tacitus & spanglar

8/3/2019 Tacitus & Spanglar

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Tacitus

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 AD 117) was a senator and a historian of theRoman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major worksthe Annals and the Historiesexamine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned inthe Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from thedeath of Augustus in AD 14 to (presumably) the death of emperor Domitian in AD 96. There aresubstantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including one four books long in the Annals.

Other writings by him discuss oratory,Germania and the life of his father-in-law Agricola,mainly focusing on his campaign in Britannia.

Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been

called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latinprose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.

APPROACHES TO HISTORY

This Approach introduces students to the work of cultural and socialanthropologists, to the way it has influenced the thinking of historians in recentdecades. As with the other Approaches, the aim is to offer students new broader

perspectives on the ways in which the past can be studied and to think morecarefully about the concepts they use. The four broad sub-themes and supporting

bibliographies allow students to read some of the classic works of anthropologyand thereby appreciate the diversity of ways in which anthropologists haveapproached the study of humans in the present. Students can consider the extent towhich functionalism and field studies at a micro level have influenced historicalwork, or the possibilities for historians of the cultural anthropology exemplified bythe work of Clifford Geertz. Students will also be encouraged to take note of theextent to which there is a two-way interaction between anthropology and history


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and to consider the implications of the intense self-criticism of anthropology as anagent of colonialism.

Family and kinshipThis topic offers students the chance to analyse how anthropological work hassharpened historians understanding of the central role of family and kinshipstructures in societies and of the diversity of forms which these structures maytake. As a central topic of much anthropological work it exemplifies the wayanthropological approaches have been contested and have developed over the lasthalf century from the stress on scientific categorization in the mid-twentiethcentury to the more recent emphasis of Pierre Bourdieu on fluidity andimprovisation.Religion, Magic and Popular CultureThis topic examines an area where the debt of many historians to the work of

anthropologists has been extensive and has opened up a number of lively debates.The work of Evans-Pritchard or Clifford Geertz and its influence on historianssuch as Keith Thomas or Robert Darnton offers a classic example. At a generallevel the topic encourages students to examine why religion and magic make senseto their participants and to consider the limitations of concepts such as popularculture.The construction of historyThis topic explores the way anthropologists have looked at and thought about the

past, be it myths, genealogies, oral histories, or the work of professional historians,as an attempt by participants within a society to explain who they are and tolegitimize, contest or make sense of the world as it is. Students are encouraged toconsider the applicability of such interpretations to historical testimonies andrecords from the past or indeed to the work of professional historians andanthropologists in the present.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

The aim of this Approach is to introduce history students, very familiar withworking with the evidence of words and texts, to a different type of evidence for

the human past: mute material remains. The course underlines the veryconsiderable strengths of material objects as evidence, but also their limitations,and how they are subject to varying interpretations. It also offers a chance to showhow an archaeological approach has altered historians perceptions of the past. Thecourse, while arranged thematically, introduces students to aspects ofarchaeological methodology (such as how to find and interpret traces of buriedlandscapes). It is not centred around theoretical debates within Archaeology


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itself, though students may engage with these if they wish. The introductoryexplanations and attached bibliographies give some idea of how each theme might

be studied though each can equally be approached with a different set of examples,chosen from any period. It is also possible to centre a topic on a specific site orgroup of material (e.g. for Burials the Spitalfields crypt, or the Sutton Hoo

barrows).LandscapeThis topic will introduce students to many of the different types of survivingevidence for ancient landscapes (crop-marks revealed through air-photography;

pottery-scatters through field-survey; modern topographical features; etc.). It willshow how we can read in the landscape changing patterns of economicexploitation, settlement and ideology.Production and exchangeThis topic explores the evidence for the manufacture and exchange of goods

examining both production sites and the distribution patterns of archaeologicallyidentifiable products.Burial: belief and social statusIn this topic students are invited to consider the extent to which the dead, and whatis buried with them, can provide evidence of belief and social differentiation.

ART AND HISTORY

The goal of this Approach is to broaden the historians sensitivity to an infinitevariety of visual evidence. In most history writing, disproportionate attention is

paid to written sources: this course is designed to foster a more balanced approach.However, using visual evidence is far from simple. Art in this context is very

broadly defined, to include not merely the western canon of high art, but theentire gamut of material cultural production, and its consumption. The short

bibliography can be supplemented with case-studies from different periods andplaces. Indeed, students should be encouraged to engage in detail with particularimages including any to be found in Oxfords museums and galleries. While for

brevity and convenience it is largely focused on western art traditions, this is notintended as any constraint on the scope of the course. The course is structured

around four broad and overlapping themes.Creation and consumptionThe first theme relates to the social context of art: how, precisely, are the varietyand changes in artistic production (styles of painting, forms of architecture, etc.)related to contemporary social developments? Consideration needs to be given notonly to structures of patronage, but also to broader issues of markets andconsumption.


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Art and politicsThe second theme includes, but extends beyond, the use of visual imagery as aform of propaganda. Images have been deployed for subversive, no less thanauthoritarian, purposes. Analysis often reveals a creative tension in theinterpretation of an image, whose true meaning is contested.The idea of the history of art: displaying, writing and collectingThe last theme is the particularly western way in which the history of art has beenconceived. This notion has been profoundly influential (through collecting, theconstruction of museums, art writing and art history), and rewards study. The post-medieval European idea of fine art is a highly particular category: to recognize itas such is to become more fully aware of the richness of a far more inclusive realmof visual culture beyondthe fine arts, both in European and non-Europeantraditions.

ECONOMICS AND HISTORY

The aim of this Approach is to introduce students to the ways in which economicmodels and statistical sources can be used to understand history. It encouragesstudents to tackle the central issue of how economic development has changed thecharacter and quality of human life and, to this end, to look at the ways in whicheconomics has tried to define and measure concepts such as character and quality.The course can be approached both by taking a broad perspective on the economicevolution of the globe and by looking at specific thematic issues and case studiesin different periods, for example the role of technological change. As with theother Approaches, it is organized around four broad themes. In the course of thesestudents will be introduced to the grand theories of economic developmentexpounded by Adam Smith, Robert Malthus and Karl Marx; the ways in whichhistorians have sought to apply, refine, or refute these grand theories in the light ofevidence from different times and places can be closely assessed.Economics and population changeThis topic looks at what determines the rise and fall of population and how

population change affects living standards and income distribution. How doMalthusian population dynamics relate to family structure, inheritance, marriage

customs, and the roles of men and women? Can long run growth patterns beexplained by preventive and positive checks? Does overpopulation remain anexplanation of poverty and a threat to sustainable development?Economics and social structureCan history be divided into stages like feudalism and capitalism as Marx argued?Is capitalism more conducive to economic development than other socialstructures? Do diminishing returns or class conflict explain the distribution of


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income? Is culture explained by technology and economic organization? How dofree market development, government regulation, or state ownership advance orhinder the interests of either the population as a whole or specific groups within the

population?

SOCIOLOGY AND HISTORY

The aim of this Approach is to introduce students to the discipline of sociology, toexplore ways in which sociological method has influenced historians, and to lookat ways in which sociology and history over the years have diverged or converged.Students are introduced to the discipline of sociology as the study of man as asocial animal, shaped by social institutions but at the same time able to construct orreconstruct them. How much scope different sociologists give to the individual andhuman agency is discussed. The course is organized around four broad themes.

Sociological techniquesThe approach of sociology to sources, concepts, the comparative method andgrand theory is compared to that of historians, and examples from the hybrid ofhistorical sociology are examined. The traffic is not all one way and the appeal tosome sociologists of the narrative and biographical approach is also illustrated.Social stratificationThis topic introduces students to the sociological theories of social stratification,especially those of Marx on class and Weber on social status, and examines howthey have set the agenda for much social history. It also explores how suchconcepts have lost some of their explanatory force and how historians have refinedthem in new and exciting ways.Power and authorityThis topic examines ways in which sociologists have conceptualized the state and

political institutions and at how they have analysed political obedience in terms ofpower (coercion) and authority (the recognition of legitimacy). It explores differentnotions of power developed by theorists such as Foucault, and ideas of

bureaucracy, social discipline, revolt and revolution. Ways in which historianshave used or developed these ideas are discussed.Sociology and religion

This topic examines ways in which religion has been treated by sociologists. Itlooks in particular at the concept of the secularization of modern society, both as adebate among sociologists of religion and as a research question for historians whohave refined and challenged the theory in the light of empirical evidence.


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Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 8 May 1936) was aGerman historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics,science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West (DerUntergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theoryof the rise and decline of civilizations. In 1920 Spengler produced Prussiandomand Socialism (Preuentum und Sozialismus), which argued for an organic,nationalist version of socialism and authoritarianism. He wrote extensivelythroughout World War I and the interwar period, and supported German hegemonyin Europe. Some National Socialists (such as Goebbels) held Spengler as anintellectual precursor but he was ostracised after 1933 for his pessimism aboutGermany's and Europe's future, his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial

superiority, and his critical work The Hour of Decision.

Historical FrameworkMore than simply a pessimistic eulogy to the West, Decline of the Westbegins by establishing ahistorical framework in opposition to the current West European scheme of history, in whichthe great Cultures are made to follow orbits round us as the presumed centre of all world-happenings, is the Ptolemaic system of history . In its place, Spengler introduces the idea ofworld-history, which widens the scope of historical inquiry beyond the Western Europeanscheme that is predicated on an arbitrary lineage from ancient Greece to the EuropeanEnlightenment. This new system admits no sort of privileged position to the Classical or the

Western Culture as against the Cultures of India, Babylon, China, Egypt, the Arabs, Mexicoseparate worlds of dynamic being which in point of mass count for just as much in the generalpicture of history as the Classical, while frequently surpassing it in point of spiritual greatnessand soaring power . He humbly calls this non-centered form of history the Copernicandiscovery in the historical sphere, through its radical departure from existing historical schemas.Spengler articulates the problem of Civilization as the primary focus of his inquiry because itcrystallizes the decline, death, and posthumous extension of world cultures. He differentiatesbetween culture and civilization, suggesting,Civilization is the ultimate destiny of the Culture


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Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanityis capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, deathfollowing life, rigidity following expansion petrifying world-city following mother-earth andthe spiritual childhood.The distinction between civilization and culture is analogous to thedifference between the Greek soul and the Roman intellect.Civilization represents petrified or

reified culture, divorced from the soul and process of becoming, and ultimately signifying theswansong rather than the apex of a cultures development. For Spengler, the German poetGoethe best epitomizes the dynamic philosophy of Becoming through his emphasis ondevelopment and growth in his works Wilhelm Meister and Poetry and Truth, in contrast to thestatic philosophy of Being represented by Aristotle and Kant .Goethes concept of livingnature emphasizes this thing-becoming and opposes the world-as-organism, dead nature toliving nature, law to form, which is propagated and expressed by civilization.Decline of theWestis also based partly on Friedrich Nietzsches philosophy, particularly.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, where, according to Spengler, he brilliantly and theatricallyformulates the creative will-to-life. For Spengler, Goethe and Nietzsche form the two great

pillars of German intellectual life, representing the apotheosis and decline of Western culturerespectively.Unlike Goethe who was able to understand and solve the great [formal] problemsof his time as a recognized member of his society, Nietzsches nihilism shatters the ideals ofhis own culture and protests passionately against everything contemporary, if he was to rescueanything his forebears had bequeathed to him as a cultural heritage.Nietzsches concept of thetransvaluation of all values, or the affirmation of new values of life and pleasure over Christiansuffering and chastity, epitomizes a dynamic philosophy of Becoming, much like Goethesidea of living nature.Nietzsche also bequeaths to Spengler the tools to issue his diagnosis ofdecline, such as the idea that a civilization in its death throes begets no more, but onlyreinterprets it assumes that the genuine act of creation has already occurred, and merely entersupon an inheritance of big actualities.Nietzsches concept of the Will to Power, or theprimary driving force of man, manifests itself in the creative, destructive Will in history thatSpengler seeks to chronicle. Thus, in a way, Nietzsche also provides Spengler with a life-affirming emphasis on dynamism and individualism that uneasily coexists with his fatalisticpessimism.

Spenglers Modernist Inheritance

Although he saw modernist art, such as atonal music and abstract painting, as manifestations ofcultural decay, Spengler himself was influenced by the principles of modernism. Like JohnMaynard Keynes, T.S. Eliot, and other modernists, he attacked the immense optical illusionthat pervaded an existing world order and peoples attendant unshakeable belief in the efficacy

of such orders .His insistence on writing non-linear history while decentering the dominant,Eurocentric scheme of history echoes the alternative narrative approaches of MarcelProust, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce Like other modernist writers who rejected theconventional narrative techniques and experimented with narrative chronology, Spengler breakswith his predecessors to reject the linear narrative of history. Spengler and modernist writersaltered existing representations of through historical and literary means respectivelyconceptions that seemed to be corroborated by Einsteins theory of relativity, which espousedthat the measurement of time and space is dependent on the position and velocity of the observer.


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Spenglers scathing critique of historiography, specifically the subdivision of history intoancient, medieval, and modern, creates a radical break with the practice of history. Heconsciously breaks with the professional historian, who sees history as a sort of tapewormindustriously adding onto itself one epoch after another. The false, parasitical linearity of theprofessional historians approach mirrors civilizations stifling influence on culture and things-

becoming. In his emphasis on becoming instead of being, Spenglers philosophy of historyhas a curiously modernist tenor; he is keenly aware of the radical instability and flux of life thatcannot be captured through static forms. He recalls Henri Bergson's concept of duration, whichcan only be grasped through simple intuition of the imagination rather than objective science orlogical analysis.Spengler writes: I see, in place of the empty figment of one linear history whichcan be kept up only shutting ones eyes to the overwhelming multitude of fact, the drama ofmighty Cultures . For Bergson, no two moments can be the same; for Spengler, no two culturesor cultural moments can be the same. He writes, Each culture has its own new possibilities ofself-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return . Underscoring the ephemeral,inimitable nature of each culture, Spenglers view of history and temporality is colored by aprofound sense of unrecoverable loss, much like Eliot's The Waste Land.

Perhaps at his most modern, Spengler privileges cultural relativity and renounces the Eurocentricvantage point of other historians in a way that strongly resonates with his contemporary reader.Spengler criticizes Western philosophers, such as Nietzsche, for failing to consider vantagepoints outside of a narrow linear frame of Western history, suggesting: It is this that is lackingto the Western thinker, the very thinker in whom we might have expected to find itinsight intothe historically relative character of his data, which are expressions of one specific existence andone only . Ironically, Spengler seems to have inherited this idea from Nietzsches concept ofperspectivism, which holds that there is no absolute, God's eye standpoint from which one cansurvey everything that is.In a way, Spengler outdoes Nietzsche in his own relativism.Paradoxically, the thinker who has often been co-opted by the right berates Nietzsche for his lackof historical and cultural relativity. Conservative appropriations of Spenglers ideas have oftenprompted historians to overlook Spenglers opposition to imperialism and biological definitionsof race. Implicit in Spenglers analysis of civilization is a critique of imperialism, which iscivilization unadulterated because it petrifies and disseminates a dying or dead culture to allparts of the globe (28). An empire disregards the historically contingent and individual status ofworld-history by blindly imposing its own forms onto other cultures. Empires, such as theRoman, Egyptian, and Chinese, become phantom civilizations or dead bodies that live on forhundreds of years after their deaths through their imperial domains.

Spengler dismisses 19th century ideas of race as a biological phenomenon as well as pseudo-anthropological claims about the phrenology of cultures. Instead, he suggests that the idea of racederives largely from a geographic location and that race-expression is completely transformedin the migration and movement of peoples. 'race' in this connexion must not be interpreted inthe present-day Darwinian sense of the word. It cannot be accepted, surely, that a people wereever held together by the mere unity of physical origin, or, if it were, could maintain that unityfor ten generations. It cannot be too often reiterated that this physiological provenance has noexistence except for sciencenever for folk-consciousnessand that no people was ever stirred


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to enthusiasm by this ideal of blood purity It is the incoordination of this (whollymetaphysical) beat which produces race hatred.

His ideas about race fundamentally opposed National Socialism, which predicated its policies ona biological distinction between the "Aryan" and Jewish race. Due to his opposition to the racist

biology of Nazism, Spenglers books were eventually banned during the Third Reich. Spenglersrebuttal of 19th century and Nazi race theories positions him as a modern, if not modernistthinker, who sought to break with the outdated methods of his predecessors and conservativecontemporaries by renouncing Western claims to universality and supremacy.

Organic View of History

In his self-described organic theory of history, Spengler labels cultures as organisms, aconcept which he derives from Goethes idea of living nature . Living nature encapsulates thethe idea of becoming from a standpoint of the phenomenal world in motion, which is beststudied through erfhlen or living into rather than by dissection. He writes, I see world-

history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing andwaning of organic forms. Drawing heavily on natural, biological terms, such as properties ofspecies, he compares humans to butterflies and orchids, describing the way cultures springwith primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly boundthroughout its whole life-cycle. By appealing to biological and organic forms, Spengler seeks tonaturalize his theory of history in a way that recalls Herbert Spencers attempts to extendevolutionary biology into sociology and ethics.

His method of studying history draws heavily on analogy, through which the form andduration can be calculated from available precedents . Northrop Frye suggests that Spenglersanalogical method regarding cultures rests on a further analogy between a culture and an

organism. Curiously, however, one of Spenglers major critiques of existing historicalscholarship is that History was seen as Nature (in the objective sense of the physicist) andtreated accordingly, it is to this that we must ascribe the baneful mistake of applying theprinciples of causality, of law, of system . Yet, this baneful mistake seems to be preciselywhat Spengler is in danger of committing by uncritically using the organism as an analogy forsociety, thereby treating history like nature. Paradoxically, as I will later suggest, underSpenglers microscope, history becomes a study of things-become, where even the things-becoming are transformed into lifeless forms . The discipline of history, like other forms ofinquiry, risks killing things-becoming in order to classify and analyze them.

Spenglers organic analogy breaks down when he tries to assert that each culture is self-

contained like a peculiar blossom or fruit, a claim which has little basis in reality. After all,Spengler himself describes the ways that various cultures impact others through empire andtrade, propagating their influence long after their declines. This complex network of influencesseems to complicate his naturalistic analogy; a butterfly or orchid does not continue beyond itsphysical existence in the same way that Plato or Greek philosophy does. At times, Spenglerundermines his own argument by forcing historical developments into his organic paradigm.


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Western Civilization and its Discontents

Ultimately, according to Spengler, Western or Faustian culture is characterized by its restlessthrust toward the infinite and unattainable, or the conception of mankind as an active, fighting,progressing whole . The Faustian individual strives to direct the world according to his will.

In architecture, the infinity-seeking Faustian tendency is most apparent in the endless verticalthrusts of Gothic cathedrals and the depth-experience of paintings, in which parallel lines meetin infinity. From its inception around 1000 with the Cluniac reforms, the Faustian civilizationmarked a radical break with its predecessors, the Apollonian (Classical) culture and the Magian(Judeo-Arabic) culture . According to Spengler, the differences between Faustian and Apollonianart are instructive: The Apollonian form-language reveals only the become, the Faustian showsabove all a becoming.

Yet, according to Spengler, after nearly 900 years of dominance, the Faustian era has reached itsdeath throes. He writes, the future of the West is not limitless tending upwards and onwards forall time but a single phenomenon of history. Like other modernists, he attacked the

positivistic, Enlightenment myth of unending progress based on universal criteria. Harbingers ofthis cultural decay were, among other things, atonal music, avant-garde art produced foroversensitive connoisseurs, manipulation of the public opinion by mass media, and imperialism.Much like Goethes Faust becomes shackled by his insatiable quest for knowledge, Faustianman has become the slave of his creation, particularly through the machine which enslaves boththe worker and entrepreneur. For Spengler, Caesarism is another manifestation of this decline,as authority becomes increasingly concentrated in the hand of one person and the moderninstitutions of the state begin to disintegrate. Even modern writers, such as Nietzsche and Ibsen,who embraced the possibilities of a true philosophy, also exhausted them .

Towards the end of volume two, Spengler becomes increasingly bitter and pessimistic in his

invective against the decay of modern society, and begins to betray his own principle ofhistorical relativity. As Helps astutely observes, his claim to observe from a neutral standpointshows a neglect of the relativity which is his favorite weapon. If the whole of reality is beingconstantly transformed in a continuum of aspects from perpetually changing viewpoints, it mustbe impossible to obtain a precise picture.in spite of his self-proclaimed non-centered history,Spengler uses the printing press, Goethe, and NietzscheGermanic historyas his primaryhistorical markers. Perhaps stepping out of himself to view his theory against the backdrop of hispeculiar world-historical moment, Spengler might suggest that his own historical framework is areification of the dynamic impulses of German or Western European culture. It is ironic that thethinker who opposed theories as mummified versions of things-becoming became best knownfor a taxonomy of decline that perhaps prematurely petrified his own culture.Perhaps, this

contradiction can best be attributed to the tensions between Spenglers metaphysical aims and hishistorical project; narrating history necessarily reifies the past as a thing-become in order torepresent and study it.


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1. H. Stuart Hughes, "Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate," New York: Charles Scribners

Sons, 1952.2. Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1962.3. Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1962.4. For instance, in his poem, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Ezra Pound wrote that a botchedWestern civilization was an old bitch gone in the teeth. Ezra Pound, Selected Poems,New York: New Directions, 1957.

5. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, "The Weimar Republic Sourcebook,"Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

6. Oswald Spengler, "The Decline of the West," New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.7. Spengler writes, That which Goethe called Living Nature is exactly that which we are

calling here world-history, world-as-history. Goethe, who as artist portrayed always thelife and development of his figures, the things becoming and not the thing-become Forhim the world-as-mechanism stood opposed to the world-as-organism, dead nature to

living nature, law to form8. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze, Munich:1937.

9. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze, Munich:1937.

10.Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science," trans. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: VintageBooks: 1974.

11.In his address on the occasion of Nietzsches eightieth birthday in 1924, Spengler wrote:His ultimate understanding of real history was that the Will to Power is stronger than alldoctrines and principles, and that it has always made and forever will make history... tohim the most important thing was the image of active, creative, destructive Will inhistory. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze,Munich: 1937.

12.Ultimately, Nietzsches doctrine of the bermensch and eternal recurrence combine toinform Spengler's emphasis on individual creative power and its reflection of the absolutepatterns of human society, which culminates in a vehement elitism. Kevin McNeilly,Cultural Morphologies: Yeats, Spengler and Adorno, Irish University Review.

13. Spenglers quotation is reminiscent of the opening lines of Keynes "EconomicConsequences of the Peace": Very few of us realize with conviction the intenselyunusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economicorganization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assumesome of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent,and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and falsefoundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms, pursueour animosities and particular ambitions, and feel ourselves with enough margin in handto foster, not assuage, civil conflict in the European family. John Maynard Keynes, "TheEconomic Consequences of the Peace," New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920.

14.Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An introduction to Metaphysics, New York: FirstCarol Publishing Group, 1992.


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15.Spengler recalls the sense of decay and disillusion captured in modernist literature: You

cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, /And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land,1922.

16.Robert Wicks, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008.17.

Curiously, Spengler personally advocated the development of a German empire.18.Northrop Frye, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, Daedalus.

19.The modernist German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was deeplyinfluenced by Spengler, similarly emphasized an organic mode of building that soughtto place his architectural theory into a naturalistic framework. In his educationalcurriculum, Mies emphasized dependence on the epoch and the obligation to realizethe potentialities of organic architecture. Werner Blaser, "Mies van der Rohe," Basel:Birkhuser Verlag fr Architektur, 1997.

20.Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1962.

21.McNeilly writes, He demands purity, depth and objectivity but cannot manage toachieve a holistic critical perspective without in some sense betraying the historicalorganism, the actual becoming he wants to describe. Kevin McNeilly, CulturalMorphologies: Yeats, Spengler and Adorno, Irish University Review.

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