Philosophy of History: Culture and Civilization

The Organic Understanding of Culture

Oswald Spengler's philosophical concept is grounded in the idea of "organic life" as a holistic reality that can only be grasped intuitively. This notion is neither equivalent to spirit nor to matter; such an approach reduces any idea to a mere "vital impulse." All living beings manifest in two forms: plants exist within time, while animals express themselves in space. From these ontological premises, Spengler deduces his cultural theory and philosophy of history. According to him, culture arises from the yearning for cosmic existence, which constitutes its highest value. There is no division between so-called "spiritual" and "material" culture—all is an expression of one essence. Any fruitful interaction between cultures is impossible, as a nascent culture, influenced by another, swiftly transforms the received (i.e., borrowed) elements into its own style, subordinating them to its unique rhythm and meter.

Thus, within any advanced culture, on one hand, there exists the peasantry, representing the race and, to some extent, nature, and, on the other, a more artificial and mutable society that exists "in form," comprising various classes and estates. However, it is the history of these classes and estates that constitutes the highest quality of world history. In comparison, the peasantry exists outside of history. All significant history over six thousand years has unfolded within advanced cultures, where the bearers of creative potential have always been the classes emerging from selection. Culture is the soulfulness that finds expression in symbolic forms. These forms are perpetually alive and evolving, akin to the forms of art. They are rooted in the highest achievements of individual creators and specific circles, particularly in what has been termed existence "in form," which alone is capable of representing culture.

Culture is something grand and singular in the organic world. It is the one point where humanity rises above the forces of nature and becomes the creator itself. As long as one belongs to a race, one is a product of nature and subjected to external selection. Only upon achieving a state does one perform one's own selection, much like a breeder choosing the best seeds while discarding the poor specimens. This, indeed, is culture in its highest and truest sense. Culture and state (or class) are interrelated concepts; they emerge and vanish together. Thus, human culture arises as an expression of existence that elevates itself to a grand form.

For this reason, each culture possesses a strong sense of belonging or foreignness. The ancient notion of the "barbarian," the Arabic term for "infidel," and the Indian concept of "shudra" initially did not convey hatred or contempt but merely acknowledged differences in modes of existence, establishing an insurmountable boundary across all manifestations of life. The perception and understanding of this fact are distorted by the Indian notion of the "fourth caste," which, as we now know, never truly existed. The Laws of Manu, with their behavioral prescriptions regarding the shudras, arose much later in the "peasant" society of India and preached a lofty Brahmanical ideal.

In any case, this concerns a small portion of the population, which holds little significance for the internal life of culture and its symbolism. These are the individuals referred to as outcasts. For instance, the Gothic term corpus christianum indicates that the Jewish consensus does not belong to it. Within Arab culture, non-believers were merely tolerated and despised. In antiquity, outcasts included not only barbarians but also slaves and, above all, remnants of ancient local populations, such as the helots in Sparta, as well as the impoverished (a state in Homer), Roman proletarians, craftsmen, singers, and "professional" unemployed individuals, whom the church's charity and the benevolence of devout laypeople proliferated during the early Gothic era. Thus, "caste" is a term not so much employed as abused, as is evident in Herodotus.

Every cultural organism is allotted a predetermined lifespan, which depends on its internal vital cycle. Culture, as a qualitative concept, creates depth, while civilization, as a quantitative concept, produces (duplicates) breadth. The primary task that Spengler sets before philosophy is to identify and reveal the foundational phenomenon of each of the eight proposed cultures, subsequently deriving the phenomenological diversity of that culture: the forms of politics, types of eroticism, mathematics and music, law and military arts, and so forth.

The main goal of Spengler's foundational work, The Decline of the West, is to create an image of a world in which one can live, rather than a system of the world that can only be analyzed through reason, as in Hegel or Marx. This work nourished the curious mind and stimulated creative imagination. Spengler's philosophy of history and styles of artistic myth-making appealed not only to reason but to emotion, elevating philosophical reflection from a strictly mental domain.

Spengler acknowledges a particular merit of Hegel in that he began with the concept of the "state" as the form of complete realization of spirit in existing being. However, in contrast to Hegel, Spengler's philosophical concept is founded on the idea of organic life, which tends toward unbounded expansion. Therefore, Spengler interprets culture as an "organism" that inevitably undergoes stages of birth, childhood, maturity, senescence, and death. This organism, first and foremost, possesses internal unity; secondly, it is distinct from other similar organisms, signifying separation in time and space; thirdly, the impossibility of grasping a foreign cultural world is asserted, indicating its inaccessibility to others; and finally, when culture, as an organism, exhausts itself, it perishes, transforming into civilization.

Civilization is a state of societal functioning that arises based on certain achievements in the development of culture; it is associated with city-building (the Latin term "civilis" translates as "urban"), the advent of writing and the state, and the manufacture and use of metals.

What do Spengler's philosophical principles tell us? That there is no single universal culture or history, and there cannot be. From this reasoning, Spengler emerges as a thinker of a non-classical type, with some even considering him a representative of an anti-classical type. His work is not a treatise in the traditional German sense but rather an intellectual novel that injects "pulsating blood into abstract thought" (Thomas Mann). The philosopher conveys his philosophical credo through the formula: "For life, there are no truths; there are only facts." Further developing and deepening this thought, Spengler writes, "Truth offers nothing; practical sense and life significance must always take precedence."

If universal history, according to Hegel, is the manifestation of spirit and akin to how an embryo retains the entire nature of the tree, the taste of the fruit, then the manifestations of spirit virtually retain within themselves all of history. Thus, by understanding the spiritual sources, the sources of the national spirit, we can gain deeper insight into its history. In Hegel, universal history presents itself as "progress in the awareness of freedom, a progress we must comprehend in its necessity." From this understanding of freedom, it follows that:

• Eastern peoples knew only that one could be free,
• the Greek and Roman world knew that some of us could be free,
• we, as Hegel asserts, know in modern times that all are free in and of themselves, that is, a person is free as such.

Therefore, in defining the spiritual world of humanity and the ultimate goal of the historical world, Hegel takes the awareness of spirit's freedom, from which the division of universal history emerges, as well as how we will consider it. Thus, the subject of the philosophy of history in Hegel encompasses two moments: first, the idea, and second, human passions. The first forms the foundation, the second constitutes the material from which the tapestry of universal history will be woven. The central link that unites these two moments in Hegel's concept is moral freedom in the state. The state reveals itself as ordered and strong in itself only when the private interests of citizens are aligned with its common purpose, where one principle finds satisfaction and realization in another. When such a conjunction is achieved, a period of the state's flourishing, its valor, strength, and happiness ensues.

But does the happiness of the state always coincide with the happiness of the individual? It has long been known that a person is happy when their existence aligns with the particularities of their character and desires, when the individual enjoys their existence, though this is rarely the case. Hegel succinctly captures this with the aphorism: "Universal history is not a stage for happiness." For any given time leaves behind far more traces of suffering than of happiness. Calamity—this is what history is made of.

Thus, the sphere of philosophical inquiry encompassing ontological questions of the historical process—whence and whither does universal history progress? What is its beginning and what is its end? Does it possess any inherent meaning?—remains an eternal sustenance for the curious intellect. The mystical trinity of the epochs of world history is:

The Ancient World ↔ The Middle Ages ↔ The Modern Era.

Fact is something singular, that which has truly occurred or will occur. Truth, on the other hand, is something that does not necessarily have to manifest to be a certain possibility. Fate is always entwined with facts, while the connection between cause and effect constitutes truth. This was known long ago. However, the idea that life is only linked to facts, composed of facts, and directed solely by facts—this is the merit of Spengler. Truths are entities of thought, their significance residing in the "realm of thought." Where reality begins, the realm of thought comes to an end, for facts are always weightier than truths.

The virtual—derived from the Latin virtualis, meaning possible, that which may or ought to manifest—has always seduced metaphysical tastes. In its original conception, this schema is a product of magical world perception, first emerging in Persian and Jewish traditions. Yet it is only on Western soil, through the addition of a third (conclusive) epoch—the European "Modern Era"—that a tendency towards direction and movement infiltrates this picture.

Thus, Spengler concludes, to the supplementary concepts of paganism and Christianity has been added the conclusive concept of the "Modern Era," which, by its nature, does not permit the process of continuation. Even after repeated "stretchings" since the time of the Crusades, it proves impotent to prolong. For after the Modern Era comes the latest, then the most recent, and so forth, as ironically noted by A. Solzhenitsyn: "there is no newer place to go."

Spengler succinctly and clearly articulates his views on the philosophy of history; it is, so to speak, the quintessence of his worldview:

1. "Humanity" has no purpose, no idea, nor plan, just as butterflies or orchids bear no relation to it. "Humanity" is an empty sound, and this phantom must be expelled from the realm of historical problems; only then will the unimaginable richness of true forms present itself, revealing an unfathomable fullness, depth, and fluidity of the living—everything that was previously concealed behind fashionable phrases, dry schematics, and personal "ideals."
2. Instead of a monotonous image of linear world history, which can only be sustained by closing one's eyes to a multitude of facts, Spengler managed to perceive the true multitude and potency of cultures.
3. These powerful cultures of world strength blossom from the womb of the maternal landscape, with which they remain intimately connected throughout their existence.
4. Each of these cultures shapes its own form from its material, and each form possesses its own idea, its own passions, its own life, its own will, its own sensibility, and its own demise. Here we observe a riot of vibrant colors, hues, and movements that no artistic eye has unveiled.
5. There are those that develop and those that age—cultures, peoples, truths, deities, landscapes—much like there are young and old oaks, flowers, and leaves; however, there is no humanity that ages.
6. Each culture possesses its own possibilities for self-expression, which emerge, mature, bloom, and never recur.
7. There exist fundamentally distinct forms of sculpture, painting, mathematics, and physics, each enclosed within itself, like any plant species with its own mode of growth and ascent.
8. These cultures, as life forms of the highest rank, bloom into the form of exalted necessity, like flowers in a field. They, akin to plants, belong to the living nature of Goethe rather than the dead nature of Newton.
9. In universal history, Spengler perceives a tableau of eternal creation and transformation, a wondrous becoming and disappearance of organic forms. However, the guild historian (or, as the thinker calls him, "the craftsman of history") sees world history in the form of a solitaire, tirelessly laying down epoch after epoch.

In this way, a holistic image unfolds before us, a spatial form of perception of objects that possess a principal axis or "center of gravity," that is, holistic cultural entities whose elements are defined by a single structure, or everything encompassed by the concept of "gestalt" (the doctrine of transformation and realization of the possible). If Hegel's "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" belong to the classical type of academic literature, then Spengler's work is more akin to an "intellectual novel" (T. Mann), where a fusion of critical and poetic spheres occurs, initiated by the German romantics and stimulated by Nietzsche's philosophical lyricism.

Such a sense and understanding of history enabled Spengler to delineate and enumerate eight cultures of universal historical significance: the Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, "Apollonian," "Magical," and "Faustian" cultures, alongside the Greek-Roman, Byzantine-Arab, and Western European cultures.

In the future, he posits, we can expect the emergence of a Russian-Siberian culture, characterized by its Ural-Siberian landscape and an intrinsic proto-symbol. Each cultural organism is allotted a specific lifespan, roughly spanning 1,000 to 1,200 years. The existence of these cultures signifies not a unity of the global historical process but rather a unity of expressions of life throughout the universe. Spengler perceives his fundamental discovery in history as the realization that great cultures are wholly primordial entities, emerging from the profound depths of human soulful existence. Conversely, there exist those peoples enchanted by culture, who, in their intrinsic form and manifestations, are not creators but mere products of this culture.

Historical thought faces a dual task: first, an attempt at a comparative analysis of the life stories of distinct cultures (a task that has notably lacked the attention of historians to this day); and second, an exploration of the significance of the random and irregular interrelations between different cultures. The latter task presupposes that the former has already been resolved.

Thus, a revision of one of the central schemas of historical thought may aid in a new reading of history, replacing the tedious school triad of universal history—“The Ancient World ^ The Middle Ages ^ The Modern Era”—with the powerful pulsation of eight "simultaneous" cultures, independent and equivalent points of reference, akin to the replacement of Ptolemy’s geocentric worldview with Copernicus’ heliocentric vision. Here, historicity is interpreted not as a sequence of moments nor as a linear path leading from the "past" through the "present" to the "future." Human existence, in this historical sense, is always situated within a unique context that "cannot be derived from the previous one, nor reduced to the subsequent."

Consequently, the total existence of any culture possesses, as its highest potential, a symbolic archetype of its world as history, and all the dispositions of individual beings, acting as living entities within the multiplicity, are nothing but reflections of this archetype. The German perceives world history differently than the Englishman; economic history appears to the worker in a way distinct from how it is seen by the entrepreneur, and a Western historian’s vision of universal history is entirely different from that of the great Arab and Chinese historians.

According to Spengler, the individuals of Western European culture, with their historical awareness, are rather exceptions than the rule. "World history" is an European view of the world, not a depiction of "humanity."

For the Indian and the Greek, there was no vision of the world's becoming. The Doric column has always symbolized the ahistorical spirit of Greek culture, embodying a denial of time; its orientation, what the Greek termed the cosmos, was an image of the world as an eternal present, not as something in the process of becoming. The entirety of ancient culture emerges from an "Euclidean" experience of corporeality; hence, the hegemony of plasticity in art, and geometry in mathematics, among others. In contrast, "Faustian" culture thrives on the idea of perspective, depth, and the "third dimension": it encompasses the dominance of counterpoint in music, linear perspective in painting, the concept of infinite space in physics, and a dynastic principle in politics.

"Der Untergang des Abendlandes" is a distinctive triad of Apollonian, Magical, and Faustian souls. Spengler regarded his book as a Copernican discovery in history, intended to replace the familiar and outdated Eurocentric schema, which perceives history as a columnar road along which humanity jolts itself forward in a single direction, with eternal philosophical commonplace observations in view.

Regarding the title of the work, the Ukrainian equivalent of Spengler’s wordplay "Der Untergang des Abendlandes" is simply impossible, as the authenticity of translation (that is, fidelity to the letter) leads only to a misunderstanding of the very spirit of the piece. The previously suggested translation as "The Twilight of Europe" represented rather fidelity to the letter than to the spirit of the work itself. If there is no Ukrainian analogue to the German "Der Untergang...," then this title must be conveyed descriptively. Consequently, we arrive at a whole array of titles, each reflecting only one, albeit significant, moment of reality: from the temporal state of the day—“dusk” or “twilight”—to a cultural experience of the process, such as "fall," "decline," "waning," "fading," up to the organic understanding of culture—"wither" or "dying," and so forth. Only such an approach opens before us a holistic image, a spatial form of perceiving objects that have a primary axis or "center of gravity," encompassing all that Spengler expressed in the title of the first volume, "Gestalt and Reality." Gestalt is something dynamic, something that arises and vanishes. Spengler's teaching about gestalts concerns transformation and the realization of the possible. Thus, the successful Russian translation—“Закат Европьі” (The Decline of Europe), which received the author's approval, demands from the Ukrainian translator not mere calque but an exploration of adequate concepts to express the forms and content of the German original.

Today we utilize the established and melodious Russian translation of "Der Untergang des Abendlandes" as "Закат Европь" (The Decline of Europe), although it is known that such a translation is, of course, imprecise. Spengler himself vehemently opposed the use of the terms "Europe" and "Asia" in any sense other than strictly geographical. His "Abendland" (Western world) encompasses both the United States and does not even include Greece, the Balkans, or Slavic countries, let alone Russia. Western Europe is experiencing decline. According to Spengler, the term "Europe" should be expunged from history. There exists no such thing as a "European" as a historical type. Today, it is nonsensical to speak of the Hellenes as "European antiquity" (thus, Homer, Heraclitus, Pythagoras were "Asians"), or of their mission of cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe. These words, writes Spengler, are borrowed from a superficial interpretation of the geographical map; however, the Russian instinct, embodying hostility toward all that is Western as represented in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Konstantin Aksakov, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, very precisely and profoundly distinguishes "Europe" from "Mother Russia." Only the East and the West are concepts imbued with genuine historical meaning. "Europe" is but an empty sound, concludes the philosopher. Everything termed European culture originated between the Vistula, the Adriatic, and the Guadalquivir. If we assume that Greece during the time of Pericles "was in Europe," then today it is not there.

In the morphology of world history according to Spengler, antiquity and the West stand alongside India, Babylon, China, Egypt, Arab, and Mexican cultures—each a distinct world of emergence, holding equal significance in the grand tapestry of history. Often, they surpass antiquity in the grandeur of their spiritual conceptions and the power of their ascents. This designation solidified for Spengler as early as 1912, denoting, in the strictest sense, a universal-historical phase characterized by a decline in antiquity, spanning many centuries, at the beginning of which we now find ourselves. The term "fall," like some others, fails to convey a sense of catastrophe.

All of these cultures occupy their respective and entirely non-privileged places. For instance, from the perspective of the Hellenes, ancient history unfolded as a chain of accidents, leading from moment to moment. Magical history was, for people, the coherent realization of a divine universal plan executed from creation to destruction—through the fate of nations and by means of the people. According to Spengler, Faustian history is marked by the dominance of a singular great will, a conscious logic, where rulers govern nations and represent them. Hence, the conclusion: all Western nations are of dynastic origin, as the dynasty embodies history. Belonging to an ancient nation is manifested through the possession of citizenship rights, to a magical nation through a sacred act; to Judaism and Islam through circumcision, and to Mazdaism and Christianity through specific baptismal rites. If the Faustian nation is linked to the Christian church, the magical nation simply coincides with the concept of church.

Thus, for Spengler, world history constitutes a collective rather than a totality of eight distinct cultures that share nothing in common; however, they are born, mature (that is, reach a stage of maturity), age, and die, thereby transforming civilization. Each of these cultures holds profound meaning for us, while collectively they are mere nonsense. Culture, in the understanding of O. Spengler, always emerges as a synthesis of the sensuous and stable expression of the soul in gestures and works, as its body, which is mortal and subject to law and transience, to number and causality; culture as a historical spectacle, as a collection of great symbols of life, sensation, and understanding: such is the language of culture, through which the soul may articulate its suffering.

While Hegel speaks of the "world spirit," "historical mission," "idea of progress," and "moral freedom," in Spengler's work, key terms include "landscape," "primitivesymbol," "soul," "destiny," "style," "character," "tact," and "rhythm." For the latter, these are essentially synonyms denoting what is fundamentally indefinable, as they signify the spontaneous impulse of the first phenomenon toward the completion of its cycle and the revelation of its own immanent form.

If Hegel's concept cast Ukrainians—and not just us—into the category of so-called "non-historical peoples" for an entire century, Spengler's concept, with its idea of the primitivesymbol, conversely offers us today a significant methodological approach for understanding the morphology of Ukrainian culture.

The central dilemma of our existence will always be the search for answers to the questions: who are we and where are we going? At the theoretical level, this issue can be framed as "the philosophy of the national idea" or "the philosophy of national defeat."

Ukrainian culture is a culture of grain. Its primitivesymbol never emerges in pure form; rather, it is always manifest in all its elements, providing the highest unity amid all dynamic diversity. It pulses in the sensation of form within each individual, community, stage, and epoch, dictating the style of the entire spectrum of life expressions. The culture of grain is a symbiosis of humanity and nature, a settled existence, a symbol of ancient territory, a genetic connection to Mesopotamia, from which, according to academician M. Vavilov, wheat originates. It is the history of trade routes (the path from the Varangians to the Greeks) that shaped the political and cultural history of the Ukrainian world.

The culture of grain is organically linked to the idea of ownership. Anything that moves freely through space lacks the idea of ownership. Ownership is more a sensation than a concept. In its most direct sense, ownership pertains to land, and the desire to convert all acquired possessions into land and soil is always indicative of a person of good character.

The primitivesymbol is also hidden in the form of the state, in myths and religious cults, in ethical ideals, in forms of painting, music, and poetry, and in the fundamental concepts of science, yet it is not exhausted by these. It cannot be comprehensively articulated in concepts. Each individual symbol speaks for itself, appealing to an inner feeling rather than to reason. In Spengler's profound conviction, everything is determined by the choice of the primitivesymbol at the moment when the soul of culture awakens to awareness in its landscape.

According to Spengler, symbols are sensuous signs, indivisible and, most importantly, spontaneous impressions that carry specific meaning. A symbol serves as a boundary of reality, denoting something that cannot be conveyed through reason. A Doric column, a Gothic cathedral, a Byzantine basilica, the gestalt of a Ukrainian house, family, human relationships, clothing, and cultic acts, the external appearance of a person, their gait and stature, certain social statuses and peoples, dialects, and forms of settled life for all humans and animals—all these, in addition to the ineffable language of Ukrainian nature with its Carpathian spruces, southern meadows, and the scent of the steppe, blue sky, and golden wheat fields—are all symbolic manifestations of a cosmic longing.

Thus, every culture begins "from the earth" and reaches toward the cosmos. It is not about what the world "is" in itself, but rather what it signifies for the being living within it, how this being perceives and experiences these symbols. There exists a vast array of primitivesymbols, yet none can be accurately transferred into the experience and understanding of any other culture. The visible and accessible form of the ancient Aphrodite was perceived and experienced in a wholly different manner by the Greeks of antiquity than by the "transferred" version brought by the great reformer to St. Petersburg—the land of "murky forests and marshy bogs," cold dampness, and swampy mists. There, it symbolizes love, embodied in a plastic form, whereas here, in the snowy and gloomy northern city, it resembles a captive, torn from its natural element and forcibly held in a foreign landscape. It is entirely false, unnatural in its essence; thus, more plausible and realistic symbols of the era include the nameless "girl with a paddle" or the fiery pioneer—Pavlik Morozov.

Each culture, as a variation on the theme of the primitivesymbol, according to Spengler, undergoes the following phases: a) mythosymbolic, b) metaphysical-religious, c) late (the age of epigones), d) civilization (i.e., early culture or high culture); transitioning into (radical nothingness).

At the beginning of history, we always observe the deepest religious experiences, unexpected revelations, tremors, and fear before the forthcoming consciousness, metaphysical dreams, and aspirations; whereas at the end of history, we find only an acute intellectual clarity to the point of pain.