Just finished reading The Decline of the West. Very eye-opening and disturbingly prophetic work. Even if mainstream academia disputes the finer points of Spengler's theory, it should at least consider ditching the ancient-medieval-modern scheme that Spengler thoroughly refuted.
Unfortunately, it's been 96 years since Volume 2 was published, so the historical details feel a bit dated. What revisions or updates since then would you add to it?
I rarely see properly-formated disputes of his basis for his theory. His theory is really unfalsifiable and philosophical, but he bases it on a really interesting historical foundation that seems solid.
I find Spengler (and Decline of the West) to be at it's strongest when it's his writings on the past, not the future.
What do you think he was most correct/incorrect about?
Add Minoans, Andeans, and Mississippians as separate High Cultures/Civilizations.
Spengler thought that Minoan culture was a spinoff of the Egyptian since the Cycladic proto-culture wasn't discovered until after his death. It's more likely now that the Minoans were their own High Culture based off the Cycladians that just happened to trade a lot with the Egyptians. Dunno why Spengler didn't cover the Andean cultures, but the Inca were probably the Caesarist phase of preceding Andean cultures like the Nazca and the Moche (again, not excavated until Spengler died). The Aztecs were also probably full Caesarism (not just aspiring Caesars like Spengler described), since we since discovered that Mesoamerican culture started much earlier with the Olmecs and that the Maya went through every phase of Spengler's model after we deciphered their hieroglyphics. Explains how the younger Spanish Western culture thoroughly dominated Mesoamerica even in relatively intact communities like Tlaxcala.
The Mississippians were likely a High Culture as well, since they arose much later and independently of the Mesoamericans. They were probably at Spengler's Reformation stage (Cherokee folklore tells of how they massacred the Ani-kutani priestly Estate) before Old World diseases prematurely stunted their development. Their experience with complex state societies explains how the remnants managed to reorganize as the Five Civilized Tribes by adopting European technology and economy. In that perspective, the Cherokee adoption of a unique writing system invented by a local silversmith was not a mere fluke but the last defiant expression of a High-Culture robbed of its future before Andrew Jackson killed it off for good.
General early 20th century racist intellectuals thread?
>muh scientism
Lothrop is kind of underrated.
More like spergler, lol.
Well obviously in contemporary leftist dominated academia
He comes off as a boorish American pleb compared to the poetic Spengler but there's some pretty solid observations in his works. He's more substance than style.
The ancient medieval modern scheme is gaining track once more nowadays, especially in anthropology of history.
The problem is Spengler is stuck with his teleological model and denies any cross-cultural fertilization or hybrid cultures. Of course he couldn't have known about globalization because it was just starting in his own time.
He however managed to grasp something very elemental that modern historiography ignores because it is caught up in its post-enlightenment "facticity" that universalizes the historical past under the present, and that thing is that each culture arises and is founded under a central cosmological idea. In this way he was among those who most accurately defined the differences, between the great civilizations, since he saw them as organic objects, that move, change and die and are therefore not universal.
I would consider Russia to be under a third Petrinism right now. The post-Soviet oligarchs who grew fat off the American-style neoliberal privatizations in the 1990s and liberashkas like Garry Kasparov and Masha Gessen are filling the role of the Westernized aristocracy and the Bolsheviks in the previous Petrinisms. Putin is filling the roles of Alexander III and Brezhnev (continuing the Petrinist regime while breaking down Petrinism itself in preparation for the coming Russian High Culture).
The coming Russian religion alluded to by Spengler would most likely be the current Russian Orthodox Church after a few theological "reforms" (They never anathematized Dostoyevsky like they did with Tolstoy). The fact that the Patriarchate is trying to reconcile with the Old Believers indicates that the Church wants to assert its own prestige after centuries of being the bitchboy of the Tsar or the Politburo.
go back to /pol/, sweetie. we don't deal with racist, unfalsifiable bullshit that's only read by neckbeard virgins here
Bump
wtf i love francis fukuyama now
So who's going to be the feudal nobility of the new Russian High Culture? The revived Cossack hosts, maybe? Will the exploits of Motorola and Givi be elevated into heroic chivalrous epics like the Illiad or King Arthur?
There's nothing racist about hist work.
>Garry Kasparov
>arictocracy
Nigger please, that guy is a fucking nobody. An utter joke in Russia.
Do you even reading comprehension, nigger? Kasparov is being compared to the post-Peter aristocracy and the Bolsheviks in that they're all agents of the Pseudomorphosis. Nowhere is he being called an aristocrat in any way.
Is that Babai or whatever his name was? What even happened to him?
>Of course he couldn't have known about globalization because it was just starting in his own time.
Couldn't you just get postmodern and make reasonable arguments for an infinitude of cultures/civs?
He discussed hybrid/etc applications in culture as a form of pseudomorphosis
B
wtf i thought this was a pic of chuck from better call saul.
>chuck
He clearly looks like sneed
What manifestation does reproducibility have in historical research?
cheer up buddy. getting bald is not the end of the world.
Pls reply