Six days of creation of the world. Anna Vasilyeva. Sunday school lesson: six days, or how it was. Show the features of this day's Creation

Oswald Spengler

DECLINE OF EUROPE. IMAGE AND REALITY

"FALL OF THE WEST" AND GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY

(public introduction)

A public introduction is not written for professionals.

This is an appeal to the reader who opens Spengler's book and has no prejudice. Our wish is to look at the “Content” of “The Decline of Europe”, evaluate the scale of the topic stated in the “Introduction”, the material and the way it is presented in the next six chapters, and it will be difficult for you to disagree with N. A. Berdyaev and S. L. Frank that O. Spengler’s “The Decline of Europe” is undoubtedly the most brilliant and remarkable, almost brilliant phenomenon of European literature since Nietzsche. These words were spoken in 1922, when the phenomenal success of Spengler's book (in two years, from 1918 to 1920, 32 editions of volume 1 were published) made her idea the subject of close attention of the outstanding minds of Europe and Russia.

"Der Untergang des Abendlandes" - "The Fall of the West" (as they also translate "The Decline of Europe") was published in two volumes by Spengler in Munich in 1918-1922. The collection of articles by N. A. Berdyaev, Ya. M. Bukspan, A. F. Stepun, S. L. Frank “Oswald Spengler and the Decline of Europe” was published by the Bereg publishing house in Moscow in 1922. In Russian, “The Fall of the West” sounded like “The Decline of Europe” (V. 1. “Image and Reality”). The publication, translated by N. F. Garelin, was carried out by L. D. Frenkel in 1923 (Moscow - Petrograd) with a preface by prof. A. Deborin "The Death of Europe, or the Triumph of Imperialism", which we omit.

The unusually semantic and informative “Content” of the book “The Decline of Europe” is in itself a way of presenting the author of his work to the reading public, almost forgotten in our time. This is not a list of topics, but a multidimensional, voluminous, intellectual, colorful and attractive image of precisely the “Decline” of Europe as a phenomenon of world history.

And immediately the eternal theme “The Form of World History” begins to sound, which introduces the reader to the topical problem of the 20th century: how to determine the historical future of mankind, being aware of the limitations of the visually popular division of world history by the generally accepted scheme “Ancient world - Middle Ages - Modern times?”

Let us note that Marx also divided world history into triads, dialectically generated by the development of productive forces and the class struggle. In Hegel’s famous triad “Subjective spirit – Objective spirit – Absolute spirit” of Hegel, world history is given a modest place as one of the stages of the externally universal self-realization of the world spirit in law, morality and the state, the stage on which the absolute spirit only steps in order to appear in forms of art, religion and philosophy adequate to itself.

However, that Hegel and Marx, Herder and Kant, M. Weber and R. Collingwood! Look through history textbooks: they still introduce world history in the same way that they did at the beginning of the 20th century. questioned Spengler and in which the New Age is only expanded by the Newest History, allegedly beginning in 1917. The newest period of world history in school textbooks is still interpreted as the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to communism.

The mystical trinity of epochs is highly attractive to the metaphysical taste of Herder, Kant and Hegel, Spengler wrote. We see that it is not only for them: it is acceptable for the historical-materialistic taste of Marx, it is also acceptable for the practical-axiological taste of Max Weber, i.e., for the authors of any philosophy of history, which they consider to be some final stage in the spiritual development of mankind. Even the great Heidegger, wondering what is the essence of the New Age, relied on the same triad.

What disgusted Spengler in this approach, why already at the beginning of the 20th century. such absolute standards and values as the maturity of the mind, humanity, the happiness of the majority, economic development, enlightenment, the freedom of peoples, the scientific worldview, etc., he could not accept as the principles of the philosophy of history, explaining its formational, stadial, epochal division (“like some kind of tapeworm, tirelessly increasing epoch after epoch”)?

What facts did not fit into this scheme? First of all, the obvious decadence (i.e., “fall” - from cado - “I fall” (lat.)) of great European culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which, according to Spengler’s morphology of history, generated both the First World War that broke out in the center of Europe and the socialist revolution in Russia.

The world war as an event and the socialist revolution as a process in the Marxist formation concept are interpreted as the end of the capitalist social formation and the beginning of the communist one. Spengler interpreted both of these phenomena as signs of the fall of the West, and European socialism declared the phase of the decline of culture, identical, according to its chronological dimension, to Indian Buddhism (from 500 AD) and Hellenistic-Roman Stoicism (200 AD). This identification could be considered a whim (for those who did not accept Spengler's axiomatics) or a simple, formal consequence of the concept of world history as the history of higher cultures, in which each culture appears as a living organism. However, Spengler's providence regarding the fate of socialism in Europe, Russia, Asia, the definition of its essence expressed already in 1918 ("socialism - contrary to external illusions - is by no means a system of mercy, humanism, peace and care, but a system of the will to power. Everything else is self-deception") - make us look closely at the principles of such an understanding of world history.

Today, after three quarters of the 20th century, during which European and Soviet socialism arose, developed and died out, one can evaluate in a different way both the predictions of O. Spengler and the historical arrogance (which led to a historical mistake) of V.I. in fact, V. I. Lenin and K. Marx saw in the dictatorship of the proletariat an instrument of the necessary state violence in the name of creating a society of socialist justice, peace and humanism. But revolutionary practice has shown that such a system of violence continuously reproduces itself as a system of such a will to power that sucks out natural resources, the vitality of peoples and destabilizes the global situation.

Almost simultaneously with The Decline of Europe (1923), Albert Schweitzer, the great humanist of the 20th century, published his article “The Decay and Revival of Culture”, in which the decline of European culture was also interpreted as a tragedy on a global scale, and not as an episode in the history of the fall of the world bourgeoisie. If, according to O. Spengler, “sunset” cannot be converted into “sunrise” at all, then A. Schweitzer believed in this “sunrise”. For this, from his point of view, it was necessary for European culture to regain a solid ethical foundation. As such a basis, he proposed his "ethics of reverence for life" and up to the 60s. practically followed it, not losing faith in it even after two world wars and all the revolutions of the 20th century.

In 1920 Max Weber's famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published. From Weber's point of view, the "fall of the West" is out of the question. The core of European culture (theories of state and law, music, architecture, literature) is universal rationalism, generated by it long ago, but which gained universal significance just in the 20th century. Rationalism is the basis of European science, and above all mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, the basis of the "rational capitalist enterprise" with its production, exchange, accounting for capital in monetary form, with the desire for continuously regenerating profits.

However, it was precisely this universal rationalism and the will to economic and political power (whether in a capitalist or in a socialist form) that Spengler considered the decline of a thousand-year-old Western European culture, i.e., its transition to the stage of civilization.

So, at least three fundamental concepts of the future of Western European culture were formed in the 1920s:

O. Spengler: rationalistic civilization is the degradation of the highest spiritual values of culture, and that is doomed;

A. Schweitzer: the decline of culture has philosophical and ethical reasons, it is not fatal, and culture can be saved by pouring into it the Ethics of “reverence for life”;

M. Weber: European culture cannot be measured by the old value criteria, they were replaced by universal rationality, which changes the idea of this culture, and therefore there can be no talk of its death.

“SUNSET OF EUROPE. Essays on the morphology of world history ”(Der Untergarg des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte) is a philosophical and historical work by O. Spengler. Vol. 1, Gestalt and Reality (Gestalt und Wirklichkeit), was published in 1918 in Vienna, Vol. 2, World-Historical Perspectives (Weltgeschichtliche Perspektiven), in 1922 in Munich (both volumes appeared in final edition in 1923). Rus. per .: t. 1. "Image and reality", per. N.F. Garelina, M.–P., 1923 (rev. 1993); the same, ed. A.A. Frankovsky. P., 1923 (rev. 1993); vol. 1. "Gestalt and reality", trans. K.A. Svasyan. M., 1993 (hereinafter cited in this edition).

"The Decline of Europe" is a book that claims to be a "philosophy of the era." Although the number of Spengler's predecessors discovered by critics exceeded a hundred, he himself names Goethe and Nietzsche, "to whom I owe almost everything" (vol. 1, p. 126). The theme of the book is a biography of world history, dressed in the form of a comparative morphological analysis of the great cultural epochs. Spengler contrasts the conventional understanding of history, according to the type of linearly rectified time of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages and the New Age, with a cyclic understanding, according to which each culture is a kind of organism closed in itself, passing between birth and death stages of childhood, youth, maturity and old age. If the linear model had an absolute homogeneity of time and space as a premise, then a completely different topic of a non-classical type could correspond to the cyclic model, say, a certain set of relativistic frames of reference. The cultural organisms of the “Decline of Europe” (Spengler counts eight of them) are not pinned to a chronometrically uniform space, but each one outlives itself in its own, invented and created by itself, space and time, and to see in the latter anything more than a common name means, according to Spengler, to replace real observation with a brain chimera. This is why not culture, but cultures (in the plural), which are thought of a spengler as monads, hermetically insulated from each other and only rationally, in the person of their superficial historiographers, imitating the presence of some kind of connection and continuity (which leads them to tragic misunderstandings, as, in the case of a renaissance, stubbornly closing their eyes to their Gothic origin and equal equally Xia on an antiquity alien to him). In a special section of the 2nd vol., these aberrations are designated according to the model of the corresponding geological concept as pseudomorphoses: “I call historical pseudomorphoses cases when an alien ancient culture dominates the region with such force that a young culture, for which this region is its own, is not able to breathe deeply and not only does not reach the folding of pure, own forms, but does not even reach the full development of its self-consciousness” (vol. 2. M. , 1998, p. 193).

Along with the linear alignment of cultures in space, according to Spengler, their linear sequence in time also falls. Spengler's cultures exist not in some temporary "before" and "after" copied from space, but simultaneously. “I call “simultaneous” two historical facts that appear, each in its own culture, in a strictly identical - relative - position and, therefore, have a strictly corresponding meaning ... Simultaneously, the emergence of Ionic and Baroque proceeds. Polygnot and Rembrandt, Poliklet and Bach are contemporaries” (vol. 1, p. 271). This means: for every phenomenon of one culture there corresponds (in the strictly mathematical sense of one-to-one, or one-to-one correspondence) a phenomenon of another culture, say, English puritanism in the West corresponds to Islam in the Arab world. The concept of "simultaneity" is, in turn, determined by the concept of "homology", in which simultaneity is given not simply as the juxtaposition of all cultural phenomena, but as the morphological equivalence of events that each take place in its culture in a completely identical position relative to each other. Borrowed from biology (and for the first time universally developed by Goethe), Spengler contrasts this concept with the concept of analogy. Unlike analogy, which deals with the functional equivalence of organs, homology is aimed at their morphological equivalence. "The lung of terrestrial animals and the swim bladder of fish are homologous, similar - in the sense of use - are the lungs and gills." Accordingly: “Homological formations are ... ancient plastic and western instrumental music, the pyramids of the 4th dynasty and Gothic cathedrals, Indian Buddhism and Roman Stoicism (Buddhism and Christianity are not even similar), the era of“ fighting inherges ”of China, Hyksos and Puni Wars, Perical and Umeyeiyads, the Rigveda era, Plotin and Dante” (ibid. 27. 0–71).

Spengler's cultures are natural in Goethe's sense. The Decline of Europe transfers Goethe's transformism from plant organisms to historical ones and postulates the absolute identity of both. Each culture is based on a certain pra-symbol, which manifests itself in all its formations and guarantees their unity. This method is based on the technique of Spengler's associations, which bring into one semantic field such apparently distant topoi as differential calculus and the dynastic principle of the state of the era of Louis XII, the spatial perspective of Western oil painting and the overcoming of space by means of railways, contrapuntal instrumental music and the economic system of credit. Here lies the key to the technique of Spengler's interpretation of the phenomena of a particular culture; for this it is only necessary to fix its pra-symbol in a living representation. So, if the pra-symbol of ancient (Spengler calls it Apollonian) culture is a body statuary outlined in space, then we can talk in this connection about the law of the Apollonian series, under which the most diverse and in the usual sense incomparable phenomena fall, like, say, Attic tragedy and Euclidean geometry. Similarly, if the pra-symbol of Western (according to Spengler, Faustian) culture is infinite space, then we are talking about the law of the Faustian series, which includes, for example, Gothic buildings, sailing navigation, the invention of printing, money as a check and a bill, etc.

As organisms, cultures are doomed to old age, decay and death. Spengler refers to the old age of culture as civilization. Civilizations “follow becoming as it has become, life as death, development as numbness, the countryside and spiritual childhood witnessed by Doric and Gothic, like mental old age and the stone, petrifying world city” (ibid., p. 164). Spengler calculates the average lifespan of cultures in a millennium, after which they begin to degenerate, reaching, in the limit, a purely vegetative stage of vegetation. In this sense, the "Decline of Europe", proclaiming the degeneration of the West and its final fellastization ("the slow accession of primitive states in highly civilized living conditions") after 2200 - "simultaneously" with the degeneration of Egypt in the era of the 19th dynasty between 1328-1195 or Rome from Trajan to Aurelian - would least of all want to be a sensation, most of all a strictly calculable forecast. Spengler's complaints about the reader's hype around his book are well known. “There are people who confuse the decline of antiquity with the death of an ocean liner” ( Spengler O. Reden und Aufsätze. Munch., 1937, S. 63).

The Decline of Europe, which became the main book sensation of the post-war period, could also be described as the most controversial book of the century. Contradictions (moreover, defiantly demonstrative) are already permeated with its very structure and technique of performance. The depth of understanding is combined here with the plane of assessments. The refined quirks of the stylist coexist with the suggestive clumsiness of phrases. “The energy and arrogance of suggestion are such,” notes E. Nikit, “that the reader simply does not find the courage to contradict and even think differently” (quoted from: Merlio G. Oswald Spengler. Temoin de son temps. Stuttg., 1982, S. 18). It is not surprising that the criticism of colleagues turned out to be extremely controversial, from accusations of incompetence and populism (a special issue - Spenglerheft - of the international yearbook Logos for 1920-21 was devoted to the topic "Spengler") to expressions of delight and gratitude. If for Walter Benjamin the author of "The Decline of Europe" is "a trivial lousy dog" ( Kraft W. Uber Benjamin. – Zur Aktualität Walter Benjamins. Fr. / M., 1972, S. 66), then, say, Georg Simmel is talking about “the most significant philosophy of history after Hegel” ( Spengler O. Briefe 1913–1936. Munch., 1963, S. 131).

It is obvious, however, that the criteria of logic, rationalistic thinking in general, are hardly capable of causing serious damage to the author, who has relied on genius and “reverse prophesying” (F. Schlegel) and leaves the right to criticism only for reality itself. The controversy over Spengler Schroter M. Der Streit um Spengler. Kritik seiner Kritiker. Münch., 1922), which raged in the beginning. 20s, disappears in subsequent decades, up to almost complete inattention to this name in the intellectual circles of modern Western society. One can, of course, explain this by the obsolescence and irrelevance of Spengler's concept. But it is permissible to see in this a kind of confirmation of his forecasts; if Europe really has already approached the threshold that separates civilization from the last, fellache, stage, then it would be more than strange to expect her to pay attention to the visionary who predicted this fate for her.

Literature:

1. Spengler O. Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2 Bde. Münch., 1923 (in Russian translation: Spengler O. Sunset of Europe, vol. 1. M., 1993, vol. 2. M., 1998);

2. Koktanek A.M. Oswald Spengler in Seiner Zeit. Munch., 1968;

3. Troeltsch E. Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1). Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 4. Tubin., 1925;

4. Averintsev S.S. The Morphology of Culture by Oswald Spengler. - "Questions of Literature", 1968, No. 1;

5. Tavrizyan G.M. O. Spengler. J. Huizinga. Two concepts of the crisis of culture. M., 1989.

A public introduction is not written for professionals.

This is an appeal to the reader opening Spengler's book

and without prejudice. Our wish is to look at the "Content" of "The Decline of Europe", evaluate the scale of the topic stated in the "Introduction", the material and the way it is presented in the next six chapters, and it will be difficult for you to disagree with N.A. Berdyaev and S.L. Frank that "The Decline of Europe" by O. Spengler is undoubtedly the most brilliant and remarkable, almost a brilliant phenomenon of European literature since Nietzsche. These words were spoken in 1922, when the phenomenal success of Spengler's book (in two years, from 1918 to 1920, 32 editions of volume 1 were published) made her idea the subject of close attention of the outstanding minds of Europe and Russia.

"Der Untergang des Abendlandes" - "The Fall of the West" (this is also translated as "The Decline of Europe") was published in two volumes by Spengler in Munich in 1918–1922. Collection of articles by N.A. Berdyaeva, Ya.M. Bukspan, A.F. Stepuna, S.L. Frank "Oswald Spengler and the Decline of Europe" was published by the publishing house "Bereg" in Moscow in 1922. In Russian, "The Fall of the West" sounded like "The Decline of Europe" (V. 1. "Image and Reality"). Edition, translated by N.F. Garelin, was carried out by L.D. Frenkel in 1923 (Moscow - Petrograd) with a foreword by prof. A. Deborin "The Death of Europe, or the Triumph of Imperialism", which we omit.

The unusually semantic and informative "Content" of the book "The Decline of Europe" is in itself a way of presenting the author of his work to the reading public, almost forgotten in our time. This is not a list of topics, but a multidimensional, voluminous, intellectual, colorful and attractive image of precisely the “Decline” of Europe as a phenomenon of world history.

And immediately the eternal theme "The Form of World History" begins to sound, which introduces the reader to the topical problem of the 20th century: how to determine the historical future of mankind, being aware of the limitations of the visually popular division of world history by the generally accepted scheme "Ancient world - Middle Ages - Modern times?"

Let us note that Marx also divided world history into triads, dialectically generated by the development of productive forces and the class struggle. In the famous triad "Subjective Spirit - Objective Spirit - Absolute Spirit" of Hegel, world history is given a modest place as one of the stages of the external universal self-realization of the world spirit in law, morality and the state, the stage on which the absolute spirit only steps to appear in forms of art, religion and philosophy adequate to itself.

However, that Hegel and Marx, Herder and Kant, M. Weber and

R. Collingwood! Look through history textbooks: they still introduce world history in the same way that they did at the beginning of the 20th century. questioned Spengler and in which the New Age is only expanded by the Newest History, allegedly beginning in 1917. The newest period of world history in school textbooks is still interpreted as the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to communism.

What facts did not fit into this scheme? Yes, first of all, the obvious decadence (i.e., “fall” - from cado - “I fall” (Latin)) of great European culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which, according to Spengler’s morphology of history, generated both the First World War that broke out in the center of Europe and the socialist revolution in Russia.

Today, after three quarters of the 20th century, during which European and Soviet socialism arose, developed and died out, one can evaluate in a different way both the predictions of O. Spengler and the historical arrogance (which led to a historical mistake) of V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin ("no matter how the Spenglers whine" about the decline of "old Europe", this is just "only one of the episodes in the history of the fall of the world bourgeoisie, gorged on imperialist robbery and oppression of the majority of the population of the earth." In fact, V.I. Lenin and K. Marx saw in the dictatorship of the proletariat an instrument of necessary state violence in the name of creating a society of socialist justice, peace and humanism. But revolutionary Practice has shown that such a system of violence continuously reproduces itself as a system of such a will to power that sucks out natural resources, the vitality of peoples and destabilizes the global situation.

1 Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. T. 45. S. 174.

Almost simultaneously with "The Decline of Europe" (1923), Albert Schweitzer, the great humanist of the 20th century, published his article "The Decay and Revival of Culture" 2 in which the decline of European culture was also interpreted as a tragedy on a global scale, and not as an episode in the history of the fall of the world bourgeoisie. If, according to O. Spengler, “sunset” cannot be converted into “sunrise” at all, then A. Schweitzer believed in this “sunrise”. For this, from his point of view, it was necessary for European culture to regain a solid ethical foundation. As such a basis, he proposed his "ethics of reverence for life" and up to the 60s. practically followed it, not losing faith in it even after two world wars and all the revolutions of the 20th century.

In 1920 the famous book by Max Weber was published

"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism". From point of view

Weber, the "fall of the West" is out of the question. The core of European culture (theories of state and law, music, architecture, literature) is universal rationalism, generated by it long ago, but which gained universal significance just in the 20th century. Rationalism is the basis of European science, and above all mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, the basis of the "rational capitalist enterprise" with its production, exchange, accounting for capital in monetary form, with the desire for continuously regenerating profit 3.

What is history? An endless stream of time, on the banks of which important events of the past lie, or a change of epochs that are born, exist and die, thereby opening the doors to a new generation? In The Decline of Europe, Oswald Spengler leaned towards the second scenario. He believed that there are cultures that become civilizations, and then, having outlived their own, disappear. A summary of Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" will help to understand this issue.

A little about the author

Oswald Spengler was born on May 29, 1880 in the small provincial town of Blankenburg into the family of a postal official. In 1891, the Spengler family moved to another city. Here Oswald has the opportunity to study Latin, mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences. Finishing his studies at the university, he defended his thesis "Metaphysical Foundations of the Philosophy of Heraclitus", received a doctorate in philosophy and began teaching in Hamburg.

At first he works as a mathematics teacher, at the same time he tries to engage in journalism, but after the Nazis came to power and confiscated one of his books, he began to lead a solitary life. He died on May 8, 1936, shortly before his death, he suggested that the Third Reich would not last even ten years. He turned out to be right.

Philosophical views

The author of The Decline of Europe, Oswald Spengler, was a unique personality in his own way. His ideas resonated in wide circles of scientists. Spengler's views concerning the historical development of nations and culture were especially popular.

The main subject of Spengler's philosophical research was the morphology of world history. He studied the originality of world cultures, which he considered as full and unique organic forms. Spengler did not want to accept the generally accepted classification of historical eras. The ancient world, the Middle Ages, the New Age - all this was too boring, wrong and simple, moreover, it gave rise to more questions than answers. And it is difficult to apply such a classification to societies of non-European origin.

Fully realizing this problem, Spengler proposed to look at world history from a different angle. The summary of "The Decline of Europe" by Oswald Spengler fully reflects his main ideas.

The scientist is sure that world history should be considered as a cluster of cultures independent of each other that exist like living organisms. They also have points of beginning and end, periods of prosperity and decline. This position of Spengler completely leveled the standard idea of the historical process. He said that history has a cyclic order of formation, during which cultures independent of each other were born and died.

Ideological basis

Like representatives of classical German philosophy of the 19th century, Spengler distinguished between the sciences of nature and the spirit. He often repeated: "The means for knowing dead forms is the law, the means for understanding living ones is analogy." But Spengler was sure that only natural disciplines should be called sciences, but not history at all. He does not want to perceive the process of the formation of mankind as a linear paradigm. The history of world development is presented to the German philosopher in the form of the birth and decline of individual cultures, which he speaks about in The Decline of Europe. In the book, Spengler describes the basic principles of the relationship between culture and civilization, which can be considered the ideological basis of the work:

Culture is the main content of history.
Culture, like a person, has stages of growing up: childhood, youth, maturity, old age.
Culture is human individuality at the highest level.
Every new culture has a new worldview.
Every culture has its own civilization.

About the book

With the work "The Decline of Europe" Spengler influenced the formation of the philosophical thought of thousands, and even millions of readers. The first publication was published in 1918, after the end of the First World War. Many researchers of Spengler's life and work note that it was the war that became the impetus that made the philosopher's ideas popular among readers. After all, no matter how you look at it, this book is prophetic in its own way. Its main idea and the predicted outcomes of events became a reality decades later. Therefore, without a brief summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe", it will be difficult to understand the ideas of the writer and philosopher, which have come true and are just as relevant in the future that has already come.

"The Decline of Europe" is a two-volume work, which contains two main ideas. The first says that the European civilization is just one of many, and it is in no way superior to the rest. The second idea is more difficult to understand: a civilization is a certain period of time describing a culture during its decline. And in order to deal with this, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with at least a summary of O. Spengler's “The Decline of Europe”.

"The Fall of Europe"

The book, published in 1918, volume 1 of "The Decline of Europe" by O. Spengler, is called "The Fall of Europe". Speaking in general terms, in this volume the author outlined the existence of the main world cultures, independent of each other. He paid special attention to the Egyptian, Indian and Chinese. In the same volume, Spengler predicts the imminent fall of European culture, which will entail the industrialization and urbanization of society.

The retelling of the summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" should begin with a description of the problem that the author poses to the reader. The first volume begins with a description of the forms of world history. Spengler brings to the attention of the public the main problem of the early twentieth century: "How to determine the historical future of mankind, if historians are forced to use a limited linear form of dividing history: the Ancient World - the Middle Ages - the New Age?".

Despite the fact that this triad of historical division was supported by the outstanding minds of mankind (including Marx and Weber), Spengler was against it. Why? First of all, because of the obvious decline of European culture at the beginning of the 20th century, which gave rise to the First World War and the revolution in Russia. Spengler declared European socialism a phase in the decline of culture. It was rationalism and the desire for political and economic power that the author considered as signs of the decline of Western European culture, that is, as Europe's transition to the stage of civilization.

Culture, history, nature, crisis

Continuing the retelling of the summary of O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe", it is worth mentioning that the author gave answers to global questions:

What is culture?
What is world history?
What is the difference between the existence of the world as history and the existence of the world as nature?
What is the great crisis of our time?

According to Spengler's work, by culture he meant the greatest form of life, the historical superorganism, which, like all organisms, is mortal. From this definition the following emerges by itself: world history is a stream of existence of superorganisms. Spengler identifies eight main cultures. Each of them has its own forms: language, people, era, state, art, law, worldview, etc. According to Spengler, each of these cultures hides its own face, in fact, he talks about this already in the second chapter of the book Physiognomy and Systematics.

Modern ethnic groups strive to have a face unlike others. This is manifested in a zealous attitude to their language, culture, mentality. Actually, as the philosopher said 100 years ago: "All sciences will be parts of a single physiognomy of mankind." Spengler was sure that culture can be studied not only with the help of physiognomy, but also with the help of systematics, that is, a causal relationship. As for the relationship between history and nature, Spengler puts forward a version that reality becomes nature, which is history.

The tragedy of mankind and the beginning of civilization

Spengler insisted that humanity has no purpose, idea or plan. It exists like butterflies or orchids. It is born, exists and dies. According to Spengler, world history is a picture of the eternal birth, change, formation and dying of organic forms, and the philosopher considers culture to be such organic forms.

In the first volume, the author talks about his vision of civilization. In general, this word is used to denote the opposite of a barbaric and savage lifestyle. Spengler, on the other hand, believed that this was the last period of the next cultural era - each culture ends with its own civilization. To understand what the philosopher is talking about, it is worth referring to such examples as the heyday and degeneration of Ancient Rome and Egypt.

Spengler also noted that any power that appears during the development of a particular culture is a sign of imperialism, which precedes the transformation of culture into civilization. Urbanization of megacities, a clear distinction between "center" and "province" - these are the main signs of civilization, which will lead to the end of the next cultural era.

Appealing to readers, Spengler advised them to deal with technology rather than lyrics, navigation instead of painting, or politics instead of the theory of knowledge.

"World-Historical Perspectives"

In 1922, the 2nd volume of "The Decline of Europe" by Spengler was published. In this work, he continues to develop his ideas, but in a more local sense. He highlights two main themes:

History must be perceived morphologically.
European culture has been transformed into a civilization, that is, it has entered an era of decay.

It is better to consider a summary of the chapters of "The Decline of Europe" by O. Spengler, referring to the second volume of his work. Thus, in the first paragraph, "Origin and Landscape", the author draws an analogy of culture with an organic being, considering its "microcosm" and its own cosmic, bodily existence. Considers the problems of attitude and thinking of living organisms. Describes in detail the behavior of animals and plants, finding various characteristics and similarities. Talks about what thinking is and how it caused a split in human society. And in conclusion, he adds that "features of animality are possessed by everyone who does not have the ability to think." Develops the idea that world history consists of two main aspects: the existence of individual cultures and the relationship between them.

The second chapter of the second volume is called "Cities and Peoples". Here Spengler introduces such a concept as the "soul of the city." In history, you can find more than a dozen situations when the moods of the masses are revealed, which can be safely attributed to manifestations of the human soul. In addition, this sincerity can be applied not only to a particular city, but also to a particular culture. Spengler considers the concept of "people" as the most frequently used in modern historical science. Spengler assures that the people are a conscious relationship, and not scientific pseudo-realities.

In the fourth chapter, The State, Spengler examines the problem of estates, in particular the nobility and the clergy, which he identifies with the male and female currents of history. In the fifth chapter, he considers the forms of economic life and the problems of money in the development of culture.

Basic moments

Conducting a characterization of the work "The Decline of Europe" by Oswald Spengler, we can say the following:

In the course of world historical development, eight main cultures were distinguished, which were in no way connected with each other. They arose and died, leaving behind a new civilization and prerequisites for the emergence of a new cultural environment.
Complementing his idea of different cultures, Spengler introduces the idea of racial theory, according to which there are "white" and "colored" cultures. "Whites" are characterized by the emergence of various kinds of revolutions. "Colored" cultures are characteristic of peoples who have not yet come to technical development.
Culture is a living organism.

Interpretation

Oswald Spengler painted his ideas during 1918-1922. Since that time, "The Decline of Europe" has been reprinted more than once. The books of the German philosopher have been translated into many languages, which causes several blocks of perception. Long before O. Spengler's 1993 "The Decline of Europe" came out into the world, the author was hailed as a prophet of his time. Thomas Mann, Fedor Stepun, Yeats, Yakov Bukshpan - they all saw in Spengler a soothsayer who predicted the decline of Western Europe.

But then reviews of the work acquire many shades, his words are interpreted in their own way, and over time, Spengler's work begins to be considered in a politicized manner. Goebbels calls Spengler's ideas racist and anti-Semitic, while he does not condemn the philosopher, but on the contrary, he tries to find adherents of racism with his help. True, at one time Spengler protested such a statement.

In Russia, the name of Spengler began to be mentioned only in connection with criticism of Western anti-capitalism. In the 50s, a new trend of interpretation began to develop: Spengler became an authoritative figure for anti-colonial movements.

“The Decline of Europe” is interpreted differently by everyone. But if Spengler saw all the possible interpretations of his work, he would just dismiss it, because you cannot predict the fate of your statement. Each proposal and theory has its own biography, and the author is absolutely not able to control their fate.

Spengler was the spirit of his time. In his work, a certain tragedy and romanticism of the story can be traced. Inspired by the ideas of Nietzsche and Goethe, Spengler created his own world, his theory, idea and reflections, thus inscribing himself on the pages of history.

"Living cultures die" - this is how O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" begins in Svasyan's translation. And already this sentence is more than enough to understand the depth of philosophical thought and the extraordinary thinking of the German philosopher.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution

higher professional education

"Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin"

Institute of Social and Political Sciences

Department of International Relations

Department of European Studies

Report on the topic: "Oswald Spengler: The Decline of Europe"

Work completed:

1st year student of FMO

group sp-122105(r-103)

Gubaidulina Snezhana

Yekaterinburg city

l civilization

Introduction

1. "The Decline of the Western World"

2. Spengler's Philosophy of Culture

3. Soul of culture

4. The transition of culture to civilization

5. Differences of culture and civilization

6. Civilization as the death of culture

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Spengler Oswald (1880-1936), a prominent German philosopher, culturologist, historian, representative of the philosophy of life, creator of the cyclic theory, author of the sensational work "The Decline of Europe", which brought him the sensational glory of the prophet of the death of Western civilization. Only in the 20s. The first volume of this cultural bestseller went through 32 editions in many languages. His teaching was intended to overcome the mechanistic nature of the 19th-century global schemes for the evolution of culture as a single ascending process of the formation of world culture, where European culture acted as the pinnacle of human development.

The creative biography of the German thinker is unusual. The son of a petty postal clerk, Spengler did not have a university education and could only finish high school, where he studied mathematics and the natural sciences; As for history, philosophy and art history, in the mastery of which he surpassed many of his outstanding contemporaries, Spengler dealt with them independently, becoming an example of a self-taught genius. Spengler's official career was limited to the position of a gymnasium teacher, which he voluntarily left in 1911.

Oswald Spengler was born on May 29, 1880 in Blankenburg, Germany. Educated at Munich and Berlin Universities. Studied philosophy, history, mathematics and art. In 1904 he received his doctorate. He first worked as a teacher in Hamburg and then taught mathematics at the University of Munich.

1. "The Decline of the Western World"

In 1918, the first volume of Spengler's famous work, The Decline of the Western World, was published. In it, the author predicted the death of Western European and American civilizations, presenting history as a kaleidoscope of eight "organic" cultural and historical types: Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, magical (Byzantine-Arabic), Western European and Mayan culture. The ninth is the culture of the future, Russian-Siberian.

Citing a variety of historical data, Spengler tried to prove two main theses.

The first considered all cultures as organisms following the same pattern of development and death within the same historical cycle. All of them pass through the stages of pre-culture, culture and civilization and are marked by crises of the same type and similar events and figures. So, Alexander plays the same role in ancient culture as Napoleon in Western culture, Pythagoras and Luther, Aristotle and Kant, Stoics and socialists also correlate.

In accordance with the second thesis, each culture has its own unique "soul", expressed in art, thinking and activity.