What does Spengler's 'Decline of the West' really mean?

Live seminars begin Saturday October 7th. We meet ten times to figure out what it means to be Faustian.
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[brianogsmyth]

From my own reading the real untergang meaning in Spengler’s work comes from Nietzsche’s deprecation of Euripides introduction of Socratic reason in Greek tragedy which Nietzsche regarded as the end of the Dionysian and Apollonian tension that held Greek tragedy in balance. The Socratic man of the west is John Locke who bring forth Anglo Saxon civilisation to overthrow European culture. Hence the real untergang is British/American Rome morphologically speaking. The text also implies at times the perfection or fulfilment of the west as the organic entelechy fulfills bringing it’s inner life into to the outer world or the extended as Spengler likes to call it. Hence Europe is the internal soul whilst Britain and America are the extended spatial imperial phase.

[Foolosophoria]

Awesome video! Exciting interpretation! <3

"The owl of Minerva only flights at the evening"

[raystargazer]

didnt he say in man and technics that he even lost the little hope he used to have for the future? xD

[simonphipp]

The first line of ‘The Republic’ refers to going down: First suggestion of Duality; Implication of teaching; Hope of rescue from the cave? Zarathustra’s going down seems to be a bead on this same thread ?

[clumsydad]

it's almost like iconography - that when the spirit of the culture is formalized and materially realized, there is a loss in this translation, and transformation from ideals towards the trapping of material forms, and the 'fall' of meaning in this process. and also that the destination is not the point of the journey - the journey was afforded by all the intangible will and desiring towards an experience or a goodness/joy, and the destination is a realization of this but also a husk. laws are put in place around principles, but then the epistemology evolves and all needs to be redone. and in a society so socially and humanely young and uninformed as we largely are, rejuvenation of thought and morays is constantly required, to get past the death of one ideology/ideation process and to the life giving possibilities of the next - the new openings.