Philosophy of History: Culture and Civilization

The Problem of Civilization's Development

The final phase is a symptom of the decay of an entire cultural world. Here, it is crucial to understand that Der Untergang des Abendlandes proclaims that no escape exists, that a dead end lies ahead, demonstrated with mathematical precision. Those who acquiesce will be gently led there, while the dissenters will be brutally dragged along. As it dies, culture gradually transforms into civilization. On one hand, every culture possesses its own civilization, for civilization is the inescapable fate of culture; on the other hand, civilization always stands in opposition to culture.

Civilization is a concept of dead "extension," devoid of soul and intellect, and on the other hand, it reflects a perspective rooted in Nietzsche’s notion of "mass culture": at first, God was spirit, then he became man, and now he already reeks of "foulness," transforming into a crowd... The re-evaluation of all values is the most secretive essence of each civilization.

Civilization signifies the dominance of the fourth estate—the mass man—who fundamentally rejects culture with its organic forms. The masses are the new nomads of world capitals, having utterly lost their roots: they neither acknowledge their past nor possess a future. Thus, the fourth estate has become the representative of history. The mass is the end, a radical nothingness.

What, then, remains for the "mass man" with his climacteric soul? Only three things: politics, technology, and sports. In the era of civilization, the political giftedness of the human community amounts to nothing more than the electorate's trust in leadership; it is a time of constant referendums and impeachments. From that moment on, sociology steps onto the stage like an ancient chorus, as a product of civilization, for the object of its study has crystallized definitively.

The renowned contemporary philosopher S. Huntington—the architect of the theory of the "clash of civilizations" (1996)—was the first to articulate a concept whereby civilizational differences would become the primary cause of conflicts in the post-communist world. The conflict between civilizations will represent the final stage in the evolution of conflict in the modern world; thus, nation-states will continue to be the most influential actors on the global stage.

Therefore, peoples and languages, gods and nations, wars, sciences, and philosophies—all of these appeared to Spengler as symbols that must be interpreted using the method of analogy—the most significant historical method. The correspondences between integral calculus and the politics of Louis XIV, between Euclidean geometry and the Greek polis, between telephone communication and credit transactions cannot be deemed superficial or contrived. These correspondences are profound and significant. Spengler’s historiographical concept attempts to expand the horizons of traditional historical science. After The Decline of the West, he occupies a position as a true patron of historiography. Hegel's philosophy of history and Spengler's philosophy of history correlate as follows:

• as a school discipline and a university science,
• as Euclidean geometry and Lobachevskian geometry,
• as Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics,
• as a printing press and an Apple Macintosh computer by Gutenberg in publishing.

Thus, let us summarize:

1. World history is the history of states, where the state is always an immobile history, while history itself is a mobile state.
2. Any nation is always represented by a minority. The internal organization of a nation (monarchy, democracy, etc.) always has but one goal—to be "in form" for external struggle.
3. There is no best, truly just state ever conceived and subsequently realized.
4. If history teaches anything, it is merely that there is no actor who cannot be killed.
5. Social relations can be overturned, but their essence cannot be altered through revolution.
6. Dictatorship is not required to protect the revolution, as Lenin claimed; rather, revolution is undertaken to establish dictatorship (Robespierre and the Jacobins, Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks).
7. Today, the primary question in the philosophy of history is the problem of civilization, and the most significant conflicts of the future will occur at the so-called cultural boundaries that separate these civilizations.
8. In the coming world, there will be no single universal civilization, but rather diverse ones, each of which must learn to coexist with the others.
9. The beginning of history is marked by the deepest secret dreams, emotional experiences, and fear of the future, while its end is marked only by intellectual (almost mathematical) clarity.
10. Biological periods and rhythms again replace historical epochs...