Events have justified much and refuted nothing. It became clear that these ideas must necessarily be brought forward at just this moment and in Germany, and, more, that the war itself was an element in the premisses from which the new world-picture could be made precise.
For I am convinced that it is not merely a question of writing one out of several possible and merely logically justifiable philosophies, but of writing the philosophy of our time, one that is to some extent a natural philosophy and is dimly presaged by all. This may be said without presumption; for an idea that is historically essential—that does not occur within an epoch but itself makes that epoch—is only in a limited sense the property of him to whose lot it falls to parent it. It belongs to our time as a whole and influences all thinkers, without their knowing it; it is but the accidental, private attitude towards it (without which no philosophy can exist) that—with its faults and its merits—is the destiny and the happiness of the individual.
Oswald Spengler.
Munich,
December, 1917.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I
| Translator’s Note | [ix] | ||
| Author’s Preface to the Revised Edition | [xiii] | ||
| Author’s Preface to the First Edition | [xv] | ||
| Chapter I. Introduction | [1] | ||
| Scope of the work, p. [3]. Morphology of World-History, a new philosophy, p. [5]. For whom is History? p. [8]. Classical and Indian mankind ahistorical, p. [9]. The Egyptian mummy and the burning of the dead, p. [13]. The conventional scheme of World-History (ancient, mediæval, modern), p. [15]. Its origin, p. [18]. Its breakdown, p. [22]. Europe not a centre of gravity, p. [23]. The only historical method is Goethe’s, p. [25]. Ourselves and the Romans, p. [26]. Nietzsche and Mommsen, p. [28]. The problem of Civilization, p. [31]. Imperialism the last phase, p. [36]. The necessity and range of our basic idea, p. [39]. Its relation to present-day philosophy, p. [41]. Philosophy’s last task, p. [45]. The origin of this work, p. [46]. | |||
| Chapter II. The Meaning of Numbers | [51] | ||
| Fundamental notions, p. [53]. Numbers as the sign of delimitation, p. [56]. Every Culture has its own Mathematic, p. [59]. Number as magnitude in the Classical world, p. [64]. Aristarchus, p. [68]. Diophantus and Arabian number, p. [71]. Number as Function in the Western Culture, p. [74]. World-fear and world-longing, p. [78]. Geometry and arithmetic[arithmetic], p. [81]. The Limit idea, p. [86]. Visual limits transcended; symbolical space worlds, p. [86]. Final possibilities, p. [87]. | |||
| Chapter III. The Problem of World-history. (1) Physiognomic and Systematic | [91] | ||
| Copernican methods, p. [93]. History and Nature, p. [94]. Form and Law, p. [97]. Physiognomic and Systematic, p. [100]. Cultures as organisms, p. [104]. Inner form, tempo, duration, p. [108]. Homology, p. [111]. What is meant by “contemporary,” p. [112]. | |||
| Chapter IV. The Problem of World-history. (2) The Destiny-idea and the Causality-principle | [115] | ||
| Logic, organic and inorganic, p. [117]. Time and Destiny, p. [119]. Space and Causality, p. [119]. The problem of Time, p. [121]. Time a counter-conception to Space, p. [126]. The symbols of Time—tragedy, time reckoning, disposal of the dead, p. [130]. Care (sex, the State, works), p. [136]. Destiny and Incident, p. [139]. Incident and Cause, p. [141]. Incident and Style of existence, p. [142]. Anonymous and personal epochs, p. [148]. Direction into the future and Image of the Past, p. [152]. Is there a Science of History? p. [155]. The new enunciation of the problem, p. [159]. | |||
| Chapter V. Makrokosmos. (1) The Symbolism of the World-picture and the Problem of Space | [161] | ||
| The Macrocosm as the sum total of symbols referred to a Soul, p. [163]. Space and Death, p. [165]. “Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis,” p. [167]. The space problem (only Depth is space-forming), p. [169]. Depth as Time, p. [172]. The world-idea of a Culture born out of its prime symbol, p. [174]. Classical Body, Magian Cavern, Western Infinity, p. [174]. | |||
| Chapter VI. Makrokosmos. (2) Apollinian, Faustian, and Magian Soul | [181] | ||
| Prime symbol, architecture, divinities, p. [183]. The Egyptian prime symbol of the path, p. [188]. Expression-language of art: Ornamentation and Imitation, p. [191]. Ornament and early architecture, p. [196]. The window, p. [199]. The grand style, p. [200]. The history of a Style as organism, p. [205]. On the history of the Arabian style, p. [207]. Psychology of art-technique, p. [214]. | |||
| Chapter VII. Music and Plastic. (1) The Arts of Form | [217] | ||
| Music one of the arts of form, p. [219]. Classification of the arts impossible except from the historical standpoint, p. [221]. The choice of particular arts itself an expression-means of the higher order, p. [222]. Apollinian and Faustian art-groups, p. [224]. The stages of Western Music, p. [226]. The Renaissance an anti-Gothic and anti-musical movement, p. [232]. Character of the Baroque, p. [236]. The Park, p. [240]. Symbolism of colours, p. [245]. Colours of the Near and of the Distance, p. [246]. Gold background and Rembrandt brown, p. [247]. Patina, p. [253]. | |||
| Chapter VIII. Music and Plastic. (2) Act and Portrait | [257] | ||
| Kinds of human representation, p. [259]. Portraiture, Contrition, Syntax, p. [261]. The heads of Classical statuary, p. [264]. Portrayal of children and women, p. [266]. Hellenistic portraiture, p. [269]. The Baroque portrait, p. [272]. Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo overcome the Renaissance, p. [273]. Victory of Instrumental Music over Oil-Painting, corresponding to the victory of Statuary over Fresco in the Classical, p. [282]. Impressionism, p. [285]. Pergamum and Bayreuth, p. [291]. The finale of Art, p. [293]. | |||
| Chapter IX. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (1) On the Form of the Soul | [297] | ||
| Soul-image as function of World-image, p. [299]. Psychology of a counter-physics, p. [302]. Apollinian, Magian and Faustian soul-image, p. [305]. The “Will” in Gothic space, p. [308]. The “inner” mythology, p. [312]. Will and Character, p. [314]. Classical posture tragedy and Faustian character tragedy, p. [317]. Symbolism of the drama-image, p. [320]. Day and Night Art, p. [324]. Popular and esoteric, p. [326]. The astronomical image, p. [329]. The geographical horizon, p. [332]. | |||
| Chapter X. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (2) Buddhism, Stoicism, and Socialism | [339] | ||
| The Faustian morale purely dynamic, p. [341]. Every Culture has a form of morale proper to itself, p. [345]. Posture-morale and will-morale, p. [347]. Buddha, Socrates, Rousseau as protagonists of the dawning Civilizations, p. [351]. Tragic and plebeian morale, p. [354]. Return to Nature, Irreligion, Nihilism, p. [356]. Ethical Socialism, p. [361]. Similarity of structure in the philosophical history of every Culture, p. [364]. The Civilized philosophy of the West, p. [365]. | |||
| Chapter XI. Faustian and Apollinian Nature-knowledge | [375] | ||
| Theory as Myth, p. [377]. Every Natural Science depends upon a preceding Religion, p. [391]. Statics, Alchemy, Dynamics as the theories of three Cultures, p. [382]. The Atomic theory, p. [384]. The problem of motion insoluble, p. [388]. The style of causal process and experience, p. [391]. The feeling of God and the knowing of Nature, p. [392]. The great Myth, p. [394]. Classical, Magian and Faustian numina, p. [397]. Atheism, p. [408]. Faustian physics as a dogma of force, p. [411]. Limits of its theoretical (as distinct from its technical) development, p. [417]. Self-destruction of Dynamics, and invasion of historical ideas; theory dissolves into a system of morphological relationships, p. [420]. | |||
| Index | Following page [428] | ||
| Tables Illustrating the Comparative Morphology of History | At [end] of volume | ||
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION