The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality

The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality (volume 1)
File:The Decline of the West Form and Actuality cover.jpg Cover
Author(s)	Oswald Spengler
Language	English
Genre(s)	Politics, History
Publisher	Arktos
Publication year	2021
Pages	616
ISBN	1912975610

The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality (volume 1) is a book by German philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler, published by Arktos in 2021. This work is a new edition of the authorized English translation of Charles Francis Atkinson (1926). Spengler's original German work was entitled Der Untergang des Abendlandes, published in 1918 and 1922.

Publisher Description

"The first volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West is a classic milestone in the annals of historiography. However, it is not a history book in the traditional sense of recounting events in chronological order. Instead, it tries to explain the mechanisms that make different cultures tick. While classical culture had no concept of the past or future and was only fixated on the present, Western culture is focused on both the past as memory and the future as unconquered territory.

Like organisms that are born, mature and eventually die, cultures are the blossoming youth while civilizations usher in senility, decay and demise. When a culture becomes a civilization, decadence sets in and the ensuing downward spiral becomes a Faustian whirlwind of self-destruction. This is inevitable as we can see that each culture’s evolution has its parallels in other periods of human history.

The endgame for the West has already begun. It is in terminal decline, desperately trying to revive the dead forms and buried traditions that animated its Promethean spirit in its youthful heyday of exuberance. But in old age, it all seems preposterous, and hence in vain as the West has become tired of itself and unable to innovate in either the arts or philosophy. The West is on its way to the grave and what will see the light next must necessarily be something completely new and not just a corpse reanimated."

Contents

Editor’s Note

Translator’s Preface

Preface to the Revised Edition

Preface to the First Edition

I. Introduction

II. The Meaning of Numbers

III. The Problem of World-History (I): Physiognomic and Systematic

IV. The Problem Of World-History (II): The Idea Of Destiny And The Principle Of Causality

V. Makrokosmos (I): The Symbolism of the World-Picture and the Space-Problem

VI. Makrokosmos (II): Apollonian, Faustian and Magian Soul

VII. Music and Plastic (I): The Arts of Form

VIII. Music and Plastic (II): Act and Portrait

IX. Soul-Image And Life-Feeling (I): On the Form of the Soul

X. Soul-Image And Life-Feeling (II): Buddhism, Stoicism, Socialism

XI. Faustian and Apollonian Nature-Knowledge

Index

Tables Illustrating the Comparative Morphology of History

Books by the same author

• The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World-History volume 2 (2021)
• Man and Technics (2015)

Publication data

• The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality volume 1, Oswald Spengler, 2021, Arktos ISBN-10: 1912975602 ISBN-13: 978-1-912975-60-0

External Links

• The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality at Arktos