Book description
The first volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West is a classic milestone in the annals of historiography. However, it is not a history book in the traditional sense of recounting events in chronological order. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Decline of the West as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I first encountered Spengler’s theories in work by science fiction writers such as A.E. Van Vogt and James Blish, who were enticed by Spengler’s notion that there was no single history of human civilization. Instead, distinct “Cultures” were born and slowly decayed into mere “Civilizations” by roughly predictable stages. Each Culture began with a fresh way of seeing and conceiving the world and our place in it, expressed in new art, politics, technology, and even mathematics.
The original inspiration was then lost and replaced by merely imitative and rule-governed art and society. Spengler certainly got a lot wrong, but I…
From Stephen's list on understanding ancient Mediterranean thought.
If you love The Decline of the West...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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