SPENGLER, OSWALD. - Philosopher, b. 29 May 1880 at Blankenburg, d. 8 May 1936 at Munich. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Munich and Berlin. He taught mathematics at Munich.
In his best-known, but amateurish and superficial, work, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, 2 vols., 1918-22, DILTHEY, WILHELM (v.) to its extreme consequences: historical structures succeed one another inexorably (without meaning and without purpose, like the families of fauna and flora), and the values they express decline and pass away like flowers and leaves (absolute relativism). Every “civilization” is characterized by a “form,” constitutes a “formal universe,” which embraces all the manifestations of an age (art, philosophy, religion, science, etc.), and is born, flourishes, and dies. Western civilization is “Faustian,” and its law is “force.” This civilization, expressed above all by Germany, is inexorably destined to decline. S. wrote this after Germany’s defeat in the First World War, which saw the collapse of Pan-Germanism and of Bismarck’s political ideal (v.). With the advent of Nazism, S. once again saw
in Germany the heir of Faustian civilization (Jahre der Entscheidung, I, Deutschland u. die Weltgeschichtl. Entwicklung, Monaco 1933).