John David Ebert @ Lafayette, 'Oswald Spengler and the Cycles of History' (full event)

Cultural critic John David Ebert visited Lafayette on Sept. 10, 2020 to deliver a talk entitled, "Oswald Spengler and the Cycles of History." A Q&A session follows his presentation.

[wroughtiron]

"I'm not interested in convincing anyone that they're wrong."
Absolutely based.

[susanpgottardi]

Dr. John David Ebert’s knowledge and wisdom is immense and v well communicated. I will start following him. Thanks for organizing.

[alexrose]

brillant talk, thank you john david and the mill series

[Levi_]

The transitions to the texts his referring to is nicely done. Thank you.

[valpergalit]

It wouldn’t be a John David Ebert video without a meltdown over astrology.

[brianogmacgabhann]

It’s great to get new material from John when you’ve been watching the older videos for years. Don’t get me wrong I will always cycle through the older material but prescient developments give rise to questions I would love to hear John answer e.g I always wanted to ask John about the West European American organisms Caesar era and how it relates to national populism and trump etc. You guys provide such answers and I’m grateful for that not to mention the great deal of thought and intelligence you bring in this video and the sit down interview with John.

[TreatyofHistory]

This lecture changed my belief system. Equivalent to death experience.

[chemist]

Mr. Ebert is - like Spengler was - a representative of an "aussterbende Spezies": A "Universalgelehrter". A refreshment to the mind.

[xxxbigboomerxxx]

Ebert looks a whole lot like Spengler.

[lamodedepinktag]

Fantastic. Very well organised lecture, with a lot of time for questions. Half the importance of the lecture is on Q &A part. Very good filming and editing of the event, too. Thank you for posting this.

[SimonYrtep]

What an incredible lecture, I am stunned

[misty]

Fantastic presentation and Q & A. Captivating ideas. tx🍻

[fergalbyrne]

Fascinating talk. Shocking however to hear you describe Buddha as a nihilist. As you probably know, nihilism is the rejection of all religious and moral principles, that life is meaningless. But Buddhism does indeed have values and principles...Nirvana, wisdom, and compassion — to name a few.

[core-nix]

Got to say, JDE is built like an absolute unit. Love the chad body language.

[JW-uexg]

Great talk. Thanks very much. I was hoping someone would ask him his views on how modern China fits in the Spenglerian scheme. John mentioned that the Sinic civilisation had its own modern phase, peaked around 1500 AD and, along with India, is now in a state of slumber. Is contemporary China now a copy/outgrowth of the West's Faustian civilisation (think of its modern cities and skyscrapers, technological drive, as well as its nascent space programme)?

[ozmer]

Tremendously lucid overview of Spengler's Decline of the West.

[adrianc]

I'd love JDE to expand on the idea he touched on of future events affecting the past, ie the present

[pwmiles]

Great stuff. I've been playing the Spengler-future game for about 25 years now. I thought 911 Saddam and Osama were parallels to the Jugurthine war (112-106 BC or so), which kicked off the Caesarism phase with Marius and Sulla. However, that model hasn't played out -- yet. The bigger parallel could be with the civil wars that followed. They were fought between Romans, the prize was Rome, but the actual wars happened far from Rome. Cheers from England!

[elgreatestweight]

@43:00 Feuerbach is properly a vitalist, along with Nietzsche, Klages, etc. not an empty shallow vision with Spencer et. al. read Paul Bishop's work. The Indian case is complicated by tantric Saiva philosophy (Pratyabhijna darsana: Abhinavagupta, Ksemaraja, Utpaladeva) and tantric Indian Buddhism (spread to Tibet), to say nothing of cultural fusion (chan/zen, Islam in India, etc.). Would like to see Spengler's model compared against that of Steve Farmer ("Syncretism in the West, " "Neurobiology, Layered Texts, and
Correlative Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Premodern History"). Perhaps Spengler himself is replaying the old 4/5 degenerating world ages mytheme of (some strains of) Laurasian mythology? Witzel ("Origins of the World's Mythologies") believes this to be a later version of the original mytheme of (ascending) world-ages, found in Mesoamerican myth. Good talk.

[oswaldspengler]

sam harris' mom made the golden girls TV show