Write a magnum opus about the importance of culture, literature, history, philosophy, metaphysics and religion

I just kept lowering my expectations until now I expect it to be an almost logic-free anti-white experience where reality can't never be contacted except fleetingly. I managed to only be slightly disappointed this semester.

Based. God that man was good.

I can see why ass blasted academics refused to acknowledge him, while a large number of actually influential thinkers and other people have been influenced by him.
He was operating on a higher level and he offended their sense of prestige.

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What do I need to read before I tackle him? I'm a native German, but I think he might be out of my league for now.

>Sociologist Max Weber described Spengler as a "a very brilliant and scholarly dilettante"

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>image
lmao

Considering Spengler's view of Academia, I'm not surprised that he was salty af.

>Adorno and Wittgenstein were influenced by Spengler
lmao what? Wikipedia is such trash

He influenced Lovecraft and Malcolm X, what? In what way lol

adorno definitely was, he wrote an essay on how spengler was right about everything

You should definitely have read the first Faust, maybe the second. More Goethe is good, Nietzsche is also good.
But he generally explains everything pretty well and in depth, with examples.
You can definitely jump right into it and look up things as you go along. Just gotta take the time to appreciate him.

This comment is why I rarely listen to anyone on Yea Forums. You're a fucking retard.

Wittgenstein explicitly said that Spengler was an influence on him, and he talked about Spengler in his personal letters.
Adorno, while a Marxist, nonetheless devoted an entire essay to Spengy in his Prisms, titled 'Spengler: After the Decline'. In the essay, Adorno said that Spengler, while he has empirical problems and a very weird interpretation of some thinkers/cultures (Plato as a philosopher of Becoming, arbitrarily lumping orthodox Christianity together with Islam), he was nonetheless very prescient and was only ignored by his contemporaries because they couldnt deal with him. He also says that Spengler might've been right about Western civilization, but that socialism will prove him wrong, which i think is really funny

Wittgenstein in Culture and Value:
>"I don't believe I have ever invented a line of thinking, I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightaway seized on it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.
Adorno in Prisms:
>The forgotten Spengler has his revenge by threatening to be right in the end.
>Spengler has hardly found an opponent worthy of him: collective amnesia provides the escape.
No, user, you're trash.

Brainlet

On the other hand, I don't understand how these were influenced by him, either.

No, you're wrong. Adorno, as another poster pointed out, said he was right about everything, but, if the source I read is correct, thought that this self-knowledge could be used to steer society away from its "inevitable" fate.

>do what you're best at
Spengler was a crypto-optimist, user; believing Faustian man would unintentionally reignite his soul in a balls-to-the-wall crusade to conquer space and time

Was Spengler the original STEMlord?

gl
youtu.be/ummd6AFLy3g

>nick land acceleratory madness talk
what am i supposed to do with this

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Im not gonna give up painting just because a character from Breaking Bad thought it died with impressionism (I stress the verb thought, not argued, since "dude, there is no soul in it, trust me" is not an argument).

Chop your dick off.

What exactly is madness about what he says there?
He speaks about the future of humanity subjects here too.

>entire philosophy gets btfo in a single paragraph
>OMG HOW IS HE SO AMAZING

What paragraph, senpai? If it's written by an analytic then i will bash your brains in.

he like Ted Kaczynski and René Guénon realised that ecture room philosophers(i.e. 99% of all academia ) are meme and he was right

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I cant get over how long Guenon's face is

also this

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>But something much more disquieting than a logical fallacy begins to appear
when the centre of gravity of philosophy shifts from the abstract-systematic
to the practical-ethical and our Western thinkers from Schopenhauer onward
turn from the problem of cognition to the problem of life (the will to life, to
power, to action). Here it is not the ideal abstract "man" of Kant that is
subjected to examination, but actual man as he has inhabited the earth during
historical time, grouped, whether primitive or advanced, by peoples

He basically says grand metaphysical philosophy mostly dies out after Schopenhauer and philosophy becomes primarily concerned with day to day life which philosophers now consider an ethical problem to be solved, like how modern """philosophy""" is just criticism of capitalism

Sounds exactly like something Taleb would say.

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I do think it's interesting how some of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century mostly came out of other fields and just rolled into phil.

>John David Ebert
's a schizo poster

Im writing a play stylised as Faust 3 inspired by Spengler. How do i get it published in this modern world?

>Then the philosopher, who pays the highest honor to these things, must necessarily, as it seems, because of them refuse to accept the theory of those who say the universe is at rest, whether as a unity or in many forms, and must also refuse utterly to listen to those who say that being is universal motion; he must quote the children's prayer, “all things immovable and in motion,” and must say that being and the universe consist of both.

Plato was a Neoplatonists—Orthodox Platonism—transcending Process and eastern motionlessness.

That's still not really Becoming

ackshually he calls scientists monkeys and he told you to get into politics/technics. shit like colonial eneterprises and shipbuilding, not fucking physics

it is becoming for the absolute static of classic morale. Kant is the most "Become" of all western philosophers and he is almost as "Becoming" as Plato.

People keep saying Spengler was prescient, so can you give some examples?

>This machine-technics will end with the Faustian civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten —our railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon. The history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close.. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture. When, and in what fashion, we know not.Faced as we are with this destiny, there is only one world.outlook that is worthy of us, that which has already been mentioned as the Choice of Achilles —better a short life, lull of deeds and glory, than a long life without content. Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honourable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man

based desu

reeeee someone give em

I would post the Decline of the West after 100 years article,but I'm at work.

okay this is epic

Can someone give me an exposition on how the black hole of critical theory ruined much of what the humanities stood for?

So NEETs were the true heroes all along.

Critical theory reduces everything to narratives of oppression and power dynamics.

Well... they’re all useless, only a good pass time. Religion is moronic though and has caused more harm then good. It would be better for the human race to drop everything and just excel in science. Then we can begin to expand even more as a species. Look at how much has happened in the past few years (technology wise) it’s because we’ve stopped focusing on needless teachings about god and more about science. Science and knowledge equals growth, we have no other room for useless pass times like religion and history

he talks to the dead, bro. what the fuck do you do?

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i don’t Have to read Hegel before Spengler right? It might be useful but I can always come back to Spengler again after I have tackled Hegel at some later point, right?

Reddit

No but you should read kant
The more you know the more the decline of the West makes sense

why kant?

Until it meshes with a new form of living spirituality, doubt it.

But ancient philosophers were very much concerned with practical and ethical problems...

Not only Western culture declines, user...

He sees kant as one of the last great Western philosophers but at the same time the first sign of Western decline,he references Kant constantly throughout The Decline

Yah to Spengler the moment a culture becomes a civilization it is already in decline. However, he also ties the decline of the West very closely with a certain "will" that other cultures did not have. In this way western man completes will through reason and understanding inevitably willing the death of his own culture.

this is a pretty based observation

I can see how he sees Kant as one of the last great philosophers, but how does the Goblin himself signify decline?

pretend you're a black woman

He wraps up one of the main issues in Western philosophy with a system meant to last forever, he's the Western equivalent to Aristotle
Spengler's decline is a decline in intellectual originality

in centuries to come spengler will be regarded as a prophet as opposed to a philosopher

Many people already do, but it's a shame he used to be read by many intellectuals, while nowadays only the far right seems interested in him.

I saw he had an interview with McLuhan through a medium, which I thought was a bit off the rails, but then again he has nothing to lose posting it on his channel. It's not explicitly an endorsement of the medium or mysticism. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may have just thought it was interesting content.

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive, trustworthy copy of the Decline of the West, or is the abridged version adequate?

I heard the abridged version is dogshit

basically everyone except for the far-right are looking to hold the pieces of modernity together and extract as much from it as possible while they have power. the far-right has no real power and no real investment in the current structure so they are more willing than others to take a sober look at it through the lens of thinkers like spengler.

I wouldnt say that power is the reason Spengler is just restricted to the far right. It's because his pessimistic views go against the liberal and communist claims to be the end of history, and the rationalism that underpins both of those, which Spengler sees as nothing more than just a temporary expression of a particular civilization. Even Adorno, while seeing Spengler's predictions in the 1930's, couldn't help but say that socialism would eventually prove him wrong, when socialism is the ultimate and last form of the western symbol, and nothing more. Indeed, this resort to utopianism is itself a very Faustian thought, which Adorno should've noticed.

No he believes in life after death and Steiner - but a lot of Americans believe trump to be a Russian antichrist so he's not that schizo compared to the average of his country.

If he is indeed right there might be no one to remember him in a few centuries.

Except for me

Well either way, It's only relevant if your goal in life is specifically to progress something. The argument would be that the maximum potential one can reach through a limited medium such as painting has been reached long ago, so there is no further progress to be made and thus is dead as no better works can be made. How true that is I don't personally know as I know little of painting besides that I, on average, far prefer older works to new ones. Along with that the large majority of pieces I enjoy from the last 50 years are completely digital. That's besides the point though, whether or not it's "dead" doesn't mean you can't become one of the greats to further contribute to it's peak works.

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Also it reduced all of philosophy to just criticism and economics.

>Then say "yeah fuck all that, just go into science instead brehs"
He didn't say this.

Egyptians, Chinese, Persians, etc, individual people survived and we still read some of their thinkers. Even if the west is the whole world culture, a new culture will rise and read, possibly, Spengler. Unless acceleration is correct. Then I guess we hope robots read.

How does Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” stack up with Spengler’s criticism of cultures?

He actually says in TDotW that as early as 2200 people won't be able to understand Western philosophy

must be those pyramids

If one is to understand the great mystery one must study all it’s aspects, not just the dogmatic narrow view of the STEMlords. If you wish to become a complete and wise intellectual, you must embrace a larger view of study. Be careful of the liberals Anakin.. only through me can you achieve a power greater than any nu-male! Learn to know the STEM side of the force and you will be able to save your mind from certain death.

I think Spengler is suggesting a more Feyerabend scienctific progress.

I'm about 4 months into learning to read German.
I tried to read Decline of the West and holy fuck this guy's writing...

Now try Kant!

I Kant.

how
> there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out.

So what exactly did he ever even get right?
> muh 'world feeling'
> muh depression is high even tho we have no idea of ppl are just coming out and being honest about depression now as opposed to there actually being a spike
> muh philosophy and art that I subjectively don't like
Yeah yeah, so none of his thought is actually falsifiable right? He's really one to talk about science while the man's thought has nothing to do with empirical research. But yeah he's a hack.

The great thinkers of the 20nth century are the men who saw the modern world for what it is; the greatest age in the history of men. Popper and Fukuyama are the true intellectuals, suck a dick Yea Forums

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i am seriously considering learning german because of Spengler, Goethe, Novalis, Trakl, Holderlin, Klages, etc.

i know i can do it because i learned Russian for Pushkin and lermontov mainly, but it seems like a big undertaking.

someone convince me it's worth it. i dont love the way the language sounds and works anywhere near as much as russian so its a bit hard to get the motivation

also if someone can rec a textbook for german that would be great.

>ppl are just admitting their depression
Suicide spikes are way up, people are sleeping more, and people are reporting their lives have no meaning or purpose
>muh subjectivity
brainlet bait

>brainlet bait
Yeah try telling that to a real academic like Dennet or Dawkins, that's not how the scientific method works

Read Adorno's essay on Spengler.

German for Reading - Wendel, is what I've been using. The vocabulary is focused on understanding existing German works. Each chapter ends with you translating a passage from a German author/politician such as Spengler, Goethe, Jung, Nietzsche. You won't learn how to speak it though unless you get supplementary stuff for that.