosaic Arabesque	14-15th century Late Gothic and Renaissance Bloom and end of Fresco and Statue, from Giotto to Michelangelo Baroque Siena Nuremberg Panel painting from Jan van Eyck to Hans Holbein the Younger Counterpoint Oil painting
	Late Period Formation of an urban group of selective, self-conscious artists: "the old masters."	Instruction in formal artistry.
		2130 BC-1990 BC 11th dynasty No trace of lost art	Completion of the temple (Peristyle) Ionic order Polygnotus (460) Apollo of Tenea of Ageladas	Completion of the mosque (Hagia Sophia) Completion of the arabesque style (Mshatta Facade)	Architectural painting from Michelangelo to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1680) Dominance of oil painting from Titian to Rembrandt (1669) Rise of music from Orlande de Lassus to Heinrich Schütz (1672)
		Completion of an intellectual stylistic idiom
		1990 BC-1790 BC 12th dynasty Use of pylons in temple construction Labyrinth	480 BC-350 BC Bloom of Athens Acropolis Rule of classical forms from Myron to Phidias Decline of fresco and clay painting (Zeuxis and Parrhasius)	7-8th century Umayyad dynasty Victory of architecture and pictureless arabesque art	The musical architectural style Rococo The rule of classical music from Johann Sebastian Bach to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Decline of oil painting from Antoine Watteau to Francisco de Goya
		Exhaustion of the strict organizational strength. Dissolution of the cultural idiom. The end of classic and romantic styles.
		Confusions in 1700 BC limit change in art	Alexander the Great Corinthian order Lysippos Apelles	Harun al-Raschid (c. 800) Moorish art	Second Empire Biedermeier Neoclassicism Ludwig van Beethoven Eugène Delacroix
Civilization Existence without internal form. Metropolitan city art as habit, luxury, sport, excitement. Trendy style fashions (revivals, arbitrary inventions, borrowings) without larger symbolic content.		Modern art. Attempts to alter and provoke metropolitan city consciousness. Conversion of music, architecture and painting into mere arts and crafts.
		1675 BC-1550 BC Hyksos Crete (Minoan art)	Hellenism Pergamon Verismo Splendor of the Diadochi	9-10th century Sultans Spain Sicily Samarra	19-20th century Franz Liszt Hector Berlioz Richard Wagner Impressionism of John Constable to Wilhelm Leibl and Édouard Manet American architecture
		End of any development in stylistic form. Senseless, empty, cumulative architecture and ornamental art. Imitation of archaic and exotic themes.
		1550 BC-1328 BC 18th dynasty Rock temples of Deir el-Bahri Colossi of Memnon Art of Knossos and Amarna	100 BC-100 AD Roman Empire Roman Forum Colosseum Triumphal arch	Seljuk Turks since 1050 Art of the Orient during the Crusades	Since 2000
		Exit. Training of a rigid form. The Caesars flaunt materialism for mass effect. Provincial arts and crafts.
		1328 BC-1195 BC 19th dynasty Massive constructions Luxor, Karnak, and Abydos Small forms: animal, fabric, weapons	From Trajan to Aurelian Giant forums Thermae Triumphal columns Roman provincial art: ceramics, statues, weapons	Mongol Empire since 1250 Giant constructions in India Eastern arts and crafts: carpets, weapons, devices	To come

Political epochs

Phase		Egyptian Culture	Classical Culture	Chinese Culture	Western Culture
Prehistory A chaos of primitive styles. Mystical symbolism and naïve imitation.		2830 BC-2600 BC Early Dynastic Period of Egypt (Menes)	-	-	-
Culture Maturing consciousness. Earliest urban-civil socity and critical thought.	Early Period Maturing consciousness. Earliest urban-civil socity and critical thought.	-	-	-	-
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	Late Period Maturing consciousness. Earliest urban-civil socity and critical thought.	-	-	-	-
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Civilization Urban rise. High point of disciplined organizational strength.		-
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