futures volume 8 issue 5 1976 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2876%2990010-0] t.d. campbell -- 14. oswald...

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4 8 From Prophecy to Prediction

From Prophecy

seriahsed survey ot the movement

to Prediction

of ideas, developments in predictive

fiction, and first attempts to forecast

the future scientifical

14 Oswald Spengler: the approaching death of

Western civilisa tion

T. D. Campbell

Oswald Spengler did not expect West-

ern civilisation to survive into the 21st

century. Writing in Germany at the

outbreak of the First World War he saw

that bloody conflict as the beginning of

a series of brutal struggles character-

istic of the terminal stages of all major

cultures. The West by which he

meant Western Europe and North

America), born around AD 1000, and

having entered old age about 1800,

faced inevitable extinction as its allot-

ted thousand-year lifespan came to an

end.

Such predictions of the imminent

and cataclysmic collapse of civilisation

were not uncommon at the time but

Spengler’s Decline of the West is note-

worthy for the grand theory of history

which underpins his prognostications.

As an exponent of the cyclical theory,

according to which human history is

essentially a repetition of a certain

basic pattern of events, Spengler’s

main efforts were directed towards

exhibiting this pattern in eight major

self-contained “cultures” : the Egyptian,

the Babylonian, the Indian, the Chinese,

the Classical, the Arabian or Magian,

the Mexican,

and the Western or

Faustian. Over the surface of human

history these “great Cultures accom-

plish their majestic wave-cycles. They

T. D. Campbell is Professor of Philosophy in

the University of Stirling, Scotland. He is the

author of

Adam Smi t h’s Scienceof M orals

London,

Allen and Unwin, 197 1).

appear suddenly, swell in splendid

lines, flatten again and vanish, and the

face of the waters is once more a sleep-

ing waste” page 90) .I Each has its own

special location and characteristics,

but each, unless killed off or absorbed

into a more powerful culture, passes

through the same phases of birth,

maturity, decline, and death.

Few present-day futurologists will

want to follow Spengler through his

intricate accounts of the art, science,

religion, and politics of such unfamiliar

cultures as the Babylonian and the

Magian. We are, however, on more

familiar ground with his analysis of

Western culture as a Faustian or

machine culture entering the stage at

which the pursuit of external material

advantages,

measured in terms of

money and territory, have taken the

place of inward or spiritual values.

Both with hindsight and with fore-

boding it is natural to focus our atten-

tion on Spengler’s diagnosis of present

trends in our own society and to

interpret him as extrapolating these

trends into prophecies of a grim future

:

the disintegration of order amongst the

rootless mass of nomads who inhabit

our overgrown cities,

the loss of

empire brought about by the declining

energies of the imperial powers, and the

emergent clash between money acquisi-

tive capitalism and liberal democracy)

and blood violent “Caesarism” or

military despotism). Faced with this

FUTURES October 1876



From Prophty to Prediction

439

dramatic scenario of our time, it is

tempting to bypass what may appear

digressions into the labyrinths of other

cultures and to address ourselves direct-

ly to questions about the accuracy of

Spengler’s predictions concerning the

collapse of our own tired and exhausted

machine culture in the face of barbaric

violence.

To approach IXe Decline of the West in

this way is bound to generate dis-

appointment, if only because of the

absence of detail in Spengler’s vision

of the future. For, despite his opening

words that

In

this book is attempted for the first time

the venture of predetermining history, of

following the still untravelled stages in the

destiny of a Culture, and specifically of

the only Culture of our time and on our

planet which is actually in the phase of

fulfilment

the Decline of the West is taken up

almost entirely with studies of the past.

Indeed, such a narrow reading of

Spengler misses his distinctive approach

to historical prophecy, for he rejected

the possibility that an analysis of one

culture could form an adequate basis

for seeing into its future. Only the

discovery of the common essence of all

cultures and the nature of the periods

of a life-cycle which they share, will

enable the philosopher-historian to

locate his place in the history of his

own culture and so read off what lies

in store for his contemporaries and

their children. Proper study of a

variety of past cultures is required in

order to probe beneath the surface

detail for the real predictive signs of

our own time. We have to see, for

instance, that the years 1800-2000 in

Western Europe and North America

are analogous or chronologically par-

allel to that stage in Classical culture

which marked the transition from

Hellenism to the Roman age: “Rome,

with its rigorous realism-uninspired,

barbaric, disciplined, practical, Pro-

testant, Prussian will always give us,

working as we must by analogies, the

key to

understanding our future”

page 45) .l Because we know that the

imperialistic Romans brought Classical

culture to an end with a period which

was “unspiritual, unphilosophical, de-

void of art, clannish to the point of

brutality, aiming relentlessly at tangible

successes”, we can observe the same

trends in our own time; and so we can

know the fate which awaits our

“civilisation” the term Spengler uses

for the terminal period of a culture).

The key symbols

Spengler scarcely attempts to justify

the theoretical foundation of his daring

historical parallels. He simply assumes

that for cultures as “for everything

organic the notions of birth, death,

youth, age, life-time, are fundamentals”.

The task he set himself was to identify

the organic units which he calls cul-

tures and unearth the characteristics

of each stage of growth and decay: what

he calls the physiognomic morphology

of world history. His method is to

discover the key symbols in terms of

which it is possible to gather together

and relate all the main features of a

culture. Thus the prime symbol of the

Classical culture is the “sensuously

present individual body”, that of the

West is “pure and limitless space”;

Egyptian culture has as its prime

symbol the “stone” while that of the

Magian is “cavernous, eternal, vaulted

space”. These symbols are aids to the

understanding of the characteristic

science, philosophy, religion, art, and

politics of their respective cultures, and

their emergence, flourishing and decay

represent the birth, maturity, and

decline of that culture.

Spengler attributes the blindness of

other historians to these giant cultural

cycles to two things. Firstly, they make

the mistake of interpreting all history

in terms of the symbols and values of

their own cultures, whereas each culture

has its own distinctive qualities which

cannot be regarded as better or worse

FUTURES

October 1876



44

From Prophecy to Prediction

than those of other cultures. They are

simply different.

By failing to grasp the truth of

cultural relativism,

most historians

have seen significance in the past only

in so far as it exhibits or leads up to

valued elements in their own society.

Typical of this essentially ahistorical

approach is the division of the past into

ancient, medieval, and modern periods.

To Spengler this was a “Ptolemaic”

form of history to which he contrasted

his own “Copernican” discovery that

history admits of no privileged posi-

tions: all cultures are of equal and

incomparable significance. Culture-

bound moral absolutism has lead to a

distorted and selective view of the

past which ignores the existence of

such major cultures as the Magian and

sees the Classical culture in terms of

our own values rather than as an utterly

distinct and different phenomenon.

More specifically he criticises the

common equation of material and

moral progress which leads to the

mistaken view that Western culture is

an improvement on what has gone

before.

The second flaw which Spengler

detected in the approach of most other

historians is their use of the methods

of natural science instead of the dis-

tinctive tool of the historian-insight

into the meaning or inner logic of

history. Spengler held that there are

two types of consciousness: the natural

and the historical. The natural con-

cerns itself with the discovery of causal

laws and is appropriate to the world

of objects but not the world of history.

It may be used to make superficial

generalisations about the past but it is

powerless to interpet the present and

so to predict the future. The historical

method on the other hand is intuitive

and depictive; it presents events and

relations illustratively so that the

reader may come to share the insight

of the philosopher-historian into the

secrets of the historical process. It

uncovers a logic of history which goes

beyond

“the causal and incalculable

elements of separate events”; it makes

evident “giant traits” which occur

again and again in the history of

different cultures “with sufficient con-

stancy to justify certain conclusions”.

It cannot be said that Spengler is

either clear or consistent here. What-

ever the precise nature of his rather

mystical historical method, he obvi-

ously wishes to dispense with mere

inductive generalisation or extrapola-

tion from short-term trends. Only

understanding of the inner nature of

a culture can produce insight into its

logical development. Yet clearly some

form of inductive reasoning is required

to substantiate his claim that all cultures

conform to a single pattern which lies

behind the superficial features of all

cultures. Even if we can only discover

the peculiar destiny of a culture from

the “inside”, we know the fixed frame-

work of its development because of our

knowledge of other cultures. How else

can he be so sure that the lifespan of

each culture is a thousand years or use

the constancy of the “great traits” of

cultures to foretell the future of his

own? Indeed Spengler admits that it is

a “calculation from available pre-

cedents” as much as any insight into

the inner necessities of Western civil-

isation that supports his prophecy of

its death.

essimism

Historical determinists who foresee

inevitable decline in their own society

are often charged with pessimism and

defeatism. Although such charges are

strictly irrelevant to the truth of their

predictions, few futurologists can resist

the temptation to reply to them. Speng-

ler is prepared to accept the label

“pessimist”

if this means simply that

he is a believer in the coming death of

his own culture. But not if pessimism

implies a complaining and despairing

attitude. He has no time for feeble-

minded romanticists who hark back

to the youth of their culture, and

scarcely conceals his contempt for

FUTURES October 197



The rise and fall of empire fascinated the American painter Thomas Cole, 1801-1848. Life began in the savage state.

It advanced to the highest level of civilised life below) . . .



and then came the inevitable collapse, followed by total desolation. Photographs by courtesy of The New-York

Historical Society, New York City)



those who cannot face up to the “cold

hard facts of a late life”. Moreover he

does not regard himself as a fatalist,

for he offers a choice to the man who is

aware of necessary historical destiny.

Such a man may choose whether to do

the necessary or to do nothing; he is

not free to choose between war and

peace, but he can do something to

achieve victory rather than ruin for

himself. Spengler does not actually

endorse the violence of the 20th

century, but he is not unadmiring of

those who are successful in its use.

He thus sees a way in which the

individual can work out his own heroic

destiny not in spite of but because of

his knowledge of the destiny of his

culture.

he future

In fact Spengler

cultural relativism

pessimism which is

is saved by his

from the sort of

despairing in the

- _

face of the destruction of every cultural

value.

He does not place ultimate

significance on the achievements of

Western civilisation and he is not

therefore totally aghast at its decline.

Indeed, although with the death of

Western culture mankind will return

to the level of vegetation, Spengler’s

philosophy of history allows him to

hope that in the future, by some

mysterious process, a new culture will

be born and develop to give expression

to different but equally significant

forms of social life. His prophecy is not

of the death of mankind but merely of

a culture. More specifically the passing

of the present phase of Western culture

is not to be regretted for it is the phase

of old age in which life has lost its

flavour and energy. The West has

ceased to be creative, confident, and

strong, and death is looked to more and

more as a welcome release.

characteristics of biological organisms,

the belief in the underlying uniformity

of the histories of such cultures, to say

nothing of the often highly contro-

versial analyses of specific historical

phenomena. But, ignoring perhaps his

claim that even science and technology

have no cross-cultural objectivity, we

may be persuaded by his general

critique of “progress” theorists who

overvalue the importance of material

development. And it is hard to dismiss

out of hand the claim that there are

broad patterns in history which enable

us to draw illuminating parallels be-

tween the rise and fall of great empires.

Nor is he clearly wrong in saying that

an insight into the dominant cultural

forms of a society may be a more solid

foundation for reflecting on its future

development than any attempted causal

approach to history which ignores

men’s understanding of themselves and

their society. Whether this amounts

to a theoretical foundation for detailed

prophecy must be doubted, yet Speng-

lerian cyclical determinism is by no

means a spent force, as the scholarly

work of Pitirim Sorokin and the massive

and popular writings of Arnold Toyn-

bee amply demonstrate. Gone perhaps

are the confident predictions. Toynbee

was wrong about the outcome of the

Second World War, which he later

explained as being due to accidental

factors. The determinism too is watered

down to allow, in Toynbee’s case, for

some meaning to be attributed so

history in terms of Christian meta-

physics. But the attempts to identify

different cultures Toynbee has 21 or

so, in place of Spengler’s eight) and

trace their rise and fall remain, as does

the touch of intellectual arrogance

which is perhaps inseparable from any

attempt to tell it like it will be.

Reference

It is not easy to defend the dogmatic

bases of Spenglerian theory: the con-

1

Oswald

Spengler,

The Decline of the

fident assumption of the existence of

West A. Helps, ed, translated by Charles

Francis Atkinson, English abridged edi-

discrete cultural entities with the

tion London, Allen and Unwin, 1961).

From Propheg to Prediction

443

FUTURES October 1 76

futures volume 8 issue 5 1976 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2876%2990010-0] t.d. campbell -- 14. oswald...

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