Philosopher of history, born in Blankenburg, C Germany. He studied at Halle, Munich, and Berlin, and taught mathematics before devoting himself entirely to the morbidly prophetic Der Untergang des Abendlandes (2 vols, 191822, The Decline of the West), which argues that all cultures are subject to the same cycle of growth and decay in accordance with predetermined historical destiny. His views greatly encouraged the Nazis, though he never became one himself.
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (Blankenburg am Harz May 29, 1880 – May 8, 1936, Munich) was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. After Decline was published in 1918, Spengler produced his Prussianism and Socialism in 1920, in which he argued for an organic version of socialism and authoritarianism. Spengler voted for the National Socialists in 1932 and hung a swastika flag outside his Munich home, and the National Socialists held Spengler as an intellectual precursor. But Spengler's pessimism about Germany and Europe's future, his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority, and his work the Hour of Decision, which is critical of the Nazis, gained him ostracism after 1933.
Biography
Oswald Spengler was born in 1880 in Blankenburg at the foot of the Harz mountains, the eldest of four children, and the only boy. His childhood home was emotionally reserved, and the young Spengler turned to books and the great cultural personalities for succor.
At the age of ten, his family moved to the university city of Halle. Here Spengler received a classical education in high school, studying Greek, Latin, mathematics and natural sciences.
After his father's death in 1901, Spengler attended several universities (Munich, Berlin, and Halle) as a private scholar, taking courses in a wide range of subjects: history, philosophy, mathematics, natural science, literature, the classics, music, and fine arts.
Scholars remark that his life seemed rather eventless.
In 1911, following his mother's death, he moved to Munich, where he would live until his death in 1936. Spengler lived on very limited means and was marked by loneliness.
He began work on the first volume of Decline intending to focus on Germany within Europe at first, but was deeply affected by the Agadir Crisis, and widened the scope of his study. Spengler was inspired by Otto Seeck's work The Decline of Antiquity in naming his own effort. During the war, his inheritance was largely useless because it was invested overseas, thus Spengler lived in genuine poverty for this period.
When Decline came out in 1917, it was a wild success because of the perceived national humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and economic depression fueled by hyperinflation seemed to prove Spengler right (Spengler had in fact believed that Germany would win while he was writing the book).
The book was widely discussed, even by those who had not read it. Thomas Mann compared reading Spengler's book to reading Schopenhauer for the first time. Max Weber described Spengler as a "very ingenious and learned dilettante" while Karl Popper described the thesis as "pointless". Spengler's obscurity, intuitionalism, and mysticism were easy targets, especially for the Positivists and neo-Kantians who saw no meaning in history. Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, shared Spengler's cultural pessimism. Spengler's work became an imporant fundation for the social cycle theory.
In the second volume, published in 1920, Spengler argued that German socialism was different from Marxism, and was in fact compatible with traditional German conservatism. In 1924, following the social-economic upheaval and inflation, Spengler entered politics in an effort to bring Reichswehr general Hans von Seeckt to power as the country's leader. But the effort failed and Spengler proved ineffective in practical politics.
Despite voting for Hitler over Hindenburg in 1932, Spengler found the Führer vulgar. However, Spengler did become a member of the Academy of Germany in the course of the year.
The Hour of Decision, published in 1934, was a bestseller, but was later banned by the Nazis for its critiques of National Socialism. Spengler's criticisms of liberalism were welcomed by the Nazis, but Spengler disagreed with their biological ideology and anti-Semitism.
He spent his final years in Munich, listening to Beethoven, reading Molière and Shakespeare, buying several thousand books, and collecting ancient Turkish, Persian and Hindu weapons. Chesterton took issue with both pessimists (such as Spengler) and their optimistic critics, arguing that neither took into consideration human choice: "The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; Spengler's vision of the cyclical nature of civilization and the contemporeneity of the end of the Western European cycle led William Seward Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to look for the seeds of the next cycle in the communities of which they were a part. Spengler has, amongst others, influenced Georg Henrik von Wright in his writing about our society. Spengler was a pivotal influence on Francis Parker Yockey, who wrote Imperium as a sequel to The Decline of the West. Yockey called Spengler "The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century." Spengler's book inspired Frye to have his own "vision of coherence", resulting in Anatomy of Criticism. James Blish's Cities in Flight tetrology explicitly lists Spengler's theories as an influence on the future history of the Cities. In the DVD commentary to Ghostbusters, actor and screenwriter Harold Ramis says that his character Egon Spengler's last name was in honor of Oswald Spengler, while the first name "Egon" came from a Czech childhood friend of Ramis's.
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