/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13870074]

Is it good?

[Anonymous No.13870239]

>>13870074
yes, and it's the ultimate filter. It requires extensive foreknowledge in history and philosophy.

[Anonymous No.13870242]

>>13870074
he's right about pretty much everything

[Anonymous No.13870990]

Its very good and underrated but try to take everything he says with a grain of salt. The parts of the book where he discusses about cycles of history and decline are pure hyperboly, since the study of history is infinitely more complex. Ultimately you have to view the book more as an amalgamation of German philosophical currents than pure history.

[Anonymous No.13870998]

>>13870990
>The parts of the book where he discusses about cycles of history and decline are pure hyperbole, since the study of history is infinitely more complex.
Essentially yes, but that's the juiciest part.

[Anonymous No.13871067]

>>13870998

The best parts in my opinion where the parts of the world form of each civilization. Those were truly eye opening and some of the most original cultural interpretations of what civilization is. Especially the Classical, Magian and Faustian parts. Those were truly excellent and I think really deserve to be studied by historians so they can have a more holistic view on cultural history. Spengler was one of the first to do civilization studies but unfortunately he is buried and forgotten because of the somewhat aphoristic and political proclamations "decline"part.

Most fascinating is Spengler's connection with the Kulturkreis school, a connection that is often understudied and or ignored, because of Spengler's characterization as a "prophet". The guy obviously was up to date with the anthropological and historical research of his time.

[Anonymous No.13871090]

>>13870239
I would really like to read it at some point, but I want to fully understand it and be able to form my own opinion on Spengler's argument. What would you recommend having read first? I would imagine that at least Hegel and Marx are necessary first, what should I have read in terms of history?

[Anonymous No.13871150]

>>13871090
Unironically start with the Greeks. Spengler also starts with the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.13871161]

>>13871090

Its best to go through this book with an open mind and then research all the philosophical and historical tidbits on your own afterwards or while reading it. If you are asking what is the driving force behind this book, the answer is nothing other but Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.

[Anonymous No.13871165]

[Anonymous No.13871181]

>>13871165
Spengler deserves some recognition. He literally solved history.

[Anonymous No.13871182]

>>13871165

The other threads are shit, ours here is a comfy little corner of late night Spengler-posting .

[Anonymous No.13871194]

>unabridged reprint never ever

[Anonymous No.13871196]

>>13871194
Is the abridged version better?

[Anonymous No.13871510]

>>13870074
It has a lot of interesting viewpoints, but the overall idea of history he presents is legitimately retarded.

[Anonymous No.13871619]

A person with 90+iq and access to the internet can destroy his view of history in an hour, I'm so sick of the shilling of this loser lately. It's no coincidence that every student that mentioned they like this book in my history undergrad ended up being a complete retard and dropping out quickly
>>13870239
LMAO what??? The only people who enjoy this trash are those that DON'T have extensive knowledge in history and philosophy and are at risk of accepting it's shallow generalizations and flat out wrong facts because it's written in a commanding prose, the have no prior knowledge to judge it's worth with. Take that sorry excuse of a book to literally any historian in any university near you and watch what them get "filtered out". You're such a fucking idiot
>>13870242
He's right about everything to you because you know nothing
>>13870998
Exactly why he attracts so many psueds. Viewing history like he did is inherently attractive to humans
>>13871181
You haven't read a history book since your 10th grade textbook kys

[Anonymous No.13871651]

>>13871619

[Anonymous No.13871768]

He's essentially anti-Marx: A lot of his analysis, logic, and systems are very simplistic and at times shoddy, but every single prediction he made (ever) has come true exactly as he thought it would, from his predicting WWI and WWII to the rise of the American Empire and to a terrorist attack from the Islamic world in New York causing a paradigm shift within the US Empire. This is opposed to Marx who creates this vast system that is entirely logically sound, but has absolutely no predictive power what so ever.

[Anonymous No.13871828]

>>13870074
How does pic related compare?

[Anonymous No.13871838]

>>13871768
shoddy how?

[Anonymous No.13871843]

>>13871619
I don't trust the intellectual opinion from someone who CAPITALIZES words for effect and says lmao

[Anonymous No.13872051]

>>13871843
I don't trust the intellectual opinion of people who don't trust the intellectual option of people if they capitalizes words for effect and say lmao. Usually a good sign of a psued who is unable to independently judge the worth of ideas without a signal to authority and intellectual tropes

[Anonymous No.13872054]

>>13871838
>shoddy how

[Anonymous No.13872060]

>>13872054
How is that shoddy?

[Anonymous No.13872073]

>>13872051
Repeat my reply isn't a get gotcha, it just makes you look like an autistic retard
>Usually a good sign of a psued who is unable to independently judge the worth of ideas without a signal to authority and intellectual tropes
If you can't convey your ideas in an intelligent way then what's the worth in considering them?

[Anonymous No.13872142]

>>13871619
This person hasn't read it

[Anonymous No.13872239]

>>13871067
>The best parts in my opinion where the parts of the world form of each civilization. Those were truly eye opening and some of the most original cultural interpretations of what civilization is. Especially the Classical, Magian and Faustian parts. Those were truly excellent and I think really deserve to be studied by historians so they can have a more holistic view on cultural history.
I agree but it seems like English academics like John Ruskin and Kenneth Clark focused more on contrasting the Classical Greek with the Faustian (Gothic) spirit.

[Anonymous No.13872371]

>>13871828
They're almost nothing alike. First you have to ignore people to talk about 'decline' in relation to Spengler, since that's not the appeal, he's not a team player or a doomsayer, he's more like the lead character in that movie 'The Saint', he can think his way into any society that has ever manifested itself.

Yockey has a totally different 'voice', he's like a Gothic radio jockey or a Neoclassical playwright or New Wave film director, Yockey has a very definite Medievalist perspective. It all about a stark, high-contrast presentation of 20th century life and particularly the resurgence of the Classical civilization in the form of the industrial-technical society.

[Anonymous No.13872418]

>>13872142
I have, and it's complete trash, nice try though, maybe next time you can form an actual argument to defend your cringelord baldboy

[Anonymous No.13872502]

>>13872073
>If you can't convey your ideas in an intelligent way then what's the worth in considering them?
Even if they were valuable ideas, we wouldn't be able to access them without emotional, spiritual or intellectual coherence.
He's a butthurt teenager, I wager.

[Anonymous No.13872507]

>>13872418
>cat fag
haha you have big gay and your opinions are invalidated by your fagginess

[Anonymous No.13872511]

>>13872371
Thanks
>>13872418
Nice cat. I'm gonna post that pic on /an/

[Anonymous No.13872517]

>>13872418
You haven't read it mate.

[Anonymous No.13872571]

>>13871619
>ego consumed man has entered the thread

Go forth and bicker to all those dumber than you for that is the path of the intellectual, are you not involved in any other forums of discussion? I can only imagine being this annoyed if this is the only place you can go, its 4chan move beyond these people, did you honestly believe everyone here will be well read? Anyone can post here anonymously by the way if you didnt remember you could literally be talking to a 14 year old. I don't understand how you can be so well read yet somehow are oblivious to where you are, there are tons of forums with people with deeper and traceable knowledge, you won't need to sit here and make claims that people are uneducated, why choose to be here?

[Anonymous No.13872585]

>>13872571
These guys dont participate there because they get exposed when every post is visible its hard to backup your 150 iq claims

[Anonymous No.13872587]

>>13872418
>abridged edition

[Anonymous No.13872680]

>>13872418
Enjoy your toxoplasmosis

[Anonymous No.13872693]

>>13872507
This is a cat lovers board, begone
>>13872571
Discussing topics like history and philosophy online is literally useless and you have to be a real dumb dumb to think otherwise and not treat everything here like a shitpost. I saw the new meme of the summer and wanted to leave my own pointless opinion with the other pointless opinions. Nobody cares if you aren't well read in a subject unless you're speaking about it with sweeping claims of authority (Spenglerfags) To any 14 year olds reading this, if you like him you're already on the right path. Just keep going and read intently on the civilizations be talks about, don't fall into the immediate trap philosophers with confidence and skill can set you in. It's a jumping off point

[Anonymous No.13872874]

Aren't you the same retard who posted wow this was depressing what to read next?

[Anonymous No.13873604]

Ok the only thing I know of Spengler I read in "Kissinger's Shadow", and he basically said Kissinger got two ideas from Spengler (from memory here):
>It is easy to paralyze yourself into inaction by waiting for more and more information, and so one (and the good statesman necessarily) acts without information often
>There is an actually palpable and significant immaterial/transcendent quality that some men have that makes them good statesmen - it cannot be measured, observed empirically, etc. it just is.

Does this sound right? And if so, am I retarded for rejecting this out of hand?

Sorry I am a brainlet

[Anonymous No.13874755]

>>13873604
Holy sugar
I’ve met lots of people who told me I should be in government, and they explain it with “just because”

[Anonymous No.13874770]

spengler is a coomer

[Anonymous No.13874798]

>>13871619
>A person with 90+iq and access to the internet can destroy his view of history in an hour, I'm so sick of the shilling of this loser lately. It's no coincidence that every student that mentioned they like this book in my history undergrad ended up being a complete retard and dropping out quickly
Yeah I'm about 70 pages into Decline of the West and I sort of agree with this.

I'm not an expert on history or anything, but his method of charting out the patterns of history seem pretty... far-reaching. Just his hyper-pessimistic view seems like a cope for someone who wanted a big-brained reason to imagine themselves as a martyr who's going down with a sinking ship or some shit.

Honestly kind of a stupid book, very interesting thesis though. It made me think about how "history is viewed" or whatever, I guess.

[Anonymous No.13874918]

>>13870990
*hyperbole

[Anonymous No.13876110]

>>13871181
>anon gets exposed to babby's first theory of history

[Anonymous No.13876190]

>>13871619
An amusing anecdote about a scholar engaging in "pedantic and external criticism of details" concerns an American, Edith Wharton. Spengler's American publisher, Alfree Knopf, relates the incident: "[Wharton] wrote Spengler upbraiding him for what she called his ignorance of Baroque art. He replied by citing in his support, among other sources, a study in an encyclopedia of widely recognized authority. 'I know,' Mrs. Wharton wrote in reply, 'but I wrote that article, and at the time I was misinformed.'

[Anonymous No.13876812]

>>13872054
Where's the error?

[Anonymous No.13876817]

Where can a guy get an unabridged copy without spending $200+?

[Anonymous No.13876835]

>>13876817
Learn German

[Anonymous No.13876850]

>>13872418
>reading a translated version
what...?

[Anonymous No.13876896]

So what are some arguments against Spengler? What's the alternative?

[Anonymous No.13877714]

>>13871090
No. Some basic Goethe, Nietzche and Shoppenhauer would be OK, since those are his favorites.

He is quiet on Hegel, because he likes him probably, you get that feel.

[Anonymous No.13877760]

>>13876896
The Enlightenment plus its immediate descendants. Rousseau, Kant, Paine, Bentham, Smith, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Mill, etc etc. Basically anyone who presents history as continual progress.

[Nietzsche's fangirl No.13879667]

[Anonymous No.13880485]

>>13876190
This nigga is making huge claims about civilizations and their art/ history and his sources are fucking encyclopedias, this can't be real. Put him in the trash with the other hack historians and philosophers. Have you read secondary sources from the time period of Spengler? What an atrocious individual

[Anonymous No.13880503]

>>13876190
>This claim you made is factually incorrect, the category you put this civilization in makes zero sense if you know anything about it, and your narrow historical perspective completely ignores a vast majority of contradictory examples of your thesis. You should actually properly study the subjects your argument uses as it's evidence Spengler.
>IM A UNIVERSALISTS!!!!!!! REEEEE

[Anonymous No.13880584]

>>13880485
>>13880503
Spengler's detractors are never able to point and say "Here is a major flaw", only "this minor detail is incorrect". You can pedantically nitpick small details but that doesn't change the fact that Spengler's cultural lifecycle is accurate. Even a briefish reading of the histories of Egypt or China on Wikipedia (before reading anything more in depth) allows you to see that Spengler's basic structure of spiritual ascent and material decline of civilizations checks out. You don't want to come to terms with the facts simply because you disagree with his pessimism. And of course this is only about his pessimism which is just half of his philosophy; the other half being his philosophy of cultures, which other writers have come to similar conclusions about (the most famous being de Coulanges), like Greece being a completely separate civilization from our own. This is the most valuable part of his philosophy to me personally.

[Anonymous No.13880594]

does anyone have the book "Prophet of Decline" digitalized? I need it and i can't get it anywhere... pls halp

[Anonymous No.13880642]

>is it good?
>is one of the most important books ever written, and possibly the blueprint for planning future civilisations, good?
you tell me

[Anonymous No.13880666]

>>13880584
>Spengler's detractors are never able to point and say "Here is a major flaw", only "this minor detail is incorrect".
You can pedantically nitpick small details but that doesn't change the fact that Spengler's cultural lifecycle is accurate.

Absolutely wrong. There are major flaws in his interpretation of civilizational lifecycles and the specific aspects of the cultures he uses to display his thesis. His evidence for his philosophy hinges on these details, you cannot just wave them away as inconsequential, these are the examples he gives to support his stand-alone statements. If these examples are incorrect or extremely shallow why the fuck are the claims they are attached to somehow correct? You give a statement, and provide your evidence, if the evidence is faulty, your statement is either incorrect or not fully developed.

>Even a briefish reading of the histories of Egypt or China on Wikipedia (before reading anything more in depth) allows you to see that Spengler's basic structure of spiritual ascent and material decline of civilizations checks out.

Correct, generalizations support generalizations in the mind of someone who can only think in generalizations on the subject they have not studied. Anything more, even a basic pop history book on Egypt or China completely dismantles the spiritual ascent material decline analysis Spengler gave. And why are you ignoring the other civilizations Spengler uses to justify this thesis? Do even Wikipedia articles prove it wrong? What about his analysis on middle Eastern cultures? as someone who specifically studies middle Eastern culture past the year 1000 his idea of it is so extremely misinformed, not even just wrong, he simply didn't have access to the wealth of information we have on those cultures now that gives a whole new idea on what was going on at the time. By viewing spengler's work with this type of critique all you are left with at the end are unsupported half-baked philosophies.

>You don't want to come to terms with the facts simply because you disagree with his pessimism.
Wrong, spenger's works is actually aesthetically pleasing, and I would love for history to be this easy to put into categories and not a jumbled up random mess that leaves you confused until your death even if you read about it every second of your life

[Anonymous No.13880677]

>>13880584
>Spengler's detractors are never able to point and say "Here is a major flaw", only "this minor detail is incorrect".

[Anonymous No.13881489]

>>13871619
t. filtered

[Anonymous No.13881921]

>>13871090
Unironically you don't need to read anything for Spengler. As long as you have good intuiton, a knowledge of art and music, and a solid knowledge of history, you should be fine.

[Anonymous No.13881932]

>>13880485
He was out on the field studying the sea peoples. Read his letters. Also, what kind of retarded schoolmarm reads books about art? I can only imagine people with no spirit.

[Anonymous No.13881958]

>>13881921
>have good intuiton, a knowledge of art and music, and a solid knowledge of history
All you need to realize spengler is a hack

[Anonymous No.13882043]

>>13881958
show he was a hack. noones stopping you and you have nothing but time, that's why you're here at 1 in the afternoon

[Anonymous No.13882054]

>>13871619
>history student
how does it feel to get replaced by fucking wikipedia?

[Anonymous No.13882063]

>>13872418
>>13872693
>angry catfag
I could probably kill you with one hand.

[Anonymous No.13882115]

>>13882043
>euro
>>13882054
You don't understand history or wikipedia if that's your opinion. You're also projecting your iq implying the extent of your study on history doesn't go beyond fucking wiki articles, sad. I'm also not a wagecuck who goes to uni to get a job, I don't give a fuck about who is replacing what
>>13882063
Cat will protect me

[Anonymous No.13882200]

>>13880666
Do you want to actually point out where spengler is wrong? It's not even some kind of secret that the conflict of the orders mirrors the rise of the bourgeoisie in medieval Europe, or Egypt's middle kingdom, or at the same time point in any other civilization he cites. "Modernity" or the transition from culture to civilization and the age of imperialism is also easy to identify in every culture. There's even a book called Spengler's Future that does a close comparison of exact events in the lifecycles of the West, China, Rome, and Islam, written in 1993 or something so it's quite up to date. You wrote a lot of shit but you are still unable to say how or where spengler is wrong.

[Anonymous No.13882403]

>>13882115
so you can't prove anything amerishart? typical

[Anonymous No.13882495]

>>13881932
>what kind of retarded schoolmarm reads books about art?
Jesus, so these are the people who read Spengler

[Anonymous No.13882526]

>>13882495
litcels may be worse than STEMcels

[Anonymous No.13882570]

>>13882200
Not that other anon but Wyndham Lewis write some 40 pages of Spengler critique (pointed at a broader critique of "time philosophies) in his 1927 book "Time and Western Man"
As an artist he talks a lot about art history, but also criticizes more basic facets like the problem the Renaissance presents to the cyclical view, the duplicitousness of claiming that Magian souls (Spinoza) exist within the Faustian world, and the proliferation of communications tech rendering the total death/fresh birth unreliable. He also shows that Spengler wasn't really the novelty that people today take him for -- his philosophy was wildly popular and the tradition was very in-vogue.
Jose Ortega y Gasset is another (less systematic) critic of Spengler. If you look at a few titles of his you get a pretty comprehensive criticism, but like Lewis it's just to be replaced by a less fatalistic variant of secular dialectics.

[Anonymous No.13882825]

>>13871619
The seethe of the poster who rails against truth

[Anonymous No.13882834]

>>13872418
So what are your critiques of it? Where is he specifically wrong?

[Anonymous No.13882838]

>>13872693
>I saw the new meme of the summer and wanted to leave my own pointless opinion with the other pointless opinions.
The backpedaling commences.

[Anonymous No.13882857]

>>13870074
>Math is a science of the most rigorous kind, like logic but more comprehensive and very much fuller; it is a true art, along with sculpture and music, as needing the guidance of inspiration and as developing under great conventions of form, it is, lastly, a metaphysic of the highest rank, as Plato and above all Leibniz show us. Every philosophy has hitherto grown up in conjunction with a mathematic belonging to it Number is the symbol of causal necessity Like the conception of God, it contains the ultimate meaning of the world-as-nature.
Fucking STEMfag. Dropped

[Anonymous No.13882866]

>>13871768
>every single prediction
kek what a meme

[Anonymous No.13882874]

You know, I'd actually like a good critique of Spengler, because it would get me onto new ground, but as I see it he's just right and the only thing that might fuck with his model is if technology changes the world, and/or people, enough to make it redundant.
But I think he even wrote about that, so it's technically part of his model.
There are still many interesting questions based on or involving Spengler's findings.

[Anonymous No.13882926]

>>13876190
>list of literal whos seething

[Anonymous No.13882929]

>>13880666
t. Didn't present a single example of Spengy being wrong. (Which, as a Spengler fan I'd actually like to know about.)

[Anonymous No.13882938]

>>13870239
>>13870074
>good
>by a beta

lol it is true that men have zero standard

[Anonymous No.13883007]

>>13882874
A critique of the critique of history? This would perhaps be the only thing more boring than Spengler.

[Anonymous No.13883012]

>>13880642
What's his plan?

[Anonymous No.13883020]

>>13874770

[Anonymous No.13883161]

>>13883007
Well a better version of history then.