A thinker who predicted the decline of European civilization. Briefly about O. Spengler's book "The Decline of Europe

Spengler has several cultures: Chinese, Indian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, European, Arab, Mayan culture. All of them are completely independent. The very intervals in the development of cultures are incommensurable. In Europe, cumulative comprehension. Gradually developing, sciences, arts appear, everything else is just a testing ground for this. Spengler - and on the basis of what is such a statement? Why is Europe the quintessence of cultural development?

Other cultures have existed for millennia and could repeat the path of European development n-th number of times. But they had other values ​​and they went the other way. Cultures: Greco-Roman, Arabic and European. At the heart of Greco-Roman culture is the Apollonian soul, as a kind of symbol of the Greeks' desire for beauty. Arabs - magical soul (principal bifurcation of the soul and body). European culture is a Faustian soul. A person is dissatisfied with his existence, and he begins to rush about. Dynamics, expansion, aggressiveness. Source souls give rise to cultures. Culture is birth and youth, civilization is old age. At the level of culture there are spiritual beginnings, at the level of civilization there is a structural beginning (petrification of the soul). Culture is characterized by poetry. At the stage of civilization - philosophy (mind). Culture - religion, faith.

Civilization - atheism, unbelief, sects. Culture is a high stage of morality, ethical behavior and the impossibility of doing otherwise. Civilization is right. Fear of punishment. Culture is an art (in the global sense of the word). Greeks - Olympics, sculpture. The word agon is an element of competition. At the stage of civilization - sport as a way of life. Every story goes through all these metamorphoses. Civilization is the sunset of this or that history. "The Decline of Europe" (18). It was a wild success. She equalized the losers and the winners. Europe lost, not only Germany. All cultures have experienced the stage of civilization. Expansion, the desire to conquer others, at the expense of them to profit culturally. Since there are independent cultures, there is homology, similarity in the development of individual elements. There are fundamental differences in the understanding of things. The attitude of the Greeks to the number was fundamentally different. The Greek symbol for number is the Doric column, a monad bounded from above. There were no negative numbers (no negative things).

For Europeans, the symbol of the number is a Gothic temple (aimed at infinity). Time is the engine of civilization. Watches - the most terrible invention - a symbol of the inexorability of time. Antiquity did not know such a time. Attitude towards eternity in general and about human life in different cultures different. In Europe (burial) is one thing, in Ancient Greece (burning) is another. In Egypt, mummification. The appearance of decadent movements: Buddhism, stoicism, socialism - are aimed at leveling the individual (depriving culture of patronage). Spengler is in solidarity with Nietzsche, believing that socialism continues the doctrine of the uprising of moral slaves. He does not predict the end of history at all. One type of possible new culture is Russian-Siberian.

O. Spengler, the author of the world-famous work “The Decline of Europe”, considered reality to be a projection of the soul into the area of ​​the extended world. Being in the process of becoming, in the power of fate, the world is just a symbol and a sign of the one who perceives it. Spengler proceeded from the thesis that there are as many worlds as there are people and cultures, and each such world "turns out to be a constantly new, one-time, never-repeated experience."

Religion for Spengler was the implementation of the language of forms of culture. He singled out three forms of culture and, accordingly, expressions of the spiritual element: Apollonian, Faustian and magical, which are the Cause of the emergence of religion. The source of the religious outlook is the enmity between the soul and the world; fear of a world that is in the process of becoming, causes in the human soul the desire to create certain forms in which the religious needs of the individual are embodied. The causes of religion, from the point of view of Spengler, are rooted in the Intuitive Experience by the soul of the process of life, fate (the inevitability of death), time and temporality of being. There is a bifurcation of reality in the consciousness of the individual into, so to speak, the secular world of the human soul and its religious world. The soul is aware of its loneliness among a world alien to it, which is represented by the kingdom of dark forces, the embodiment of evil, therefore, in confrontation with reality, it creates a world of culture, the essence of which is religion.

According to Spengler, there are two types of deep fear. The first, inherent even in animals, is before space as such, its overwhelming power, before death. The second is before time, the flow of being, life. The first type of fear gives rise to the cult of ancestors, the second - the cult of the gods and nature.

It is religion, according to Spengler, that frees from both types of fear. There are different forms of liberation: sleep; mysteries, prayer, etc. The highest form of liberation is the religious overcoming of fear, which occurs through self-knowledge. Then “the conflict between the microcosm and the macrocosm becomes something that we can love, that we can completely immerse ourselves in. We call it faith, and it is the beginning of man's intellectual activity." Faith in God for a person is salvation from a sense of power and the inevitability of fate. Only with the help of faith is overcome the fear of the unknown and mysterious, because faith is the basis of knowledge of the world. Knowledge is only a later form of faith.

Religion is the soul of every culture, Spengler believed, culture is not free to make a choice in favor of irreligiousness. Religion, like culture, is inherent in all aspects of organic life. It goes through the stages of emergence, growth, prosperity, decline and death. “Cultures are organisms. World history is their common biography. Huge story Chinese or ancient culture is a morphologically exact likeness of the microhistory of an individual person, some animal, tree or flower, ”wrote Spengler,

Biologism (consideration by analogy with organic life) in relation to religion, spiritual life and culture in general, Spengler combined with an attempt to show the historical development of the religious worldview within the framework of various forms culture. The very concept of religion in Spengler was interpreted ambiguously, approaching in meaning either myth or metaphysics. Religious experience finds its expression in myth (this is theory) and cult activities (this is technique). Both require a high degree of development of human worldview and are born either by fear or by love. Based on this, Spengler divided all mythology into two types - the mythology of fear (characteristic of primitive religious ideas) and the mythology of love (characteristic, for example, of early Christianity and later mysticism).

Spengler believed that civilization (which he identified with the decline and death of culture) is characterized, first of all, by the development of atheism and the theory of socialism; “Hellenic-Roman stoicism is atheistic to the same extent as socialism and Buddhism of Western European and Indian modernity - often with the most respectful use of the word“ God ””. In essence, he considered atheism as one of the varieties of the religious worldview.He singled out ancient, Arabic, Western atheism.Spengler called Nietzsche's thesis about the death of God "dynamic atheism", meaning "the godlessness of infinite space".Religious and atheistic worldviews, according to Spengler, were united in essentially spiritual phenomena, the difference between them lies in the fact that the basis is the belief in the opposite: the affirmation of the idea of ​​God and its denial.Considering religion as metaphysics, the philosopher believed that religion is “... otherworldliness, wakefulness in the midst of the world in the evidence of the senses illuminates only the foreground; religion is life in the supersensible and with the supernatural. natural, and where there is not enough power to possess such vigilance, or even to believe in it, there true religion ceases to exist. Despite the relativistic consideration different cultures, all of them, according to Spengler, are characterized by the presence of religion as the basis of society. The decline of the religious worldview entails the death of culture.

"FALL OF THE WEST" AND GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY
(public introduction)

A public introduction is not written for professionals.

This is an appeal to the reader who opens Spengler's book and has no prejudice. Our wish is to look at the “Contents” of “The Decline of Europe”, evaluate the scale of the topic stated in the “Introduction”, the material and the way it is presented in the next six chapters, and it will be difficult for you to disagree with N. A. Berdyaev and S. L. Frank in the fact that O. Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" is indisputably the most brilliant and remarkable, almost a brilliant phenomenon in European literature since Nietzsche. These words were spoken in 1922, when the phenomenal success of Spengler's book (in two years, from 1918 to 1920, 32 editions of volume 1 were published) made her idea the subject of close attention of the outstanding minds of Europe and Russia.

"Der Untergang des Abendlandes" - "The Fall of the West" (as they also translate "The Decline of Europe") was published in two volumes by Spengler in Munich in 1918-1922. Collection of articles by N. A. Berdyaev, Ya. M. Bukshpan, A. F. Stepun, S. L. Frank "Oswald Spengler and the Decline of Europe" was published by the publishing house "Bereg" in Moscow in 1922. In Russian "The Fall of the West ” sounded like “The Decline of Europe” (V. 1. “Image and Reality”). The publication, translated by N. F. Garelin, was carried out by L. D. Frenkel in 1923 (Moscow - Petrograd) with a preface by prof. A. Deborin "The Death of Europe, or the Triumph of Imperialism", which we omit.

The unusually semantic and informative “Content” of the book “The Decline of Europe” is in itself a way of presenting the author of his work to the reading public, almost forgotten in our time. This is not a list of topics, but a multidimensional, voluminous, intellectual, colorful and attractive image of precisely the “Decline” of Europe as a phenomenon of world history.

And immediately the eternal theme “The Form of World History” begins to sound, which introduces the reader to the action-packed problem of the 20th century: how to determine the historical future of mankind, being aware of the limitations of the visually popular division of world history by the generally accepted scheme “ Ancient world- Middle Ages - New time?

Let us note that Marx also divided world history into triads, dialectically generated by the development of productive forces and the class struggle. In Hegel's famous triad "Subjective spirit - Objective spirit - Absolute spirit" of world history, a modest place is given to world history as one of the stages of the externally universal self-realization of the world spirit in law, morality and the state, the stage on which the absolute spirit only steps in order to appear in forms of art adequate to itself. , religion and philosophy.

However, that Hegel and Marx, Herder and Kant, M. Weber and R. Collingwood! Look through history textbooks: they still introduce world history in the same way that they did at the beginning of the 20th century. questioned Spengler and in which New Time is only expanded recent history allegedly started in 1917. Newest period world history in school textbooks is still interpreted as the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to communism.

The mystical trinity of epochs in the highest degree attractive to the metaphysical taste of Herder, Kant and Hegel, Spengler wrote. We see that it is not only for them: it is acceptable for the historical-materialistic taste of Marx, it is also acceptable for the practical-axiological taste of Max Weber, i.e., for the authors of any philosophy of history, which they consider to be some kind of final stage. spiritual development humanity. Even the great Heidegger, wondering what is the essence of the New Age, relied on the same triad.

What disgusted Spengler in this approach, why already at the beginning of the 20th century. such absolute standards and values ​​as the maturity of the mind, humanity, the happiness of the majority, economic development, enlightenment, the freedom of peoples, the scientific worldview, etc., he could not accept as principles of the philosophy of history, explaining its formational, stage, epochal division ( “like some kind of tapeworm, tirelessly building up epoch after epoch”)?

What facts did not fit into this scheme? Yes, first of all, the obvious decadence (i.e., “fall” - from cado - “I fall” (Latin)) of the great European culture in late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, which, according to Spengler's morphology of history, generated the first World War that broke out in the center of Europe, and the socialist revolution in Russia.

The world war as an event and the socialist revolution as a process in the Marxist formation concept are interpreted as the end of the capitalist social formation and the beginning of the communist one. Spengler interpreted both of these phenomena as signs of the fall of the West, and European socialism declared the phase of the decline of culture, identical, according to its chronological dimension, to Indian Buddhism (from 500 AD) and Hellenistic-Roman Stoicism (200 AD). .). This identification could be considered a whim (for those who did not accept Spengler's axiomatics) or a simple, formal consequence of the concept of world history as the history of higher cultures, in which each culture appears as a living organism. However, Spengler's providence regarding the fate of socialism in Europe, Russia, Asia, the definition of its essence expressed already in 1918 (“socialism - contrary to external illusions - is by no means a system of mercy, humanism, peace and care, but is a system of will to power. All the rest is self-deception”) – make us look closely at the principles of such an understanding of world history.

Today, after three quarters of the 20th century, during which European and Soviet socialism arose, developed and died out, one can evaluate in a different way both the predictions of O. Spengler and the historical arrogance (which led to a historical mistake) of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin (“No matter how the Spenglers whimper” about the decline of “old Europe,” this is just “only one of the episodes in the history of the fall of the world bourgeoisie, gorged on imperialist robbery and oppression of the majority of the world’s population.” Indeed, V. I. Lenin and K. Marx saw in the dictatorship of the proletariat an instrument of necessary state violence in the name of creating a society of socialist justice, peace and humanism, but revolutionary practice has shown that such a system of violence continuously reproduces itself as a system of such a will to power that sucks out natural resources, the vitality of peoples and destabilizes the global situation.

Almost simultaneously with The Decline of Europe (1923), Albert Schweitzer, the great humanist of the 20th century, published his article The Decay and Revival of Culture, in which the decline of European culture was also interpreted as a tragedy on a global scale, and not as an episode in the history of the fall world bourgeoisie. If, according to O. Spengler, “sunset” cannot be converted into “sunrise” at all, then A. Schweitzer believed in this “sunrise”. For this, from his point of view, it was necessary for European culture to regain a solid ethical foundation. As such a basis, he proposed his "ethics of reverence for life" and up to the 60s. practically followed it, not losing faith in it even after two world wars and all the revolutions of the 20th century.

In 1920 Max Weber's famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published. From Weber's point of view, the "fall of the West" is out of the question. The core of European culture (theories of state and law, music, architecture, literature) is universal rationalism, generated by it long ago, but received universal meaning just in the 20th century. Rationalism is the basis of European science, and above all mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, the basis of the “rational capitalist enterprise” with its production, exchange, accounting for capital in monetary form, with the desire for continuously regenerating profits.

However, it is precisely this universal rationalism and the will to economic and political power(whether in a capitalist or in a socialist hypostasis) Spengler considered the sunset of a thousand-year-old Western European culture, i.e. its transition to the stage of civilization.

So, at least three fundamental concepts of the future of Western European culture were formed in the 1920s:

O. Spengler: rationalistic civilization is the degradation of the highest spiritual values ​​of culture, and that is doomed;

A. Schweitzer: the decline of culture has philosophical and ethical reasons, it is not fatal, and culture can be saved by pouring into it the Ethics of “reverence for life”;

M. Weber: European culture cannot be measured by the old value criteria, they were replaced by universal rationality, which changes the idea of ​​this culture, and therefore there can be no talk of its death.

Our century is coming to an end. It brought unprecedented and unthinkable in the XIX century. catastrophe, global change way of human existence. Rational science brought planetary technology to life. Mankind has begun space exploration. Genetic engineering, cyber-organismal technologies for changing the physical and spiritual properties of a person have been found, non-technological ones have been rediscovered and technological methods have been applied to expand the capabilities of the psyche. Apocalyptic dangers hang over mankind. In a matter of years, classical capitalism left the historical arena (giving way to the post-industrial and information society), the European socialist system. Environmental disasters have become commonplace. The population of the planet is rapidly approaching the critical threshold. And therefore now the only important global issue Will humanity be able to avoid self-destruction? And here we can not do without referring to the classics - pessimists and optimists. Yes, O. Spengler predicted the decline of culture, but M. Weber and A. Schweitzer had a different opinion on this matter. It is fundamentally important which of them turned out to be more right. But let the reader solve this problem for himself. Martin Heidegger also solved a similar global problem in a series of post-war reports “Einblick in das, was ist” (“Insight into what is,” as V. V. Bibikhin translated it). Heidegger, quoting lines from Hölderlin's Patmos:

But where there is danger, there it grows
And saving ... -

made a significant conclusion: “The closer we come to danger, the brighter the paths to salvation begin to shine. The more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought.

Let us also ask, and above all Spengler, who noted that the fall of the West is, of course, a separate phenomenon of world history, but also “a philosophical theme that, if it is appreciated, contains all the great questions of being.” He referred to such questions as: What is culture? What is world history?

What is the difference between the existence of the world as history and the existence of the world as nature? What is the great crisis of our time?

So what is culture? According to our observations, no one in the literature has yet been able to define culture indisputably and definitively. Only in the academic Soviet cultural studies of recent years have been put forward regulative-activity, holistic, formational, teleological (target), essential-semantic, country-specific, production-productive, demographic, locally-typical, value, system and other approaches to the definition of the concept of culture.

The superorganic concept of culture in The cultural geography of the United States is based on the following general definition: “Culture consists of explicit and implicit forms that determine behavior, mastered and mediated through symbols; it arises as a result of the activities of groups of people, including their embodiment in means. The essential grain of culture consists of traditional (historically developed and isolated) ideas and especially the values ​​assigned to them. Cultural systems can be considered, on the one hand, as the results of activity, on the other hand, as a regulatory element. further activities» W. Zelinsky (USA) proposed to understand culture as a supra-biological organism that lives and changes according to its internal laws. The components of culture in W. Zelinski are the same as in those of J. Huxley - artifacts, sociofacts, mentifacts. Artifacts are the basic means of life support (for a wide range of subsystems) of anthropic origin. Sociofacts are elements of the culture of interpersonal relations. Mentifacts are universal values ​​(religions, ideologies, ethics, art, philosophy) that bind together all representatives of a given culture.

In a less broad sense, culture is usually regarded as a class of things and phenomena, depending on the symbolism of supra-somatic (out-of-body) content.

In the heyday of culture, noted A. Schweitzer, it is not defined, because that culture is progress, it is clear to everyone and so. The need for a definition of culture arises where a dangerous mixture of culture and lack of culture begins. Culture is focused on the spiritual and moral perfection of man. Culture, according to Schweitzer, is composed of man's dominance over the forces of nature and over himself, when a person coordinates his thoughts and passions with the interests of society, that is, with moral requirements. A. Schweitzer was aware of the demoralization of man by society, which was in full swing. He came close to understanding "the terrible truth, which is that as the historical development of society and the progress of its economic life, the possibilities for the prosperity of culture do not expand, but narrow." And the fault of European philosophy is that this truth has remained unconscious.

But the fact of the matter is that European philosophical thought in the person of Oswald Spengler this terrible truth proclaimed urbi et orbi. And this is easy to verify. The price of this truth is high: culture is the highest form of life, a historical superorganism, and every organism is mortal. Human history is nothing but a stream of existence of super-organisms - "Egyptian culture", "ancient culture", "Chinese culture", etc. But in this case, European culture must also become dilapidated in due time - and there is nothing extraordinary in this. We have seen that modern scientists interpret culture as a suprabiological organism. However, they do not dare to draw the conclusion that Spengler made on the first page of his book - "living cultures die!" Decide on this, and the decline of culture will become great for them too. philosophical theme. For what is life, and therefore also death, what is being and nothingness, what is spirit and immortality, in essence, no one knows. And in order to understand the danger that threatens cultures, is it not better to heed the arguments of Spengler than the panicked groans of the alarmists? So, if culture is an organism that has lived for about a thousand years, if in world history Spengler identifies eight cultures (Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Byzantine-Arabic, Western European, Mayan culture) ”and Predicts the birth and flourishing of Russian culture, then culture has its own forms - people, language, era, state, art, science, law, religion, worldview, economy, etc. In a word, each culture has its own face, physiognomy, and therefore the second chapter of the book begins with the paragraph “Physiognomy and systematics".

Physiognomy is the doctrine that a person expresses himself in facial features, gestures and postures, body shapes. Physiognomy is strikingly different from the doctrine of the essence, which is not directly given, which "is." The appearance of something is given visually, it cannot be reduced to one property, sign, without distorting this appearance. At the same time, external appearance is an extra-rational analogue of a categorically expressed essence. The essence is expressed rationally - Rene Descartes wrote about this 360 years ago, in "Regulae ad directionern inqenii", i.e. "Rules for the direction of the mind."

So, in order to understand the morphology of Spengler's history, you need to reflect on the subject of physiognomy, its possibilities and the possibilities of physiognomy of world history! For what? In order, said Spengler, "to survey the entire phenomenon of historical mankind with the eye of God, like a series of peaks of a mountain range on the horizon." Capacious words! They feel Nietzsche's "pathos of distance" from the crowd and the pathos of Copernicus, who rebelled against Ptolemaic geocentrism, and the pathos of proclaiming the equivalence of any cultures, fed, in particular, by Einstein's principle of relativity.

Spengler was sure that the "morphology of world history" as a way of seeing the world would still gain recognition. And he turned out to be right: let's take a look at what is happening on the planet and see that there is a struggle against the unification of values ​​and living standards, against the power of those who determine these values ​​and standards. The fierce struggle for national sovereignty in the territory former USSR gave rise to the "Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms", which proclaimed the rights to the native language, to the preservation and development of national culture. The assertion and strengthening of the cultural authenticity of nations has been put forward as one of the four main goals of the World Decade of Culture (1988-1997), declared by UNESCO.

The desire of modern ethnic groups and cultures to have “faces with a non-common expression”, the rejection of civil, linguistic, class, religious, educational unification directly works for the following prediction of Spengler: “In a hundred years, all sciences that can still grow on our soil will be parts of a single huge physiognomy of everything human."

In contrast to living and animated matter, the morphology of culture, history and life, called their physiognomy, Spengler calls the morphology of dead (mechanical, physical) forms of nature systematics, that is, a science that discovers and brings into system the laws of nature and causal relationships. In a word, physiognomy and systematics are two ways of observing the world. Which one is more productive? Any natural scientist, a rationalist by conviction, will answer unequivocally: the most productive method is the method of revealing causal, causal determination through observation, measurement, experiment and formulating the mathematical form of the law.

However, Spengler was not satisfied with the previous methods of cognition of history - both rationalistic and axiological. Therefore, he created his own method, and various aspects of this method are revealed in The Decline of Europe.

New, original and deep, always seems strange. So Spengler demonstrates his "oddities" all the time.

The main “strangeness” is presented in the second paragraph of the chapter “The Problem of World History”, which introduces the idea of ​​two forms of cosmic necessity: causality as the fate of an organic form (culture) and causality as a physicochemical, cause-and-effect causality. The “idea of ​​fate” and the “principle of causality” are, according to Spengler, two forms of necessity that exist in our universe and are not reducible to one another; two logics - the logic of the organic and the logic of the inorganic; two ways of representation - image and law; two ways of voluminous givenness - the temporal irreversibility of fate in history, their temporal extension and finiteness, and the spatial extension of natural objects; two ways of calculation - chronological and mathematical.

Spengler argues that Nature and History are two ways of representing reality in the picture of the world.

In other words. History and Nature are two outcomes of experiencing and assimilation of the surrounding world, in the first case - as a sum of images, pictures and symbols (obtained with the help of imagination and not "objective", but only possible), in the second - as a set of laws, formulas, systems etc.

Reality becomes Nature if this becoming is regarded as having become, and then these are the worlds of Parmenides and Descartes, Kant and Newton. Reality is History, if what has become subject to becoming, considering it in images, and then the worlds of Plato and Rembrandt, Goethe and Beethoven arise.

Spengler makes a very strong statement: mathematics and the principle of causality determine the systematization of phenomena according to the method of natural science (natural science), chronology and the idea of ​​fate - according to the historical (culturology as the morphology of history). These systematizations cover the whole world. It is clear that this statement is objected to by many. So, Heidegger asked: why do we talk about the picture of the world when interpreting a certain historical epoch? Does each epoch of history have its own picture of the world and is concerned about building its own picture of the world, or is it just a new European way of representing the world? what does the picture of the world mean? After all, the world is space and history. And do nature and history necessarily exhaust the whole world? Indeed, Heidegger found vulnerabilities in the concept of "The Decline of Europe". But, perhaps, Spengler consciously limited himself to the fatalistic conclusion that follows from the idea of ​​fate - the conclusion about the inevitable fall of the West (as Arthur Schopenhauer a hundred years before him). Martin Heidegger identified the transformation of the world into its picture with the process of transforming a person into a subject, i.e. with the beginning of such a human existence, when the mastery of reality (“the whole being”) is planned. Heidegger showed that only where the world becomes a humanized picture is humanism as such possible. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of slipping into the ugliness of subjectivism in the sense of individualism (personal, state, national). Heidegger saw “an almost absurd, but fundamental process of modern European history: the wider and more radically a person disposes of the conquered world, the more objective the object becomes, the more subjective, i. in the science of man, in anthropology. Anthropology is conceived here as moral and ethical anthropology, as humanism in the historical and philosophical sense. This is how Heidegger makes an ontological (man becomes the essence of being) generalization of the idea of ​​the Beggar's superman, the superman who masters his own mode of existence as a culture of non-deterministic biography, the world as history in the world as nature. Now you understand what worldview Oswald Spengler justified in the idea of ​​the fate of high cultures, as opposed to two forms of universal necessity - natural and historical and cultural, when life and culture, as its highest historical form, challenge natural determinism in the sense formulated by M. Heidegger, and which is taken as an epigraph to our Public Introduction: "Being never proceeds within the framework of cause-and-effect relationships."

Thus, the meaning of the connection between the geoplanetary situation in the 20th century, the image of which was created global issues humanity, and the possibility for humanity, suppressed by the forces of nature and its laws (embodied in super technology) to become a planetary subject, shaping its own destiny in spite of the cruel rationalism of nature and intellect.

At the same time, we emphasize that we should not get carried away with the modernization of the philosophy of history as a morphology of higher cultures. In fact, Spengler never for a moment had the thought of a possible end human history, about the self-destruction of mankind and the destruction of the biosphere as a planetary habitat by it, about the possibility of subordinating mankind to the Megamachine, which Heidegger, Jaspers, Berdyaev thought about in two or three decades, and which the globalists of the Club of Rome no longer doubted in the early 70s. So, Aurelio Peccei appealed to humanity: the fate of man as a species is at stake, and there will be no salvation for him until he changes his human qualities! True trouble human species at this stage of his evolution, that he was unable to adapt to the changes that he himself brought into this world.

Global alarmism was not Spengler's style, although he said that "humanity" is an empty word, because for him there was only "the phenomenon of many powerful cultures, with primitive strength growing from the bowels of their country, to which they are strictly attached to everything throughout its existence, and each of them imposes on its material - humanity - its own form, each has its own idea, its own passions, its own life, desires and feelings, and, finally, its own death.

Only absolute conviction in the inexhaustibility of humanity as a “material” for an endless, uninterrupted process of shaping new, unique cultures allowed Spengler to reproach European thinkers with trivial optimism about the future of higher humanity and its goals. He stubbornly argued that "humanity" has no purpose, no idea, no plan, just as butterflies or orchids have no purpose. In world history, he said, I see a picture of eternal formation and change, miraculous becoming and dying of organic forms. This is a property of the living nature of Goethe, and not of the dead nature of Newton.

The inhabitants of our planet in the second half of this century fully felt the reality of what the great Europeans, humanists and rationalists could never imagine - a nuclear, ecological, civilizational apocalypse. And now Spengler's absolute conviction in the eternity of the flowering of life and culture on Earth seems just as naive as the belief of European thinkers in the infinity of the New Age.

At the end of the XX century. the idea of ​​the historical frailty of world cultures, philosophies and religions is replaced by the awareness of a very possible self-destruction modern civilization, i.e., the possible end of history, and it is this awareness that can become the absolute consciousness of a new planetary subject - Supermankind, as imagined by M. Heidegger, P. Teilhard de Chardin, Nikolai Berdyaev.

The word "civilization" is now used in several meanings: as the opposite of savagery and barbarity, as the current state of Western society, as a synonym for the word "culture" to designate cultural and historical types in historical concept the greatest modern historian Arnold Toynbee. For Spengler, civilization is the completion, the outcome of culture, each culture ends with its own civilization. That is why, in The Decline of Europe, Western civilization appears as the inevitable fate of Western culture, as its decadence.

It is easiest to understand civilization as the decadence of a given culture by looking at the examples of the degeneration of other cultures. Here Spengler writes that Roman civilization is barbarism that followed the flourishing Hellenic culture, when soulless philosophy, sensual arts are cultivated, inflaming animal passions, when law regulates relations between people and gods, when people value exclusively material things, when life moves to the "world city ”, when cold practical intellect replaces ardent and noble spirituality, when atheism supplants religions, and money becomes a universal value, devoid of a living connection with the fertility of the earth, talent and hard work - and we are convinced that these are, indeed, signs of the decline of ancient culture.

And one more paradox: power - political, economic, military, administrative-state and legal - Spengler presents as the main sign of imperialism at the stages of the transformation of any culture into civilization. Therefore, for him, the existence of Babylonian, Egyptian, Andean, Chinese, Roman imperialism is undeniable. Hence, in his opinion, the "simultaneity" of all imperialisms, no matter what centuries and countries they dominate. So what, and our "great Russian", Slavic, culture "stopped its course"? Did Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Blok, Bunin really foresee or foresee this, and Nekrasov definitely got into the “temporary object” with his “everything you could, you have already done - / Created a song like a groan; / And spiritually rested forever?” It seems so. After all, according to Spengler's method, the very bitterness about the decline of one's culture is the first sign of its decadence. Indeed, a flourishing culture is a powerful major statement of life, for example, in the poetry of the "sunny", early A. S. Pushkin. But the reflective late Pushkin is already decadent. The urbanization of mega-cities, the opposition between the "center" and the "province" are signs of civilization. The center, or "world city," as Spengler says, absorbs and concentrates the life of an entire country. Spiritual, political, economic decisions are made not by the whole country, but by three or four "world cities", which absorb the best human material of the country, and it descends to the position of a province. “In the world city,” writes Spengler, “there is no people, but there is a mass. Its inherent misunderstanding of tradition, the struggle against which is a struggle against culture, against the nobility, the church, privileges, dynasties, traditions in art, the boundaries of what is known in science, its superior peasant mind sharp and cold rationality, its naturalism of a completely new type, going much further back than Rousseau and Socrates, and directly adjoining in sexual and social questions with primitive human instincts and living conditions, that “panern et circenses”, which in our days comes to life under the guise of a struggle for wages and sporting events - all these are signs of a new in relation to the finally completed culture and to the province, late and devoid of a future, but inevitable form of human existence.

We have given in full one of Spengler's brilliant passages, which amaze with the depth of insight and at the same time cause uncontrollable resistance, rejection of this inevitability. We have yet to read a work on "The Decline of Europe" whose author did not rebel against this statement about the inevitability of the decadence of culture, whether it be the culture of Europe or Russia. At the same time, the decadence of the great cultures of antiquity is perceived “free of judgment”, as M. Weber would say.

Apparently, the distance of millennia and the alienation of other cultures remove the pathos of rejection. But the invariably condescending attitude towards the "gloomy pessimist" Spengler of those who receive a charge of optimism from other philosophical, religious, ethical and socio-doctrinal sources. In our time, these "sources" trivialize, reduce to the level of "ordinary" many of the most acute global problems.

But Spengler was just as sincere when he exclaimed: who does not understand that nothing will change the inevitable, that one must either wish for this, or desire nothing at all, that one must either accept this fate, or despair in the future and in life, who rushes with with its provincial idealism and longs to resurrect the lifestyle of past times, he must give up understanding history, experiencing history, making history!

A new article by Yevgeny Chernyshev, a permanent observer of the resource, shows how accurately the Western European philosopher Oswald Spengler described almost a hundred years ago everything that we are seeing in the West today. And the name Spengler picked up a curious one: "The Decline of Europe."

"Many write about history. Only a few comprehend it. One of these geniuses was Oswald Spengler (1880 - 1936). The main work of his whole life is The Decline of Europe (the first volume was published in 1918, the second - in 1922). In this truly great In his work, he gives a deep understanding of the philosophy of history.Just as everything that exists is born, grows stronger, reaches maturity and then inevitably fades away, dying and returning to the eternal cosmic stream of life, so cultures in their development go through the same life stages.

Developing the concept of cultures as the largest historical organisms, which are based on their own unique soul, he describes the impending and already clearly observed decline of the stony Western civilization, the sunset is predetermined and inevitable. Civilization according to Spengler is inevitable fate any culture; it is what remains when a culture dies, passing into ossified forms of all-consuming technicism, meaninglessness and sterility.

I would like to present to the reader who is not familiar with "The Decline of Europe" Spengler's vision of the fate of the West, its state forms and Western democracies, as well as the fate of "international law", which the West has turned into banditry before our eyes. Today, these questions are of great concern to many, and, despite the belief in infinite progress learned from the school bench, we intuitively and in some kind of transcendent premonition feel something incomprehensibly sinister and inevitable hanging over the “civilized world”. His vision is so relevant that it seems as if it was said today! (Italics are mine.)

« Sovereignty, sovereignty is a life symbol of a higher order. The strength of leadership is an undeniable sign of the vitality of political unity, and to such an extent that the shock of existing authority turns the whole nation into an object of foreign policy, and very often forever ...

[From England] came the unceremonious use of money in politics - not the bribery of individual high-ranking personalities, which was characteristic of the Spanish and Venetian style, but the processing of the democratic forces themselves. here in the 18th century. for the first time, parliamentary elections are systematically organized with the help of money, and then - by them - the resolutions of the lower house are carried out, and as for the ideal of freedom of the press, the fact was also discovered here that the press serves those who own it. It does not spread "free opinion", but creates it.

Together, both are liberal, that is, free from the fetters of earth-bound life. However, both of them are unashamedly oriented towards the domination of one estate, which does not recognize the sovereignty of the state over itself. A completely inorganic spirit and money desire the state, not as a naturally grown form with great symbolism, but as an institution serving one purpose ... Parliamentarism is in complete decline today. In fact, every modern election campaign is a civil war carried out by means of the ballot and various inciting means, speeches and writings.

Since the beginning of the XX century. parliamentarism, including English parliamentarism, is rapidly approaching the role that it itself prepared for royal power. Parliamentarianism becomes a performance that makes a deep impression on the crowd of believers, while the center of gravity of big politics is redistributed to private circles and the will of individuals... In two generations there will appear those whose will is stronger than the total will of all those who long for peace. Continents will be involved in these wars for the inheritance of the whole world, India, China, South Africa, Russia, Islam will be mobilized, new and supernova techniques and tactics will be introduced into the cause.

The only morality that the logic of things allows today is the morality of a climber on a steep ridge. A moment of weakness and it's all over. The whole of today's "philosophy" is nothing but internal capitulation and self-relaxation, and also a cowardly hope that with the help of mysticism it will be possible to elude the facts. It was the same in Rome… (Spengler puts “philosophy” in quotation marks not without reason. We, who live today, won’t we see the modern slobbering of “rights and freedoms” here? - E.Ch.)

"To be in shape" (in Verfassung) - everything now depends on it. It is the hardest time of all that the history of high culture knows.

In the beginning, where civilization is moving towards full bloom—i.e. today, the miracle of the world capital rises, this great stone symbol of everything formless, monstrous, magnificent, arrogantly spreading into the distance. It sucks up the streams of the existence of a powerless village, these human crowds, blown from place to place, like dunes, like flowing sand, flowing in streams between stones. Spirit and money are celebrating their greatest and final victory here. Money triumphed in the image of democracy. There was a time when only they did politics. However, as soon as they destroy the ancient cultural orders, a new, all-superior value, reaching to the fundamental principles of all formation, emerges from chaos: people of Caesarian cut. The forces of the blood, the primeval urges of all life, the unbroken bodily strength, once again assume the rights of their former dominion. The race breaks out in a pure and irresistible form: the strongest wins, and everything else is his prey.

Streams of blood in the era of struggling states have stained the pavements of all world capitals in order to turn the great truths of democracy into reality. Now these rights have been won, but even punishments cannot force grandchildren to use them. Another hundred years - and even historians no longer understand these old reasons for contention. Already by the time of Caesar, a decent public almost did not participate in the elections. In a speech for Sestia, Cicero points out that five people from each tribe are present at the plebiscites, who also belong to another tribe. However, these five come here only to sell themselves to those in power. But fifty years have not passed since the Italics for this very right to vote perished en masse.

Peace throughout the world—which has already reigned often—contains a private renunciation of war by the colossal majority, but at the same time their implicit readiness to become the prey of others who do not refuse war. It all starts with the desire for universal reconciliation, which undermines the foundations of the state, and ends with the fact that no one lifts a finger until the trouble affects only a neighbor.(How exactly a hundred years ago Spengler foresaw modern "European values"! - E.Ch.)

Modern means for long years will remain parliamentary: elections and the press. As for a free press, let the dreamers content themselves with the fact that it is constitutionally "free"; the connoisseur asks only about whose disposal it is ... The form of the ruling minority is constantly developing further - from the estate through the party to the retinue of the loner. Therefore, the end of democracy and its transition to Caesarism are expressed in the fact that not even the party of the third estate, not liberalism, disappears at all, but the party as a form in general. The frame of mind, the popular aims, the abstract ideals of all true party politics, are gone, and in their place is taken by private politics, the unfettered will to power of the few people of the race...

Democracy would have remained in the minds and on paper, if among its champions there were not genuine powerful natures, for whom the people are nothing more than an object, and ideals are nothing more than means, no matter how little they often realize it themselves. Absolutely everything, including the most shameless methods of demagogy, all this was developed by honest but practical democrats ...

At the beginning of a democracy, all operational space belongs to the spirit alone. There can be nothing nobler and purer than the night meeting on August 4, 1789, where people, having power in their hands, deliberated about universal truths, and at that time real authorities gathered their strength and pushed the dreamers aside. However, quite soon another component of any democracy declares itself, recalling that constitutional rights can be exercised only by having money ...

Finally, the feeling is awakened that universal suffrage does not contain any real right at all, even in relation to the choice between parties, because the power formations that have grown up on its soil, with the help of money, dominate all spiritual means of influence, directing the opinion of the individual at their own discretion.

Liberal bourgeois feeling prides itself on the abolition of censorship, that last limiter, while the dictator of the press drives the slavish crowd of his readers with the scourge of his editorials, telegrams and illustrations. . With the help of the newspaper, democracy completely ousted the book from the spiritual life of the masses. The book world, with its abundance of points of view, forcing thinking to choose and criticize, has become the property of only narrow circles. The people read one, “their own” newspaper, which daily in millions of copies penetrates into all houses, already early in the morning bewitches the minds with its charms and its very appearance dooms books to oblivion; and if this or that book nevertheless comes into view, the newspaper, undertaken in advance, switches off their action. The public truth of the moment, which alone matters in the actual world of action and success, is today a product of the press. What she desires is true. Its commanders create, transform, replace truths. Three weeks of press work and the whole world knew the truth...

The fights that take place today are reduced to snatching these weapons from each other. When the power of newspapers took its first innocent steps, it was limited by censorship, which defended the champions of tradition, and the bourgeoisie screamed that spiritual freedom was under threat. The reader does not notice anything, while his newspaper, and with it he himself, change their rulers. Money triumphs here too, forcing free minds to serve itself. The people, like a crowd of readers, are taken out into the streets, and it rushes at them, rushes to the designated target, threatens and breaks windows. A nod to the press headquarters - and the crowd calms down and goes home. The press today is an army carefully organized by branch of service, with journalistic officers and readers-soldiers. However, here it is the same as in any army: the soldier blindly obeys and the goals of the war and the plan of operation are changed without his knowledge. The reader does not know, and should not know, anything about what is being done to him, and he should not know what part he is playing in it. A more monstrous satire on the freedom of thought cannot be imagined. It was once forbidden to have the courage to think for yourself; it is now permitted, but the ability to do so has been lost. Everyone wants to think only what he should think, and takes it as his freedom...

And here is another side of this late freedom: everyone is allowed to say what he wants; however, the press is also free to choose whether or not to pay attention to it. It is capable of condemning any “truth” to death if it does not take it upon itself to communicate it to the world – a truly terrible censorship of silence, which is all the more omnipotent because the slavish crowd of newspaper readers absolutely does not notice its presence ...

This is the end of democracy. As English royalty in the 19th century, so parliament in the 20th century. slowly become a lush and empty spectacle. As in the first case, the scepter and the crown, so in the second, the rights of the people are carried with great ceremonies before the crowd, observing them the more scrupulously, the less they mean in practice. However, even today power is shifting from parliaments to private circles, and elections in our country, with the same steadfastness as in Rome, are degenerating into a comedy. Money organizes their entire course in the interests of those who have them, and the holding of elections becomes a predetermined game, staged as popular self-determination.

With the help of money, democracy destroys itself - after money has destroyed the spirit. The capitalist economy has disgusted everyone to the point of disgust. There is hope for salvation that will come from somewhere else, hope associated with the tone of honor and chivalry, inner aristocracy, selflessness and duty.

*Cit. Quoted from: Spengler O. The Decline of Europe. Essays on the morphology of world history. T.2. World-historical perspectives / Per. with him. and note. I.I. Makhankov. - M.: Thought, 1998. - 606 p.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution

higher professional education

"Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin"

Institute of Social and Political Sciences

Department of International Relations

Department of European Studies

Report on the topic:

"Oswald Spengler: The Decline of Europe"

Work completed:

1st year student of FMO

group sp-122105(r-103)

Gubaidulina Snezhana

Yekaterinburg city

l civilization

Introduction

1. "The Decline of the Western World"

2. Spengler's Philosophy of Culture

3. Soul of culture

4. The transition of culture to civilization

5. Differences of culture and civilization

6. Civilization as the death of culture

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Spengler Oswald (1880-1936), a prominent German philosopher, culturologist, historian, representative of the philosophy of life, creator of the cyclic theory, author of the sensational work "The Decline of Europe", which brought him the sensational glory of the prophet of the death of Western civilization. Only in the 20s. The first volume of this cultural bestseller went through 32 editions in many languages. His teaching was intended to overcome the mechanistic nature of the 19th-century global schemes for the evolution of culture as a single ascending process of the formation of world culture, where European culture acted as the pinnacle of human development.

The creative biography of the German thinker is unusual. The son of a petty postal clerk, Spengler did not have a university education and could only finish high school, where he studied mathematics and the natural sciences; As for history, philosophy and art history, in the mastery of which he surpassed many of his outstanding contemporaries, Spengler dealt with them independently, becoming an example of a self-taught genius. Spengler's official career was limited to the position of a gymnasium teacher, which he voluntarily left in 1911.

Oswald Spengler was born on May 29, 1880 in Blankenburg, Germany. Educated at Munich and Berlin Universities. Studied philosophy, history, mathematics and art. In 1904 he received his doctorate. He first worked as a teacher in Hamburg and then taught mathematics at the University of Munich.

1. "The Decline of the Western World"

In 1918, the first volume of Spengler's famous work, The Decline of the Western World, was published. In it, the author predicted the death of Western European and American civilizations, presenting history as a kaleidoscope of eight "organic" cultural and historical types: Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, magical (Byzantine-Arabic), Western European and Mayan culture. The ninth is the culture of the future, Russian-Siberian.

Citing a variety of historical data, Spengler tried to prove two main theses.

The first considered all cultures as organisms following the same pattern of development and death within the same historical cycle. All of them pass through the stages of pre-culture, culture and civilization and are marked by crises of the same type and similar events and figures. So, Alexander plays the same role in ancient culture as Napoleon in Western culture, Pythagoras and Luther, Aristotle and Kant, Stoics and socialists also correlate.

In accordance with the second thesis, each culture has its own unique "soul", expressed in art, thinking and activity.

2 Spengler's Philosophy of Culture

Like Nietzsche, he was a prominent exponent of the philosophy of life. He was also considered a classic of the civilizational approach to history, i.e. its consideration, when the historical subjects are not individual peoples and states, but their vast centuries-old conglomerates, united by a common, primarily spiritual culture. It was in this that Spengler repeated our compatriot

N.Ya. Danilevsky and, like him, was one of the most consistent critics of Eurocentrism and the theory of the continuous progress of mankind, considering Europe already a doomed and dying link. Spengler owns a widespread interpretation of the differences between the concepts of "culture" and "civilization", which he developed in detail in the book "The Decline of Europe".

In this book, he considers history as an alternation of cultures, each of which appears to them in the form of certain organisms isolated from each other, collective personalities, each of which, like the people who make them up, has a certain symbolic "great soul", "genetic code"; of them develops, flourishes, ages and dies. In addition to the "soul", each culture has its own "physiognomy", i.e. the changing expression of the "face" and "gestures", reflecting in the course of history the originality of this "soul" in the form of art and features of folk life.

With the advent of civilization, mass culture begins to predominate, artistic and literary creativity loses its significance, giving way to unspiritual technicalism and sports. In the 1920s, "The Decline of Europe", by analogy with the death of the Roman Empire, was perceived as a prediction of the apocalypse, the death of Western European society. History, as is known, has not confirmed Spengler's prophecies, and the new "Russian-Siberian" culture, which meant the so-called socialist society, has not yet come about. It is significant that some of Spengler's conservative-nationalist ideas were widely used by the ideologists of Nazi Germany.

The book opens with the words: "In this book an attempt will be made to determine the historical future." The German theorist creates his own method of studying history, within which he considers a number of cultural formations of antiquity, and, on the basis of the parallels he draws with modernity, tries to determine the fate of the West. It is no coincidence that in the introduction to his creation, Spengler spoke of the importance of using analogies, while noting that "the Technique of comparison does not yet exist", and argues that "here is the root hidden, from which only a broad solution to the problem of history can follow" . There are not many cases in the history of culture when treatise causes not only a reaction scientific community, but also the widest response in the minds of people far from the sphere scientific research culture.

At the same time, a fair criticism of traditional theories, a study of the current socio-cultural situation, an attempt to analyze the origins of the cultural crisis make "The Decline of Europe" extremely relevant.

The conclusions made by O. Spengler about the inevitable death of the West are disputed by many researchers of his work; he is criticized for excessive pessimism and lack of factual material, but at the same time no one doubts the value.

Spengler's book was not only research. It was a diagnosis book, a prophecy book. The author not only studies the history of culture, but also raises the question of the future of European culture, a question to which the author himself gives a disappointing and bitter answer. And in this capacity, Spengler's book is a warning. Thinking over the vast historical and cultural material, Spengler proposes to abandon the usual scheme for us "Ancient World - Middle Ages - Modern Times", in which the main stages of the development of world culture are usually traced.

Spengler renounces the desire to reduce the entire cultural-historical process to one core logic that permeates the whole of history and finds its completion at some highest point. For Spengler, there is no single world culture. There are only different cultures, each with its own destiny: "Humanity" has no idea, no plan...

3. Soul of culture

The own "idea" of each culture, which Spengler speaks of, is not at all analogous to the idea of ​​culture, as Hegel, for example, understands it. If Hegel's logic was primary, then Spengler's primary is the soul of culture. Logic, as well as art, science, politics, is always secondary in relation to this soul. In Spengler's understanding, culture is a symbolically expressed system in which the corresponding soul realizes itself: "Culture as a set of sensual expressions of the soul in gestures and labors, as its body, mortal, passing; culture as a set of great symbols of life, feeling and understanding: such language, which alone can tell the soul how it suffers.

It is of great importance what meaning Spengler acquires the term "soul" in relation to culture. For him, the term "soul of culture" is a vivid and at the same time precise expression of the fact that the basis of culture is irreducible to reason. Each culture has its own "soul" which is realized in many individual lives. The soul of each culture is unique and cannot be fully expressed by rational means. Therefore, it is so difficult to penetrate into the inner world of people of a different culture, to understand the nature of their symbols, feelings, beliefs: "Every great culture has a secret language of worldview, which is quite understandable only to those whose soul fully belongs to this culture."

Spengler dwells on the consideration of three historical cultures: ancient, European and Arab. They correspond to three "souls" - the Apollonian, which chose the sensual body as its ideal type; the Faustian soul, symbolized by boundless space, dynamism; magical soul, expressing the constant duel between soul and body, the magical relationship between them. From this follows the content of each of the cultures. Each culture passes through the age stages of an individual: childhood, youth, manhood and old age.

4. The transition of culture to civilization

“The closer a culture approaches the noon of its existence, the more courageous, sharp, imperious, saturated becomes its finally established language of forms, the more confident it becomes in the feeling of its strength, the clearer its features become. early period all this is still dark, vague, in search, full of dreary aspiration and at the same time fear. Finally, at the onset of old age of a beginning civilization, the fire of the soul is extinguished. The fading forces once again make an attempt, with half success - in classicism, akin to every dying culture - to express themselves in creativity on a large scale; the soul once again recalls with sadness in romance about its childhood. Finally, tired, lethargic and cold, she loses the joy of being and strives - as in the Roman era - from the millennial light back to the darkness of the first-hearted mysticism, back to her mother's womb, to the grave ... ".

For Spengler, all cultures are equal; each of them is unique and cannot be condemned from an external position, from the position of another culture. "The phenomenon of other cultures speaks a different language. For other people, there are other truths. For a thinker, either all of them or none of them are valid." Having concentrated his attention not on logic, but on the soul of culture, he was able to accurately notice the uniqueness of the European soul, the image of which can (as the author himself believes) be the soul of Goethe's Faust - rebellious, striving to overcome the world with its will.

Spengler believes that each culture has not only its own art, but also its own natural science and even its own unique nature, because. nature is perceived by man through culture. "Each culture already has a completely individual way of seeing and knowing the world - as nature, or - one and the same thing - each has its own, peculiar nature, which in exactly the same form cannot be possessed by any person of a different warehouse. But in addition higher degree, each culture has its own type of history, in the style of which it directly contemplates, feels and experiences the general and personal, internal and external, world-historical and biographical development.

According to Spengler, every culture is based on the soul, and culture is a symbolic body, the life embodiment of this soul. But all living things eventually die. A living being is born in order to realize his spiritual powers, which then fade away with old age and go into oblivion along with death. This is the fate of all cultures. Spengler does not explain the origins and causes of the birth of cultures, but on the other hand, their further fate is drawn by him with all possible expressiveness. "Each culture passes through the age stages of an individual. Each has its own childhood, its own youth, its own manhood and old age." "Culture is born at the moment when a great soul awakens and exfoliates from the primordial state of eternally infant humanity"

A certain image from the ugly, the limited and passing from the limitless and abiding. It flourishes on the soil of a strictly limited area, to which it remains attached, like a plant. 2 A crisis in culture occurs when its soul realizes the totality of its possibilities, in the form of peoples, languages, religious teachings, arts, states and sciences. As a result, culture again returns to the arms of the primitive soul.However, the flow of culture is not a smooth, calm process.This living being is an intense passionate struggle: external - for the assertion of its power over the forces of chaos and internal - for the assertion of its power over the unconscious, where is this chaos , angry, hides.

The death of culture is the exhaustion of its soul, when its meanings no longer inspire people who are now turned not to the realization of cultural values, but to utilitarian goals and the improvement of life. Spengler connects this period with the advent of the era of civilization. "Civilization is the inevitable fate of culture, the Future West is not an unlimited movement forward and upward, along the line of our ideals. Modernity is a phase of civilization, not culture. In this regard, a number of vital contents disappear as impossible. As soon as the goal is achieved, and all fullness internal possibilities, completed and implemented outside, culture suddenly stiffens, it dies, its blood coagulates, its forces break - it becomes a civilization. And it, a huge withered tree in a primeval forest, can bristle its rotten branches for many centuries to come."

Here we come to the consideration of the internal content of the concept of civilization. In the generally accepted understanding, the word "civilization" is close in meaning to "culture" (in the understanding of O. Spengler), but the author of "The Decline of Europe" means something else by this term. Paradoxical as it may sound, in a certain sense Spengler opposes culture and civilization, and the name "theory of local civilizations" in relation to him should be transformed into the "theory of local cultures."

The very idea of ​​separating culture and civilization is not new, but Spengler approached this issue in an unconventional way, harmoniously combining terminology with his concept. The German theorist under civilization understands the result, completion and outcome of any culture. "Civilization is those very extreme and artificial states that the highest species of people is capable of realizing." O. Spengler called civilization a decrepit culture that had realized its goals and had come to the end of its existence.

5. The difference between culture and civilization

What is the difference between culture and civilization? Very well, the differences between them were formulated by N. Berdyaev, the main idea from whose work was derived by Professor I.Ya. Levyash: "He was in solidarity with O. Spengler, who "recognized civilization as the fate of any culture. Culture does not evolve indefinitely. She carries the seed of death within her. It contains principles that inevitably draw it towards civilization. Civilization is the death of the spirit of culture. Dynamic movement within culture with its crystallized forms inevitably leads to going beyond culture. On these paths, the transition of culture to civilization is being accomplished. How can such a deep metamorphosis be explained? “Culture,” the thinker noted, “is the creative activity of man. In culture, human creativity receives its objectification." Civilization "is a transition from culture, from contemplation, from the creation of values ​​to life itself." And, finally: "Culture is religious in its basis, civilization is non-religious. Culture comes from a cult, it is connected with the cult of ancestors, it is impossible without sacred traditions. Civilization is the will to power, to arrange the surface of the earth. Culture is national. Civilization is international. Culture is organic. Civilization is mechanical. Culture is based on inequality, on qualities. Civilization is imbued with a desire for equality, it wants to settle on quantities. Culture is aristocratic. Civilization is democratic."

The differences between culture and civilization are caused "... largely by the need to expand the prospects of historical vision, to include in the object of theoretical research the sphere of material life, which did not fit into the traditional framework of the analysis of the philosophy of culture and ignoring which in connection with scientific and technological development would mean discrediting socio-philosophical constructions".

6. Civilization as the death of culture

Why does a civilization that brings a person the social and technical improvement of life cause Spengler to feel the death of culture? After all, beautiful works of art, scientific achievements, the world of cultural symbols are preserved. Spengler saw a deeper and more non-obvious side of the matter. Culture is alive as long as it retains a deeply intimate, intimate connection with the human soul. The soul of culture does not live by itself, but only in the souls of people who live with the meanings and values ​​of this culture. "All art is mortal, not only individual creations, but the arts themselves.

If culture ceases to attract and inspire human souls, it is doomed. From here, Spengler sees the danger that civilization brings with it. There is nothing wrong with the improvement of life, but when it absorbs a person as a whole, then there is no spiritual strength left for culture. He has nothing against the comforts and achievements of civilization, but he warns against civilization that supplants genuine culture: "Culture and civilization are the living body of the soul and its mummy."

Spengler does not deny civilization, but he is not a "man of civilization" capable of throwing aside the old "cultural rubbish" in order to feel comfortable in the world of everyday worries. From this follows his dual worldview, which was brilliantly described by N. Berdyaev: "The originality of Spengler is that there was no man of civilization yet ... with such consciousness as Spengler, the sad consciousness of the inevitable decline of the old culture, which would have such sensitivity and such a gift penetration into the cultures of the past. Civilizational well-being and self-consciousness of Spengler is fundamentally contradictory and bifurcated. There is no ... civilizing complacency in him, there is no this belief in the absolute superiority of his era over previous generations and eras. Spengler is a man of civilization, he is a man of old European culture ". Spengler was one of the first to feel this tragedy, and he was the first, in my opinion, to express it with amazing force and expressiveness in the forms of theoretical thought.

Conclusion

The main idea of ​​the concept of "The Decline of Europe" was expressed by I.Ya. Levyash: "The cycles of development of cultures, their ups and downs give the impression of a series of coexisting or successive circular changes."

From the ideas of Spengler, a new direction in cultural studies and the philosophy of science developed. After his work, researchers began to notice things that had previously eluded their attention. Now it is no longer possible to do without studying how, in what way, the non-rational semantic foundations of culture determine the development of not only religion and art, but also science and technology. And the credit for discovering this problem belongs to Spengler. His "Sunset of Europe" became not only an event in cultural studies, but also an event in European culture. Of course, not everything in his book is perfect. But, perhaps, Spengler did not strive for this, since for him the main thing was to theoretically fully express the painful problems of the era, and he completely succeeded in this.

List of used literature:

1. "Anthology of cultural thought" - Auth.-comp. S.P. Mamontov, A.S. Mamontov - Moscow: ROU Publishing House, 1996.

2. "Sunset of Europe" - Spengler O. - T.1 Moscow, 1993.

3. "Fundamentals of cultural studies" - account. manual for universities - Mamontov S.P. - Moscow: "Olimp", "INFRA-M", 1999.

4. "Culturology" - account. allowance - P.S. Gurevich - Moscow: "Knowledge", 1996.

1 Spengler O. "The Decline of Europe". T.1 - Moscow, 1993 - p.266

2 Spengler O. "The Decline of Europe" V.1 - Moscow, 1993 - p.264

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Oswald Spengler said: one day man-made civilization will collapse. The book of the German philosopher "The Decline of Europe" is considered prophetic: it makes you think about the fate of bygone centuries and reflect on what we are coming to today. Oswald Spengler himself worked at the University of Munich when the Nazis came to power in Germany. He fell out of favor with the government, his books were confiscated from all libraries. The scientist died in 1936, shortly after he suggested that the Third Reich would last no more than ten years. And so it happened.

Why was Spengler criticized?

For many years Spengler remained misunderstood. The prevailing view in the Soviet Union was that his writings were an expression of the grief of "educated philistines" over the death of Europe in the imperialist war: "In my opinion, this looks like a literary cover for the White Guard organization," said Lenin. Trying to divert the curious eyes of young people from Spengler's work, critics pounced on his ideas. It was argued that the scientist borrowed the concept from Danilevsky, and he, in turn, from the German historian G. Rücker. However, there were brave minds who refuted the statement. In fact, the theories of the two great philosophers are quite different. Thus, Danilevsky identifies ten cultures, which are based only on their inherent values ​​(for example, the idea of ​​beauty in ancient Greece). And Spengler insisted that any culture is a geometric whole with a world of values ​​that is typical only for it.

The decline of Europe: a culture that repeats cycles

Spengler's philosophy is woven from contradictions - soul and mind, culture and civilization, history and nature: "Mathematics and the principle of causality lead to the natural ordering of phenomena, chronology and the idea of ​​fate - to the historical." Spengler denies the philosophies of Schopenhauer, Kant, Feuerbach, Goebbel, Strindberg, criticizes them for posing abstract questions, and the answers did not take into account the connection of phenomena with the culture of other times. Spengler is controversial. Blaming others, he showed cultures apart, denying systematic historical development.

Spengler rejected the scientific nature to which the works of other philosophers are subject, but at the same time he appealed to historical facts, at the same time denying their significance for world culture as a whole. Perhaps this is what F. Stepun had in mind when he called "The Decline of Europe" a book "... if not a great philosopher, then a great artist."

Spengler writes about the abstract, at times plunging into the world of metaphysics.

Here is how the philosopher characterizes culture: "the totality of the sensually-become expression of the soul in gestures and labors, like its body, mortal, passing." In his opinion, culture and soul cannot be separated from each other, but it is impossible to put an equal sign between them. Returning to the symbol of the world spirit outlined by Spengler, we can assume that neither culture nor the soul perishes. Both leave the cycle of human life, impoverishing it.

The next symbol that Spengler contrasts with the image of the soul is the mind, because civilization, with its destructive consequences, was created with the help of the mind. In each consciousness, Spengler singles out the soul and the "alien", which is called the world. Culture, according to Spengler, is the powerful creativity of the maturing soul and expresses the feeling of God in the heart. Therefore, the first cultural form is the myth, the traces of which have remained in the traditions. The heyday of culture is achieved when a nation is united by one worldview.

Civilization - "the death of culture" - is the withering away of creative energies in the soul, it arises on the basis of the denial or analysis of generally accepted religious and mythological dogmas.

Spengler sums up the inherently terrible conclusion: “The highest achievements of Beethoven's melody and harmony will seem to future cultures as the idiotic croaking of strange instruments. Sooner than the canvases of Rembrandt and Titian have time to decay, those last souls for whom these canvases will be something more than colored patches will be transferred. Who understands Greek lyrics now? Who knows, who feels what it meant to the people of the ancient world?

So, the death of culture from the sword of civilization is inevitable. But “The Decline of Europe” is full of contradictions: sometimes Spengler mentions that there is a world soul that gives birth to the souls of global cultures, releasing them to Earth, and then absorbs them when the given mission is completed. It is there, in this soul, that the tragedies of Aeschylus are alive, but not in a material form, but in another, indestructible, which human consciousness will never understand. This means that further developing this path, proposed, but at the same time not continued and interrupted by Spengler, it is the world spirit that is the receptacle of all cultures, it is he who gives people these cultures, developing which humanity receives material benefits - manifestations of civilization. But in his limitations, a person refuses what revived him to life - from culture, thereby dooming himself to death.

Trinity of cultures

Spengler in his book shows the cyclical life of three cultures - Greek, Western European and Arabic. Each of them has its own soul with its own traditions, way of life, aspirations and ideals.

In ancient Greece, the Apollonian soul is erected on Olympus, for which the ideal is enclosed in a sensual body. Spengler cites the Pythagorean number as an example, which is a measure and proportion. This is the material characteristic of the body symbol of the ancient Greeks. Perhaps that is why in ancient Greek mythology gods stand next to people, are endowed with human outlines and seem so real that they embody the qualities of an entire nation. The divine is on a par with the human. Spengler talks about the rationalistic worldview of the Greeks: only bodies exist (that is, what we can see), and space (that is, what is around us and is to some extent characterized by the influence of metaphysics) does not exist. History confirms the theory: the fear of space prevented the Greeks from expanding small states. The sea merged with the image of an incomprehensible and hostile infinity, so the Greeks kept Greek ships near the coasts.

Western culture has a Faustian soul. Descartes acts in opposition to the ideas of Pythagoras. According to Spengler, the symbolic meaning of Descartes' geometry is equal to the symbolic meaning of Kant's transcendental aesthetics: infinite space is the basis of everything existing world, Faustian impulse to the unknown. If there are many gods in antiquity, Faustian culture implies the unity of the created with the Creator. In their desire to embrace infinity, the Greeks created an ideal to which all living things were reduced. Ancient Greek tragedies were based on the traditional form. But Western art is completely different. As examples, Spengler cites the art of painting by Rembrandt and Titian, the music of Gluck, Bach and Beethoven, compares Gothic forms with "a musical impulse to infinity."

But Faust's soul is rebellious, striving to conquer the world with his will. Spengler denies Schopenhauer's concept of the will that governs cosmic law in human life. But it is no coincidence that Spengler mentions the following fact. Handel accused Beethoven with his freedom-loving "Ode to Life" of disbelief, thereby showing the tragic doom of his own theory. It turns out that the death of European music begins precisely with Beethoven as a person who exalted his individualistic impulse over the idea of ​​the One Whole.

In considering Western European culture, O. Spengler pays attention to the portrait as the pinnacle of the liberation of painting from music. (Goethe called gothic music frozen, and the ideas of Goethe and his Faust became fundamental in assigning the name Faustian to Western culture by Spengler). Each portrait is individual, and here, apparently, the aging of culture begins, which is surprising in itself, because Spengler recognized the isolation of each culture. But perhaps this is the essence of his teaching: everything individual is mortal, and since each culture rests on its own pedestal, it is cyclical, that is, mortal.

The third culture described by Spengler is Arabic. Her soul is magical, resists the body. At the same time, the magical relationship between the soul and body of Arab culture is emphasized.

Spengler spoke of the inevitable struggle between two principles - culture and civilization, without which there would be no life. It is no coincidence that one soul acts as a coefficient to which Spengler equates an entire culture. Just as man is mortal, culture is cyclical. When a person dies, he cannot take anything from the material world with him. Likewise, when a culture dies, it loses those who recognized it and lived by it. This was the vision of Oswald Spengler.

Asya Shkuro