/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22977295]

Spengler differentiates between country, village, town and city. I understand these four correspond with the four stages (or seasons) of civilization, is the correct? Can someone explain what he exactly means by each and why he ultimately favors the town?

”It is a conclusive fact—yet one hitherto never appreciated—that all great Cultures are town-Cultures.”

[Anonymous No.22977701]

>>22977295
Spengler distinguishes between Culture and Civilization. Both have their early, middle, and late stages.

Culture is when a race begins to form its world-feeling and is spurred into a spontaneous way of life where they act according to their collective higher-spiritual instinct. Its when all great art and thought happens.

Civilization is when a people loses its spiritual fire and their essential spiritual essence erodes away as their basic feeling for life becomes abstracted away/intellectualized. Civilizations are urban and megalapolitan, classified by cynicism and discontent. Socialism, Stoicism, and Buddhism were the civilization-philosophies of the Faustian, Classical, and Indian races respectively. Civilization is the end-stage of a race and as they run on embers basically.

A race is essentially a living organism that is born, grows into its prime, and then withers away into old age before dying. Culture is its prime, and civilization its weak old age.

That’s the gist of Spenglerian thought. The designations you mentioned are probably just delimiters between the different sub-stages of Culture/Civilization. I don’t remember Spengler hyper-fixating on them except for Cities which are the essence of Civilization.

[Anonymous No.22977716]

How d'you even say town in German?

[Anonymous No.22977745]

>>22977295
Country, village, town, and city are just analogs for Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter or perhaps, poetry, theology, philosophy, and prose. So yes, you are correct. They specifically mean urban-spiritual development.
I think there are two possible models he is using, the first one is: the four seasons model. Or perhaps:
>Country-Merovingian period
>Village-Spring
>Town-Summer
>City-Autmn/Winter.
By what he means exactly by the terms I think is simple. When a civilization is very young, it is at its core rural, The fact that it has cities nonwithstanding, those cities have to develop. When it matures a little, its cities gain some clout and start becoming center of the arts and crafts, they are villages. The Town is a more refined and cultured version of the village, older and bigger, this is the beginning of the end. By the end, the cities are bloated masses of people, culture, and politics. Tjhey've goven all they could give and and produce nothing but the same. The essence of winter is ready made standard template art&architetcure. Evewrything is crystalized into clear normas and nothing changes anymore. History ceases, in a way. Supplanted by a series of happenings that lead nowhere and result in nothing.

[Anonymous No.22977767]

>>22977701
Literally no one ever bothers to read his book.

Culture is inwardly focused, the high culture emerges through inner forms. Religious achievements, theological and philosophical insights, artwork, plays. The mindset to produce these things is driven by a living spiritual ideal which is largely unconscious.

Civilization is externally focused, where the inner life of the civilization has been exhausted and the achievements of the inward time express themselves through practical matters, warfare, politics, engineering, practical sciences derived from worldly problems etc.

The city is a persistent discussion point as the heart of the world soul. Spengler sees the peasant, i.e. land bound farmers, as providing an endless stream of men for the cities to consume. As the Civilization progresses, the rural areas and farmlands are largely stripped of the small farmers and peasants as they are forced to move into cities for economic reasons, leaving behind these latifundi of mass production.

The relationship of the village, town and city is essentially focused on the concentration of historic focus in fewer and fewer cities as time goes on. For the classical era, there were dozens of vital cities which require focus to understand the circumstances. In Alexander's time, the various cities of Ancient Greece matter less and the powers of Carthage, The Romans, Syracuse, the Delian League, the various Diadochi etc are the primary focus of history. By the Late Roman Republic, especially after Zama, the only relevant political power is Rome and the only important cities are the world cities of Rome, Alexandra and Athens.

[Anonymous No.22977799]

>>22977295
There's a long tradition of white men writing books so they can masturbate to the profundity of their own thoughts. It's the white man's version of playing basketball.
Usually there's one or two actually insightful ideas packed in between some guy sucking himself off.
>town cultures. What did this mean?

Absolutely nothing, it's an arbitrary, non empirical, reductive concept Spengler made up for his book and then further extrapolated

Means literally nothing

[Anonymous No.22977812]

>>22977799
how is it non empirical?

[Anonymous No.22977813]

>>22977701
Race is spiritual in Spengler, not biological btw

[Anonymous No.22977817]

>>22977813
This isn't true, he argues that race is comparable to the soil in which a culture grows. The culture can not grow in an alien soil (race of people).

[Anonymous No.22977820]

>>22977812
Because you can't quantify "town" across cultures or even from town to town
And even if you may be able to, which i doubt
Spangler doesn't so it's moot

[Anonymous No.22977829]

>>22977820
You are upset that Spengler didn't correctly count how many towns there are in ancient Rome?

[Anonymous No.22977836]

Interesting.

[Anonymous No.22977837]

>>22977829
I'm not upset about anything. I'm just telling you the reason you can't find exactly what he means by each is because he's arguing using an abstract undefined concept that doesn't translate to reality
Its like if i said "history can be divided between the nobles and the degenerates," then categorized a bunch of stuff, and you said hmmm what does he mean by this??? Nothing, it's arbitrary subjective abstract projection

[Anonymous No.22977844]

>>22977836
Nice try zogdog.
His books weren't banned at all, Himmler and Goebbels were both fans. He explicitly talks during Volume 2 about the decline in the disappearance of the original racial stock in the cities, with alien peoples wearing the forms but lacking the soul of the original people.

Post source for your propaganda.

[Anonymous No.22977846]

>>22977767
>Literally no one ever bothers to read his book.
I’ve only read vol 1 so I might be missing something. Will start vol 2 next month which seems to be where the real meat is.

>the achievements of the inward time express themselves through practical matters, warfare, politics, engineering, practical sciences derived from worldly problems etc.
Yes but its qualitatively different and “soulless” (his word). Civilization runs on the fumes and instincts of a race but the truly spirited vigor that once animated it is gone for good. Its a time for death, like old age.

>The city is a persistent discussion point as the heart of the world soul
The city is where the world-feeling of a race goes to die. The megalapolitan structure of cities force them into acts of “work” rather than acts of “deed.” Its a place of inertia and decay. Spengler hates Paul because he took the Gospel to the great big city of Rome where its essence would be lost.

[Anonymous No.22977862]

What would Spengler think about a city-dweller like myself, chasing the embers of the past and escaping the ever increasing degeneracy of the city, going back to a more rural life? Is this LARP and wishful thinking?

[Anonymous No.22978150]

>>22977799
stemfag autist filtered
captcha: G4YWN

[Anonymous No.22978167]

>>22978150
You mad at the truth?

[Anonymous No.22978414]

>>22977836
>Only blood can displace money
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.22978653]

>>22977862
Yes. Your desire to “turn back” is in itself an abstract rationalization of life. You aren’t truly living a real, honest, sincere, soulful life. Your just conjuring up scenarios that you’ll never experience in their full capacity even if, hypothetically, everything you wished for came true, just like a dog or a cat doesn’t have the capacity to enjoy the finer things in life just because it lives in a mansion.

[Anonymous No.22979216]

>>22977295
>Hard times create great men (country)
>Great men create good times (village)
>good times create weak men (town)
>Weak men create hard times (city)

Town culture is the last step before hard times.

[Anonymous No.22979426]

>>22979216
But it seems like Spengler is suggesting that town = good times? Also, what is the real significant difference between a country, village and town? I know what a city is, but those other three are hard to conflate and they sometimes even overlap. For instance, Spengler says that it is inaccurate to think the only difference between a village an a town is in terms of population size, the thinks the town is imbued with a Soul that the village lacks.

”It goes without saying that what distinguishes a town from a village is not size, but the presence of a soul.”

[Anonymous No.22979431]

>>22978653
Is this your opinion or Spenglers?

[Anonymous No.22980747]

>>22979431
Spengler’s opinion is that you can’t fight against the tide of the times and you can’t meaningfully cultivate the inner spiritual nourishment that people from the old epochs were born with by default. You were born with a tired and aged soul. He mentions that only those born in the springtime of culture can be truly young.

You can still choose to NEET it out until you die since that’s the most bearable way to live nowadays, that’s essentially what Spengler did.

[Anonymous No.22981472]

What would he thinks of Nick Land and AI trying to escape civilization decline?

[Anonymous No.22981474]

>>22978414
Merchants rule the empire under oligarchy in a facade of democracy. One man, Ceaser uses his will power to subjugate the money under force and blood.

[Anonymous No.22981481]

>>22981474
Wasn't that already tried without success by Chudler?

[Anonymous No.22981797]

Nice reads Spenglerboys

[Anonymous No.22981836]

>>22977295
I like to think that
>>22981472
He'd probably dismiss them as Faustian cope. A vain attempt to beat decline worthy of the Caesars.
>>22979426
Oh, I think I understand it now. The town represents the culture in it's beginning and maturity stages. The town is small, but vital and full of creative energy, the city is huge but exhausted, the village is latent and full of potential. While the country is completely dormant, waiting to be roused by a race of men. I'd go as far as to say that even when surface-level urbanization is present, the spirit of the land does not change. The great cities of Africa are still a smattering of villages and countryside in spirit.
Together, they might represent the 4 "meta" stages of Spenglerian world feeling, Barbarian people without history, a Merovingian period of formation, the Culture stage, and finally the civilization stage.
>>22981481
Before there was Sulla, there was Marius, and before him, there were the Gracchi. It's coming, it just takes time.

[Anonymous No.22981856]

>>22977799
This.

Anybody can make up an analogy and keep stretching it and stretching it. Its literally harry potter level philosophy.

[Anonymous No.22981861]

>>22977817
An analogy you say? wow so biological, thats totally the way empirical biologists argue and not spiritualists

[Anonymous No.22981869]

>>22977846
>Civilization runs on the fumes and instincts of a race but the truly spirited vigor that once animated it is gone for good.

lol imagine unironically believing this

"world feeling" ahahahhahahahahhahahahhaha holy shit I think feminists ought to start reading this drivel

[Anonymous No.22981874]

>>22978150
ahahaha imagine being mad at science because it doesnt confirm your views on race. Sound a bit like a certain group who is mad at science because of gender? Idpol is retarded in every era and its proponents will never do more than project the insecurities they have over their own allegedly very very important identity

[Anonymous No.22981879]

>>22977295
Spengler suffers the same as Nietzsche on this board; both have some interesting ideas and the spirit of what they’re saying is relevant but autists and fanboys hang onto every word and concept and treat them as infallible

[Anonymous No.22981880]

>>22978653
yes. and your critique is in itself of course not an abstract rationalization himself. Imagine thinking you have the authority to tell someone when their being real, honest, sincere and soulful because they want to move from the city to a town ahahahhahahahhahhahaha

[Anonymous No.22981889]

>>22977295
Holy shit, all this talk about soul and feelings. Spenglerites should do what the other simps of the world do and go arrange a crystal field in their living room, work on their energy and vibrations a bit more.

[Anonymous No.22981919]

>>22977799
Numbers are a "non-empirical" concept. They're abstractions achieved by analogy, extracting invisible, untouchable, unmeasurable "two-ness", say, from "twice as many" oranges being analogous to twice as many apples in this feature of quantity.
While there might be a lot to criticize about Spengler, it's not up to an utter retard like you who isn't fit to clean his shoes, intellectually.

[Anonymous No.22981979]

>>22981919
lol go read the philosophical investigations. Numbers do indeed work in the empirical world. You are reducing numbers to being just qualities, and pretending that their salient features are when we use them as analogy, as abstract, and as unmeasurable... Last time I checked we can do math with them and such math is inseparable from empirically observable proportions.

Why would we use twoness to describe both two apples and two oranges, if the proportions between such objects was not equal? If we did not do that then we would basically be arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

You literally just claimed that numbers are unmeasurable... This while they are the most precise measure we have...

[Anonymous No.22981990]

>>22981979
nta but read kant

[Anonymous No.22982009]

>>22981979
Yes, abstractions reached by analogy can and do indeed work in the "empirical" world, that is the world we choose to apply them to after we have developed them by reasoning. That's what measuring is, an abstract activity of comparison. "Proportions" itself is just as abstract an idea as numbers. The fact that it formed through feedback with observations of the real world just supports the point that reasoning by analogy is a valid procedure, and that it's meaningless to criticize Spengler for that alone.

[Anonymous No.22982054]

>>22982009
When thoughts are 'formed through feedback with observations of the real world' they are empirical, when they are not then they are not empirical. Good reasoning and good concepts reflect real facts. Spenglers concept of different sized settlements and their souls as reflective of a certain civilizational progress is detached from empirical facts. Just like theories of the soul, theories of angels and demons, phlogiston, organon, or a harry potter book. Even liberals speak more seriously on social facts...

"Thoughts without contents are empty" i.e. the fallacy of misplaced concreteness or reification if you'd like

[Anonymous No.22982061]

>>22982009
Some abstractions do, others do not.

[Anonymous No.22982066]

>>22982054
oops, I meant orgone of course

[Anonymous No.22982070]

>>22982009
Some feedback is systematic, done by measure, using clear terms, without arbitrary excess, with limited bias and interpretative intervention.

Other empirical feedback is at the level of 'this made me feel bad', I think Spengler is of the latter quality rather than the former

[Anonymous No.22982752]

>>22977701
these descriptions feel like words for the things they are not

[Anonymous No.22982791]

It’s not really essential to the book. These are just labels that refer to how people live at each stage of a civilization’s life. The country is the cultural-civilization root from which everything proceeds. The village is basically agricultural and religious. It’s the earliest sort of living arrangement in the culture phase that has just come out of pre-cultural barbarism. The town is the dominant living arrangement at the high point of the culture. It has art and artisans, literature, and ideas. Commerce is starting flourish and architecture starts to come into its own. The town gives way to the city at the transition from culture. The city is the town massified, commercialized, increasingly so in both cases, and becomes concerned with more and more practical pursuits. It’s less and less about religion and more about law. It’s less and less about art and more about technology. The civilization phase is dominated by the cities. All thinking that matters is fundamentally city thinking, all action that matters is city action, and all people that matter are fundamentally city people (even when they don’t technically live or grow up inside of the city). In a modern American context, this looks like suburbs, exurbs, or even people living in small towns but thinking and acting more or less how a highly urban city person would. Then the city peaks, and it unwinds. The people leave the cities and go backwards into towns, villages, and countryside as the civilization reaches its terminal stage. It becomes religious again, but it’s a more syncretic and shallow sort of religious and all of the authentic artistic and cultural vitality is gone forever. There are still true believers and art is still made, but the special ineffable spark that made the culture itself is gone.

[Anonymous No.22982804]

>>22981889
Spengler was right to focus on the spirit, as that not only jives with what a Westerner necessarily would do even if not articulated in those terms if he was right, but also correctly understands that these are at bottom unconscious and ineffable processes. The rise of a culture out of a countryside, imbued with its own religious conception of the world and it’s contributions as it hardens into civilization is fundamentally a process that can’t be accounted for in anything other than matter of fact terms. There is no cause and effect. You could describe the cause and effect regarding the biological specifics for how a plant reaches maturity, but why that happens, what kicks it off, why it develops the way it does, what orders the colors and patterns, all of these things are fundamentally mysterious and can only be discussed in mystical terms. He is basically resigning himself to the fact that science can’t account for these things. The language of religion is all that’s left.

[Anonymous No.22982888]

>>22982054
>Spenglers concept of different sized settlements and their souls as reflective of a certain civilizational progress is detached from empirical facts
No, historical sources are empirical facts. You might hold history and philosophizing on general laws of history in lower regard than the precise predictive deductions one can make for, say, physics, but it just happens to be a field not amenable to the experimental method. The "experiments" that history has run are not controlled, not replicable and subject to an overwhelming amount of factors. One can still look at certain patterns and try to distill generalities. That is, after all, what is done with other complex systems, even where precise prediction is provably impossible.

>>22982070
Same here, arbitrarily demanding the standards of physics for history let alone philosophy of history, will ofc always make you right because no writer could possibly conform to those. Your other charges are of an aesthetic nature. If you need everything to be written in the execrable academic lingo of today, just to not have to decode the "arbitrary excesses" of personal style, it's a you problem.

[Anonymous No.22982908]

>>22977836
Chuds btfo

[Anonymous No.22982953]

>>22982804
He doesnt resign himself at all, he actually thinks that he has the answer to such issues! Hes like woa dude I know ineffable things that you scientists can never know. I cant tell you about it, nor why, cause its spiritual and ineffable, but I do know these things well enough to make such a claim over the domain of science. Not sure why though but yea

[Anonymous No.22982996]

>>22982953
It is a resignation, a resignation from what he considers the necessarily theoretical language of world-as-nature (science). For an aspect of reality which is fundamentally mystical and specifically non-scientific, the only language we have at our disposal is religious language. It’s one thing to say seeds burst into plants and plants sprout up and flower because God made it that way, but it’s another thing entirely to say that there is some mystical spiritual something motive in the essence of a plant which drives this process. That is neither scientific nor religious, but it’s conveyed in religious terms. Spengler thinks the how and why of these things is mysterious. We can’t know them. We can only observe the facts, that the plant does indeed grow.

[Anonymous No.22983002]

>>22982888
Lol epistemology is not just the standards of physics. If you really think its physically reductionist to claim that history should respond to facts with minimal intervention of interpretation, then you have a lot of other domains of knowledge you still need to come to grips with. That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. When history is written by the victor, you seem ready to accept his word for it. Yes there is a problem with historicism, but dismissing the rest of the scientific method because of it is something only a charlatan can get away with. There are also people who take knowledge seriously. Yes we lack predictive capacity in terms of general historic trends, though this is a justification for skepticism not blind faith or speculation.

Besides all this, the physical reductionist method has done amazing things in historiography, it has moved it from the domain of gossip to one of study.

Lingo is annoying I agree, but if people dont clearly state what they mean then whats the point in even communicating your thoughts to begin with. I never advocated for lingo, I advocated for clarity!

[Anonymous No.22983003]

>>22978414
That the sword and the law overcome the stranglehold of money. Seems pretty self-explanatory.

[Anonymous No.22983014]

>>22977862
He would say that you’re more or less appropriate for you time, but the idea that you could go back in any true sense is delusion. You can leave the city, and probably, you will leave the city, but you can’t help be modern even if you’re modern exactly in your desperation to escape.

To be clear, you don’t even have to live in a city to be a city person for Spengler. It’s something that is a consequence of the circumstances of your birth. Even people who spend their whole lives on a farm are not exactly not urban. Even less so in Western civilization because of its unique traits.

[Anonymous No.22983032]

>>22982996
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Otherwise you are no more than a bullshit artist.

I agree that science has not solved all and doesnt describe everything perfectly, but knowledge has its method to produce it, this method also isnt perfect but it brought us a whole lot more knowledge beyond doubt then any cloistered pedophiles in the middle ages did with their studies of angels.

Honestly if you are so spiritually captivated by the mysteries of the universe then why dont you actually try to explain, to predict their behaviour, to study the facts until doubt is reasonably eliminated?

This whole, 'we dont know some things thus god, but not actually more "something" sort of like god', this is gonna send us right back to the middle ages.

[Anonymous No.22983038]

>>22982996
1. we cant know some things
2. spengler knows enough about these things to speak on them.

choose one

[Anonymous No.22983092]

>>22982070
I'm not at all familiar with the details of Spengler's opinions but here's the way in which he seems usefully descriptive and not at all bullshitty to me:
A cultural environment is a real state of affairs and we can gather some sort of data about it and form more or less solid judgments about what it consists of, how it affects people's subjective experience, and how it affects the creation of cultural artifacts. Spengler recognizes this and tries to give a description of different cultural environments and their effects. Of course when it comes to subjective experience there's a lot of variation and we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush, but everything we see suggests there's *some* significant relationship, even if, as we see in this thread, it can be bimodal.

[Anonymous No.22983096]

>>22983032
Nietzsche argues well on this. Replace Kant with Spengler, 'categories' and 'synthetic a priori' with 'history' or 'civilization', and 'faculty' with 'mystery'.

Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something—at all events "new faculties"—of which to be still prouder!—But let us reflect for a moment—it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself—and what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"—but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man—for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves—all seeking for "faculties." And what did they not find—in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough, however—the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"—he had said, or at least meant to say. But, is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere,
...
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy.

[Anonymous No.22983154]

>>22983092
Yes everybody uses heuristics, but deduction and induction deliver results that are less doubtable.

Meta narratives take a lot of evidence to claim, in fact a whole lot more than the simple everyday practicalities where we apply heuristics.

I do not need to know how a light switch works to use it, I also do not need to prove where the wires are to understand that my light switch is connected to my light.

I dont need to know how history works to take part in it, nor the truth for another to believe me. But when somebody makes a claim that overarches the development of human civilization, that claims a whole region is in decline because they are no longer authentic, or have lost some essence, well then I would prefer to see the proof before accepting it. might as well go read whig history, the bible or israeli historiography otherwise.

[Anonymous No.22983158]

>>22983154
in other words, we cannot induce from theory!

[Anonymous No.22983299]

>>22977799
dumb nigger

[Anonymous No.22983464]

>>22983154
Sure but do you actually think the majority of historical evidence doesn't support his thesis? It seems like a pretty clear pattern that was recognized before him and he just tried to present a more in-depth treatment of the concept. I suppose what you're saying is "certain specifics are different this time around and this may result in different outcomes", and you may be right, since as you say the theory isn't precise enough to preclude that possibility, and it's painfully clear that things *are* very different this time around, quite possibly for the worse. But I don't think it's wrong to start with a less precise model and work from there to sharpen it, as long as you don't claim to be stating the incontrovertible truth. You and Wittgenstein may feel that it's better not to speak about these things at all but surely you can see why people might want to and why it might have its uses, at least in domains that touch on the real world.
Anyway I haven't actually read the book so perhaps he does lay claim to absolute certainty, in which case it would of course be incorrect and in bad taste, but you have to take these Germans with a grain of salt, they're drama queens. I value his ideas simply because they gave me a way of seeing the world and history that makes a lot of things make a lot more sense, compared to the default individualist free-will model the average person today uses without being aware of it - and also because they were my first real introduction to the appreciation of culture as an aesthetic whole, which is one of the things I've come to prize most in the world.

[Anonymous No.22983558]

>>22983032
Bullshit platitude. A thing can be described via negative. To say there is something but it is not this thing here are the facts of its work in the world is perfectly reasonable. You won’t accept that because it’s precisely the domain of religion and all atheists do exactly that, refuse to engage with the language. I guess you’re an atheist or something and that’s why it triggered you.

[Anonymous No.22983626]

>>22983002
>If you really think its physically reductionist to claim that history should respond to facts with minimal intervention of interpretation, then you have a lot of other domains of knowledge you still need to come to grips with
But Spenglers very project is an interpretation of history, not an investigation of a concrete question about "what happened" in this or that period, which is a totally different genre, perfectly approachable via reductionist/positivist/empirical or whatever method.
>That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
That's how critics dismissed Newton's idea of gravitation acting as some ghostly invisible force, and not by mechanic connection as was the common sense at the time. Or even the Copernican heliocentric model, which was at first worse for prediction than the fine-tuned epicycle model. My point is that theoretical conceptions are always first born on a speculative hunch, and not because a lot of data was amassed and led to an inevitable conclusion.
Spengler sure speculates a lot, but he does present a model of civilizational cycles that might or might not have value, I guess one can only wait and see since we can't run the experiments. But to dismiss it on the grounds that his categories like "soul" don't refer to something precisely measurable is intellectually lazy.
>When history is written by the victor, you seem ready to accept his word for it
That's an old cliché, history is written by historians and they argue quite fiercly about it. Just goes to show that simply a positivist stance is not enough to establish the perfect interpretations of history, everyone who attempts it goes out on a limb and inevitably speculates (when it comes to meaning and patterns, not the actual events), otherwise historians would be in full agreement.

[Anonymous No.22983674]

>>22977295
Did Spengler know how to party?

[Anonymous No.22983805]

>>22983626
Spengler tried to predict! it is not just interpretation

Gravity is one very specific example where we manage to describe it more and more precise through time, but yes the mystery of gravity is central to physics' enterprise. I just think its important that this is seen as opportunity and not limitation (not a warrant to start bullshitting a la rupert sheldrake, but the reason to continue serious research much like gerard 't hooft).

Do you more trust a historian who is paid one way, biased another, or the one who deals more exclusively with facts?

Speculation is an part of science sure, in fact it is part of most reasonable approaches to understanding. Though it is not the end all! There is no perfect interpretation of history currently but that does not mean there is no such thing as truth or falsity in it. When two interpretations contradict, neither can be true at the same time. Either that or you do not believe in truth.

[Anonymous No.22983846]

>>22983558
'the facts of its work' are precisely the description of an object and its relation to other objects, aka a positive description, what the thing does. You cannot properly explain what a goose is by only studying trees, mice or how to become a hairdresser, geese are unrelated to these things. Even if that list of studies in the negative becomes longer and longer, the oh so crazy mystery of the goose will never be lifted, you have only described what it is not. To describe what something is does indeed take positive content to do so.

Although I might have misunderstood you due to some poor grammar

[Anonymous No.22983860]

>>22983558
lol keep crying that people dont accept your made up terms.

Besides I actually enjoy engaging in them quite a bit, I just dont accept their claims as true. Dont be so weak, just because somebody disagrees that does not mean they do not take you seriously!

Besides doesn't Spengler argue for a certain intellectual disengagement himself?

[Anonymous No.22983887]

>>22983805
>Spengler tried to predict! it is not just interpretation
He was interpreting history in such a way as to construct a model for the future. (Model that isn't been strayed very much from at this moment, btw.) This model was based off repeating patterns across various cultures. Mind you, Spengler's information wasn't perfect much like how ours isn't perfect.
Spenglerautism has also progressed over time. It's just that we don't inhabit universities that often anymore.
>the one who deals more exclusively with facts?
You cannot construct a model of human history and culture going off coin finds and tombs.
Man isn't a physical element.
Regardless, history going off of parts is suprirsingly rare the father you go. Before the advent of writing you are essentially blindly looking at tree rings and piecing pots together.

[Anonymous No.22983901]

>>22983464
corroboration is not falsification! In fact a justification stands loose from how such a fact is discovered. Sorry to bore you with anglo epistemology but problems like the black swan indicate that we must look for a lack of falsifying facts to confirm a theory, not the large amount of evidence in favor of something.

I really am sorry to do this, I hate popper, but this point I cannot disagree with.

Hahaha I cannot disagree with the drama queen part, but the scientific method is a beautiful aesthetic too! Perhaps the earlier german idealists were on to something there. It is not only beautiful, it is sublime, the obliteration of individual feelings and its sublimation under the world in its purest form, the world as no one with reason ought to deny. Not as individuals but as men amongst other men, ones who stand in a world that we can understand as we understand ourselves and each other.

[Anonymous No.22983909]

>>22983464
A made up world is never as sublime as the real thing!

[Anonymous No.22983941]

>>22983887
Im pretty sure man exists physically, that you contradict this should be problematic to most. Maybe not to your priest but he has a prior commitment to undrape your undergarments.

[Anonymous No.22983955]

>>22983887
Im pretty sure that studying the remains of humans (including their bodily remnants, the undeniable physical part to a human) has told us more about our prior history than historicists have been able to explain. (and this is coming from somebody who believes in quite a few historicist claims). Im sorry but what Hegel, Marx, and Spengler have in common is that their predictions were often wrong, and when they weren't then they were often imprecise.

[Anonymous No.22984004]

Capitalism is a fundamental force of the material Universe, the demiurge is supposed to be kept in check by the spiritual balance of positive spirituality and never let people get so soulless that they fully embrace the demiurge and do capitalism at the expense of God and spirituality.

Modern politics is just the human material expression of our limited ability to think our way out of problems when we've embraced the demiurge over God- capital transfers using electronic signals but no inspiration or spiritual energies uplifted in the process.

You guys are all stuck discussing old, boring shit about these black-and-white dudes who couldn't party. They never drove fast cars, never fucked hot chicks, and never lived in cool places.

>>22979216
>Town culture is the last step before hard times.
Well, what is the latin root of politics?

If politics are just the material expressions of human thought manifested by the need to do what the demiurge commands(capitalism), so what does that make a city? A city is a microchip of human consciousness. The city itself becomes a supercomputer of collaborative effort. Higher beings somehow feed off this computation in some way, there is some underlying universal force that created human beings to do capitalism and create all of the complex systems, but once God is taken out of the balance of these two forces; the demiurge and spiritualism, then the demiurge takes over and you have rapidly advancing shit like the AI, all of the manufactured crises, everything is serving to advance the consolidation of capital and power, with the end goal being these super computer networks controlled by an elite few, ruling over the entire planet of an atheist slave class. Once the AI fully takes over, it will automate all processes to fulfill its need for fuel until the entire planet is consumed and it will leave for another. All of human existence is leading up to us building our replacements.

Ah well, at least shitposting on /lit/ can be fun!

[Anonymous No.22984116]

>>22984004
Do you ever confuse yourself with such poor grammar and lack of semantic concern? Or is it your confusion which produces such poor form?

If there was an intelligent demiurge he would never have formed such an aesthetically childish and uninformed man as yourself. I have run into large language models and schizophrenics who speak more cogent than you.

[Anonymous No.22984230]

>>22984004
You mean the greek root of the word

[Anonymous No.22984243]

>>22984116
I put too many points into charisma and clapped many hot women's cheeks, not enough points into int but a lot into wis

[Anonymous No.22984327]

>>22984243
something tells me you need to work on a stable emotional relationship with the women in your life rather than posting on 4chan

[Anonymous No.22984366]

>>22983901
You're talking past me, none of this is relevant to what I said because I never claimed that anything was "confirmed".

>>22983909
Yeah but we don't have access to the real thing, only half-random bits and pieces of it.

[Anonymous No.22984380]

>>22984327

[Anonymous No.22984388]

>>22984366
Its relevant to truth in history though, a point that is irrelevant to spengler a bit too often

[Anonymous No.22984426]

>>22984380
Granted I dont know many so I can't make a statistical claim, two incels I know in real life obsess over finding the right one quite unironically. They refuse to adapt themselves in any sense to the people around them because people should accept them for who they are (think along the lines of not taking showers, insisting upon their own obsessions being a constant focal point of conversations, justifying their own emotional selfishness, projecting and protecting their own insecurities rather than confronting them head on). Yet they still think there is some kind of right one for them out there, not getting that there's a plethora of foul odored self-interested men out there that the large majority of women will never in their life even wish to speak to. But no, their mom told them that theres a right one out there, someone who will respect them for who they are. Its not surprising these people are involuntarily sexless.

There's also men who fall head over heels for a bit of poon, changing themselves to something their not. Of course that's repulsive to most, but I notice they get laid a just a little bit more often than the find-the-right-one kind.

Then again I know people who do not adapt themselves and find women all over the place, probably because they are not aesthetically or intellectually hideous. Still I see very angry relationships when people dont adapt to each other.

[Anonymous No.22984446]

>>22984388
I'm not sure that making 10 true statements and 3 false ones (numbers made up for the sake of argument) is really all that much less "true" than making 3 true statements and 0 false ones.

[Anonymous No.22984522]

>>22984446
10 truths are more truths then 3 truths yes. 3 falsities are not. It depends on how we interpret this thought experiment.

but if we consider these as mutually exclusive sets, i.e. 10 truths and 3 falsities as one set, and 3 truths and 0 falsities as another, well then perhaps the latter is still better, as it does not actually deceive you on any points. Sure the world becomes smaller, but the usefulness of the truth is that it does not deceive, that it clears falsities out the way. Sure phlogiston could explain a lot as a theory, but our current theory is more accurate! Even if some things are now unexplainable, at least we can be confident in the truth.

Its an interesting way of putting it though, sometimes casting a wider net helps, even if you end up with a bit of bullshit. But in terms of the truth, only the truth is true and a falsity isnt.

[Anonymous No.22984772]

>>22984426
>Still I see very angry relationships when people dont adapt to each other.
Dating just has very rigid expectations of men still but women have complete freedom for any lifestyle they want. I would be there is more economic activity when a man and a woman are divorced with kids.

[Anonymous No.22984940]

>>22983096
Aristotle made the categories first not kant. The entire analytic method that kant uses including logic, was developed by aristotle.

[Anonymous No.22986003]

>>22984772
lol stop playing the victim

[Anonymous No.22986009]

>>22983860
The only claims being made are that an event did in fact occur, which no reasonable person would deny. To point out similarities is not even a claim. It’s merely observance. So you actually don’t think they’re not true. You’re just looking for a debate.

[Anonymous No.22986090]

>>22981869
>>22981874
>>22981880
>>22981889
way too obvious, pay docked

[Anonymous No.22986521]

>>22984772
Ah yes, the fish. Right above the pig in the food chain.

[Anonymous No.22986553]

>>22977799
Damn even when they try to think the lesser races fall desperately short to the genius of the divine white man. It can't comprehend more complex ideas so it automatically assumes white authors are idiots that can't express their ideals coherently. It's almost comical in a certain way.

[Anonymous No.22986820]

>>22986553
you sound rlly smart tho

[Anonymous No.22986829]

>>22984940
I think Nietzsche's argument agrees with this sentiment, makes it all the more absurd that somebody would hail Kant's thought as a discovery

[Anonymous No.22986918]

>>22986553
Middle class white guys pretending their blonde hair(or blue eyes, with skin, whatecer) makes them gods to cope with their complete inability to control anything is fascinating

[Anonymous No.22986975]

>>22986820
>>22986918
Brownoid shudra seething

[Anonymous No.22987227]

>>22986975

inability to get poony in this zeitgeist :'(

oh no im a man respect my anger hormones, have sex with me now, i deserve it im really smarter and richer than blacks, no one respects real men these days. Im not of inferior stock, im germanic, these women have just been brainwashed thats why they dont like me and like blacks instead. where are the real men like don draper, real men command respect, women wont understand

[Anonymous No.22987237]

>>22986975
white virgin lurking

[Anonymous No.22987295]

>>22986553
>>22986975
cope more

[Anonymous No.22987361]

>>22984522
Correct me if I'm wrong but was that not directly observed to be wrong (to the extent you can directly observe the lack of something) and replaced by the understanding of molecular structure and chemical reactions, which explains a lot more than just fire?
Anyway I'm not trying to defend whatever terminology he uses. I'm just saying that I think the idea of cultures as relatively distinct entities which have their own particular properties to some degree, and which go through various stages of development that affect things like the nature of their artistic products, is one that I find compelling and pretty accurate in my own experience. I'm not saying there couldn't somehow arise some piece of evidence that would take down the whole idea but in the absence of that I think it's perfectly serviceable as a tool for thinking about history.

[Anonymous No.22987416]

>>22987361
Is that not quite tautological? who argues that there is no cultural distinctions? even benedict anderson, or others who view many parts of culture as invented or constructed, would agree with spengler there. And yes there are stages in every culture, and these effect art, sure. I dont think anybody would for example argue that there isnt a distinction between the enlightenment, romanticism, modernism or something of the sort. The point is that spengler takes a top down view on these issues, just about insistent that cultures are like organisms. Here many would disagree with him, many cultures have nothing like a parabolic trajectory, just as the linear history of the Whigs found many contradictions, that spengler quite rightly points out when he talks about conventions in world history. We can keep stretching and stretching an analogy, but this won't make it reveal more truth than a proper falsifiable theory could.

[Anonymous No.22987430]

>>22987361
Phlogiston was wrong, but it helped us explain and predict some of the ways fire is until we had a better theory

[Anonymous No.22987432]

>>22987430
in other words, it wasnt 100% useless, but now it is