Not really. That would give too limited of a view. — Terrapin Station

True; because it excludes such modern, Western European countries as France, Germany and Holland etc; and also the Scandinavian (Nordic) nations of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, all of which I would place, without hesitation, under the rubric of "The West."

( NB: Having said this I think it is fair to say that the United States has been the undisputed powerhouse and "Flagship" of Western civilization throughout the 20th century and much of the 19th century. Now, unfortunately, as Spengler predicted so very accurately in 1918, the US has entered a phase of (potentially terminal) civilizational decline. He predicted that the rise of leftist, liberal-progressive political ideology, (such as multiculturalism) in America during the 20th century would result in open-immigration policies that would, in turn, swamp the traditional Western/European descended native population and their traditional culture, with non-Western immigrants who would bring with them cultural traditions/ mores that were incompatible with basic Western ("Faustian") cultural values. Spengler's prediction was chillingly accurate; for it is now confirmed that by the year 2042, native Americans of Western European descent who have alway comprised the majority of the population will become a demographic minority group. When this happens, it will not be a matter of if, but when America dies; and by America, I mean America the Western nation. Moreover, when America, the great lynchpin of modern Western civilization around the world dies, so too will Western nations like Canada, Australia and the UK also fall in rapid succession. As to what will replace them, I am afraid the prospect is too depressing for me to discuss in any further detail. The point I wish to emphasise for the moment is that what we now call "The West" has entered a phase of civilizational decline, so it will likely become increasingly difficult in the decades ahead to identify where, exactly, what is left of the true "True West" is located.)

To continue now from where I left off at the end of the first paragraph above. Although there are many who would disagree, in my view, Western culture/civilization is both distinctive and very unique in comparison with all the other world cultures/civilizations that have existed either in the past (e.g. the Classical Athenian-Roman culture/civilization or the ancient Egyptian civilization) or are in existence today (e.g. modern China and the civilizations of latin America).

I believe that the first, nascent manifestation of "bone fide" Western culture can be traced back to the ancient Germanic tribes of the Nordic Bronze Age who inhabited the regions propinquitous to, and including, the land mass we now call Scandinavia. (These tribes were, BTW, originally members of the Neolithic, proto-Indo- European people who were based in the Pontic-Caspian steppe zone of Eurasia around 4000 BC). The harsh climate and landscape of the Scandinavian region played a critical role, I believe, in the evolution of what Spenger would call the archetypically "Faustan" (Western) soul within the proto - Germanic/Nordic Bronze age people, (to whom I refer),, who had migrated there. This, in short, is where Western man and Western culture first emerged in their embryonic form. It would not be until around the year 1000 AD in France (Burgundy) that Western civilization per se would be born following the Cluniac reforms mediated by the Roman Catholic Church of the time.

This, of course, is just a very "quick and dirty" summary of what I believe is the primeval ground of the Western ("Faustian") soul, though if anyone is interested I can provide what I think is a compelling and eminently rational argument in support of my theory.

Regards

John

Dear BC,

Question: Why did Spengler call it "Faustian"? When I think of Faust I think of Faustian bargain. — Bitter Crank

For Spengler, the terms "Faustian culture" and "Western culture" were synonymous; ditto: "Western soul" and "Faustian soul". I think there are two reasons he decided to use the descriptor "Faustian." instead of Western" in the text of "The Decline of the West". Firstly, Faust" is the title of a famous tragic play written by Johann Goethe. It was published in 1806 and is regarded by many to be Goethe'smagnum opus and the greatest work of German Literature. Moreover, the play was extremely popular, it always drew the largest audiences whenever it was performed on German-languages stages. (And) today, not just Germans, but many Westerners,( people like us, for instance), living in the Anglosphere are still familiar with the name "Faust". Like yourself (BC), they often have at least some basic knowledge of the Faustian legend such, for example, as the fact that the story is based on a wager ( "a bet") that the Devil ("Mephistopheles") makes with God.

When Spengler was asked (during an interview) which thinkers he felt had exerted the most profound influence on his own work he replied that there were two; the first and most important he said, was Goethe, and the second was Nietzsche. So, Spengler was clearly a big fan of Goethe and doubtless a great admirer of "Faust" (the play). Secondly, some of the major themes in Goethe's "Faust", as I will explain below, deal with concepts that are strikingly similar to those that Spengler ultimately formulated in his efforts to explain the unique nature of Western culture, the distinctive essence of the Western soul and the definition of what he referred to as the West's "prime symbol"; cf., for instance, Chapter V ( "Makrokosmos") of "The Decline."

Here is a brief account of the Faustian legend for you...

In the late middle ages in Germany there is said to have been a remarkably erudite scholar who was reputed to have unravelled some of the great mysteries of nature and to have been able to use this knowledge in wonderful and magical ways. Some people said he was a talented alchemist who had gain his special powers through diligent work in the laboratory. Others thought that he was a charlatan, a mere trickster who was a master, not of the arts of alchemy, but rather, the "sleight of hand" . Most people of the time , however, eventually came to view him as a conjuror who had made a pact with the Devil selling his soul in return for knowledge and power.

This mysterious scholar/alchemist was a man called Dr Johann Faust (c.1480 or 1466 - c.1541) and the many myths and legends that grew up around him captured the imaginations of writers, poets and composers over the succeeding generations. Fifty rears after Faust's death a chapbook entitled "Historia von D. Johann Fausten" was printed by Johann Spies in 1587 in which these legends were compiled. Later in the 16rh century the English playwright, Christopher Marlowe wrote his tragic drama: "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus" which was published in 1604, based upon the legends that were set down in Johann Spies chapbook. After this, countless others took up the Faustian theme - namely, the theme of a man striving to exceed his ordained bounds, of a man obsessed with the quest for knowledge and power beyond that which is allotted to others The most noted writer in this tradition was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the first part of his long dramatic poem "Faust" was published in 1808. Goethe's "Faust" was tremendously influential; throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century, symphonies,plays, poems and novels dealing with the Faustian mythos continued to appear, all of them drawing primarily on Goethe's treatment of the legend.

Ever since the real Dr Johann Faust wandered through the towns of southern Germany in the 16th century performing magic tricks, reading horoscopes and boasting of his supernatural powers he has been, in short, an object of fascination. There is something about the legend of Faust that captivates and enthrals the Western mind.; the subject evidently resonates with something deep in the European soul, in fact, I believe that a precursor of the Faustian legend can actually be traced back to around 6 AD because this is when we find the earliest (?) historical records that reference the great Norse god, Odin. In Norse mythology, In Nordic mythology, Odin was the chief god and he was widely revered by the Germanic peoples. Odin features prominently in the historical record, as I say, from about 6 AD when the Romans first occupied parts of "Germania", all the way up to and throughout the era of the Vikings ( 800 AD - 1066) . So what, you may ask, is the connection between Odin and the Faustian legend ? Well, it is quite uncanny actually, and the details are set down very clearly in two sources. The first is a 13th century Icelandic manuscript called the Codex Regius ("Royal Book).(NB: Although it was written in the 13th century, the Codex Regius contains material from earlier traditional sources reaching into the Viking Age). The Codex contains a collection of anonymous Old Norse poem that are collectively referred to as "The Poetic Edda" One of these poems is the "Hamaval" - The Sayings of the High One" (.e, Odin). The second source is an Old Norse work of literature called the "Prose Edda". It is believed to have been either written or compiled by Snom Sturluson in Iceland around about 1220.

The Edda tell us that Odin's quest for wisdom is relentless; that it never-ends and that he is willing to do anything, to pay any price, for knowledge of mysteries of life.In the Edda there are two stories in particular that underscore just how intensely Odin craved wisdom, they tell of two sacrifices he made to gain knowledge of the cosmos and of powerful magical forces. The first of these sacrifices made by Odin was for knowledge of the runes, and the story is recorded in the poem "Hamaval" ("The Sayings of the High One (i.e. Odin)) in "The Poetic Edda". In order to properly appreciate this story one needs to be aware that the ancient runes were not merely letters of an old Nordic/Germanic alphabet. The runic characters were also symbols of some of the most powerful forces in the cosmos. Through the runes it was possible to link into, interact with, and manipulate word-changing forces. So when it's said that Odin "sought knowledge of the runes", it was not anything mundane, like knowing how to pronounce the runic letters, for example, that interested him; rather it was knowledge of the secret of an extraordinary potent system of magic that he craved. So, to continue, Knowing that the runes only reveal themselves to one who has proved himself worthy of possessing their extraordinary and fearsome power, Odin decided he must make a fitting sacrifice. And the sacrifice he chose to make was ofhimself of himself. In the centre of the Nordic cosmos there is a giant tree called Yggdrasil ( the "World Tree") which grows out of a bottomless pool of water called the Well of Urd . To prove himself worthy Odin hanged himself from one of the branches of the World Tree and pierced himself with his own spear. He forbade the gods to offer him the slightest assistance, even a sip of water, and stared down into the shadowy water belo calling to runes, He survived like this balanced perilously on the cusp of life and death for 9 days and 9 nights. One the 9th night, finally, he perceived the forms of the rines emerging in the depths of the water. They has accepted his sacrifice and in return revealed to him their inner secrets.

The tale of the second remarkable sacrifice that Odin made in his restless quest for knowledge and wisdom is told in the "Prose Edda" in the first of the three book it contains that is called called "Gylfaginning" As I mentioned above, at the bottom of the World Tree from which Odin had hanged himself there was a fathomless pool of water called the Well of Url. The guardian of this well was a shadowy being called Mimir. Mimir had a knowledge of all things that was said to be just about unparalleled among all the inhabitants of the cosmos. He is said to have achieved this status by drinking water from the well, which was infused with this comic knowledge. In his search for wisdom Odin decided he must venture to Mimir's well. When he arrived at the Well or Url, Odin asked Mimir for a drink from the water. Being the guardian of the well, Mirir knew the value of such a draught and he told Odin that he would only allow him a drink of the water if he were prepared to offer one of his eyes in return. Odin then gouged out one of his own eyes. The pain was great and searing but Odin made no sound nor showed any sign of his terrible suffering. He then handed the eye to Mimir who dropped it into the well. Then, true to his word, Mimir dipped his horn in the water of the well and offered the now-one-eyed god, Odin, a drink. We are told that as the water entered him, Odin saw the great and terrible suffering that must befall both men and gods. Yet he also saw their reasons and causes and could now understand why they must be. He drank again and now saw the ways that gods and men might, with outstanding, noble courage, fight and defeat the the evils that were destined to arrive. I'll. stop here, because I'm sure you get the idea.

In short, Odin and Johann Faust are both examples of individuals who are obsessed and driven by an irrepressible will to prevail in the pursuit of their lofty goals. They are suffused with something like Nietzsche's "Will to Power". Both are ready and willing to do whatever it takes - Faust will sell his soul to the Devil, Odin will mutilate and torture himself to the very brink of death - solely in order to triumph in achieving for themselves that which is remarkable, astonishing extraordinary...; That which fate will deny other men.. I am reminded right now of a stanza from a song recorded by the 1980s punk rock band "The Clash". It was was written by band-member John Mellor (aka "Joe Strummer") and it says...

"Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world
And ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl
"Love" and "Hate" tattooed across the knuckles of his hands
Hands that slap his kids around coz they don't understand how
"Death or Glory" became "just another story"
"Death or Glory" became..."just another story."

This, I think, is Mellor's poetic snapshot of a Western man's worse nightmare, namely, his realization that the former vainglorious "Death or Glory" sobriquet he applied to his spirit - all the self-perceived heroism and nobility of his infinite, thrusting "will to power"; of his vaunted will to over-throw and triumph - all of that which was once his proudest boast, is now dead within him.Or, he wonders, was it ever really alive at all? He see in the cheap, mundane ugliness of the world he has now created around himself, that the answer is: "No, it wasn't.".He must accept the fact he never really was anything special or honourable at all, just a "cheap hood" Life in the West has taught him that a commitment to it native code of "Death or Glory" means nothing unless one is prepared to interpret and live out the meaning of those three words in a strictly literal sense. If not, then what was your "Death or Glory" will inevitably become "just another (pitiful, tragic) story".

This explains, in part, the enduring fascination of the West for the Faustian legend, for the Nordic mythology of Odin, for tales of the ferocious courage and fanatical "death before dishonour" fighting style displayed by his Viking warriors on the field of battle, the legend, - ( immortalised in a famous poem by the British Poet Laureate of the day, Alfred Lord Tennyson) -, of Lord Cardigan and the British cavalrymen he led in the doomed, suicidal, "Charge of the Light Brigade" against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854.. Odin, Faust and the Norsemen, the cavalrymen of the "Light Brigade" are eternal Western heros because in their case, "Death or Glory" can never become "just another story."

Returning now ( my apologies BTW, for the wayward diversions off- topic above !) to the issue that this post is supposed to be dealing with, i.e; the Faustian legend, I mentioned that Goethe's "Faust" ( of 1808) had inspired a tremendous number of musical symphonies, plays, poems, and novels throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century, all dealing with the Faustian mythos. In these many different versions of the Faust legend various elements are emphasised, but the persistent theme is that which I have already mentioned above, i.e; the quest of exceptional men for an understanding of life and nature; the reaching out for a new ( and more advanced) level of existence, the striving to cultivate a fuller development of latent powers. It is from this persistent theme rather than from any any semi-historical account of the life of Dr Johann Faust or from any fictional works using his name that we draw meaning attached to the adjective "Faustian" today.

The word "Faustian" as it is currently used ( and as it was used by Spengler in the 20th century), refers to a spiritual tendency in Western man , who has shown such tremendous fascination down through the ages with the idea behind the Faust Legend. It describes a fundamental urge or drive that is latent in the soul of Western man and active in only a few individuals. The Faustian urge in the Western soul says to us:

* "Thou shalt not rest or be content no matter what thy accomplishments." (i.e. Thou shalt never rest on thine laurels).

* "Thou must strive all the days of thy life."

* "Thou must discover all things, know all things, master all things."

Western man's Faustian urge is quite different from the urge in the Levantine soul, which is to accumulate, to possess, which is covetous and craves the piling up of riches/money/wealth beyond all reason, which exhibits a lust for personal aggrandisement and so on.It is different as well from the Classical Greco-Roman soul (and I have already discussed this in some detail an earlier post on this thread above) this soul is, - to briefly remind you,- driven by a desire for individuation, for the organisation of a reality that is sensuously tangible ( touchable, visible), concrete and finite, orderly restrained and well-bounded/ "in - bounds", material, stable, substantial,well-defined and precise, etc.The Western ("Faustian") soul is also dramatically different, one might even say, antithetical to what is typically called the "Manyana" spirit of the Latin peoples. This spirit says to them: "Enjoy life - take it easy and relax; don't worry; don't hurry - you can always finish what you are doing tomorrow or the next day; stay were you are and settle down, you have no need to know what lies beyond the next ridge. It is a comparatively stolid, languorous, lackadaisical, apathetic, feckless and insouciant spirit.

The "Faustian" drive is the source of the Western soul's basic restlessness and it is also the primal origin of our basic inquisitiveness; it is what makes adventurers of us, what compels us to risk our lives in ventures which can bring us no conceivable material benefits - something wholly foreign to the nature of all other ethnic/cultural groups who are accustomed to evaluate everything purely in terms of utility . It is the Faustian urge which has made Westerners the pre-eminent explorers of the world, which has driven us to scale the highest mountains in lands inhabited by different ethnic/cultural groups who have hitherto been content to always remain in the valleys. It has impelled us to struggle on foot, step- by- step through the hazardous, frozen wastelands of the Arctic in a quest to be the first people to stand upon the North Pole of the Earth, it is what has insisted that we build a spacecraft to take a man to the moon, and what now has us reaching for the stars. The Faustian urge is also what has made we Westerners the most prominent, prolific and successful scientists, in particular in the days before the practice of science became a well-paid profession.

Why? Why is it that Western man was so determined to send four American astronauts to the moon. Why did he spend so much time and effort organizing such a monumental feat ? Soon after "The Eagle" lunar module landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin crawled out of it and on to the surface of the moon. Over the next two hours, they erected an American flag, took a 2 -minute phone call from Richard Nixon, who rang to congratulate them from the Oval Office, kangaroo - hopped and loped about on the lunar surface for a while for fun, collected some samples of moon soil and about 50 moon rocks and then returned to the lunar module, climbed back inside and began making preparations for the return journey home to Earth. And that, I'm afraid, is all there is to report of mankind's first sojourn on the the surface of the moon (?) Similarly, WHY, exactly, was it that Edmund Hillary was so utterly determined to risk his life climbing to the top of Mount Everest in 1953? After all, when he and his guide finally made it to the summit of the highest mountain in the world, nothing particularly world-shattering took place; Hillary took a photograph of his guide, placed a cross a friend had given him on the summit, Tenzing left some chocolates and then the two of them promptly headed back down the North face of Everest toward their base-camp at the foot of the mountain. Altogether, Hillary and Tenzing spent just 15 minutes on the top of Everest.The first person Edmund Hillary met on his descent was an acquaintance named George Lowe. Hillary said to him: "Well George, we knocked the bastard off." And that was it. Hillary had nothing else of any import to say (?)
.As another example, consider the life of Sir Donald Campbell, one which was entirely devoted to a "suicidal" obsession with breaking, setting and re-setting the official world land and water speed records. Briefly, Campbell was an Englishman who broke 8 absolute world speed records on water and land in the 1950's and 1960's, and he remains to date the only man to have set both world land and water speed records in the same year (1964). In March of 1964 Campbell and his latest super-car, the CN7, arrived in Australia from the UK. He was there with the intention of making a bid for the world land speed record on the salt flats of Lake Eyre in South Australia.The weather had failed to live up to Campbell's expectations and spells of rain showers had made the salt flats of Lake Eyre damp. Finally in July he took to the track and was able to post some speeds that approached the record. On the 17th of the month he took advantage of a break in the weather and made two courageous run along a shortened and still treacherously damp salt flat track posting a new world land speed record of 403.1 mph. Campbell was bitterly disappointed with the record as the CN7 vehicle had been designed for much higher speeds.When he was asked for his reaction to the success, Campbell said, " We made it - we got the bastard at last." Campbell died on the 4th of January, 1967, attempting to break his own world water speed record on Coniston Lake in Cumbria in his jet-engined boat the K7 "Bluebird", he was 46 years old. Campbell came to grief on the second run of the record attempt. His K7 "Bluebird" was travelling very fast at 328 mph about 200m out from the finish buoy. when it began to experience trouble. First the boat started "bouncing" on the water, then the jet engine powering the vessel experienced a " flame-out" which caused the K7 to rise up to begin "gliding through the air above the lake. The "Bluebird" then rose sharply up into the air and promptly completed a somersault before plunging down hard nose-first into the lake, the "Bluebird" then cartwheeled across the water before ultimately disintegrating. As a final example, there is the American teenager, Gertrude Ederle, who devoted herself to achieving the goal of becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel. Having spent untold hours practicing by swimming the lengths of a 25 meter pool in the US, on the 6th of August, 1926, Ederle, finally walked out into the waters of the English Channel from a beech on French coast and began swimming toward England.Twelve hours into her gruelling swim across the Channel the weather turned, and gusty squalls of wind rendered the water of the Channel very choppy. Ederle struggled mightily to continue in the difficult conditions. Her trainer, watching the teenager struggle defiantly against the wind-whipped, choppy water, from a tug boat beside eventually became extremely concerned for her welfare, and called to her: "Gertie, you must stop now - you must come out!" But Ederle refused.( And) so it was - if I might now to "cut-to-the-chase", - that 14 hours and 34 minutes after she had set out from France, Gertie Ederle finally clambered up onto the beach at Kingsdown (England), the first woman to succeed in swimming the English Channel.( I think that Ederle would, BTW, have been left in no doubt she had indeed made it to the English coast, for the very first person to greet her on arrival was an officious, British immigration officer requesting a passport from the shattered, waterlogged youngster ! ) It was widely believed at the time that women would never be able to swim the English Channel as they naturally lacked the physical strength and stamina of a man. But Ederle proved them wrong. In 1926, only five men had successfully swum the Channel before, and the fastest time had been 16 hours and 33 minutes, set by Enrique Tiraboschi. The 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle has lopped a massive 2 hours of the old record.

To be the first to: swim the English Channel; to fly to the moon; to scale the world's highest mountain, to drive the world's fastest cars and boats, what can we infer from these things about the nature of the spirit/soul that drives these quintessentially Western obsessions ? I mean, that characteristically, restless Western compulsion to strive for and achieve the extraordinary and remarkable, at any cost, in particular where the achievement is valued, purly for its own sake?

I have already suggested that it is the "Faustian" drive which is the source of the Western soul's unique will - to - overcome/overthrow; of its singular desire to be continually striving/reaching beyond the set limits for that which is extraordinary. Typically this "Faustian" drive is latent in the Western soul/psyche, and it is actualised only in relatively few men (Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir Donald Campbell were two modern-era examples of the later which I briefly described above). What Hillary, Campbell, Neil Armstrong, Gertie Ederle and others like them have in common is that they are "men (and women) of the deed." For these individuals the extraordinary deed: to be the first to scale the world's tallest mountain, to drive cars and boats faster than any other man in the world has ever done before, to defy those who claimed no woman had the strength or heart to swim across the English Channel, is far more important than physical existence.

These individuals exemplify the "deed-oriented" nature of the "Faustian"/Western man in the sense that they are not satisfied with the challenges of a Darwinian struggle for existence, nor, say, the political /ideological (Marxist) struggle for economic equality. The "Faustian" soul of Western man is not preoccupied with mere adaption, reproduction and conservation. When the drive of "Faustian" soul actualises itself in Western man, he craves to climb higher, run faster, to sorm up into the heavens and shape the world, to smash through the given barriers and achieve ever higher levels of existential intensity and meaningfulness. But WHO exactly, is this "Faustian"/Western man? Is he, perhaps, like Hegel's Master who fights to the death for the sake of prestige? Or is Spengler closer to the mark when he paraphrases Nietzsche and writes that the primordial forces of Western culture reflect the...

"...primary emotions of energetic human existence, the cruelty, the joy in excitement, danger, the violent act, victory, the thrill of a conqueror and destroyer."

Nietzsche also wrote of the "aristocratic" warrior who had longed for the "proud, exalted states of the soul " as experienced intimately through: "combat, adventure, the chase, the dance, war games." But WHO precisely, are these people ? Are their "primary emotions" different from those of humans from other cultures? If they are, then why is this this case?

The answers to these complex question deserve a separate post, as they will require, first and foremost an investigation into the ground of the "Faustian"/Western soul, or, if you like, an account of where and how what is genuinely and distinctively Western culture first came to emerge. I am confident I have the answers and, As I say, I will set them down in a separate post on this thread. To conclude this post, I will now set out some final noteworthy particulars relating to the history of Faustian legend.

The opening scene in Goethe's "Faust" conveys the idea of the Faustian Soul/spirit through the character of the chief protagonist Faust who is depicted as restless scholar who has plumbed all of human knowledge, but whose soul remains unslaked, his craving for ultimate truth is unabated. Alone in his study late at night he gazes with a mixture of awe and desire on the sign of the Macrocosmos and says to himself:

"Was it a god who engraved this sign which stills my inner tumult and fills my heart with joy, which with a mysterious force unveils the secrets of nature all around me. Where shall I grasp thee O infinite nature ?"

But Goethe paints other aspects of his hero's character beside what we would call "Faustian" (Western), and given this, a better - or a least, a less ambiguous representation - might be Ulyssian (or Odyssian), chiefly because the English Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, in his one short poem, "Ulysses" really strikes closer to the sense of what we are trying to convey, in the concept of the "Faustian soul/spirit, than does Goethe or any of the others who have written about the legend of Dr Faust. Despite this, common usage still favours the term "Faustian" over "Ulyssian."

To conclude this post, I will provide a brief account of Tennyson's poem, "Ulysses" in order to summarise the essential features of what we call the "Faustian" soul of Western man; for these are the spiritual drivers of his distinctive cultural achievements and the uniqueness of his civilization over the past millennium. Moreover, Tennyson captures them all very elegantly in this one relatively brief poetic monologue.

Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" is a dramatic monologue, which sets down the thoughts of Ulysses ( Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus who was, a hero in ancient Greek literature) who is now an old man living a sedate and mundane life at home with his elderly wife. Ullyses begins by telling us that he is still restless and craves to be once again sailing the high seas and journey around the world as his did for most of his life when he was younger. He still feels compelled to live life to the fullest and swallow every last drop of excitement and wonder it has to offer, and says...

"I cannot rest from travel; I will
drink life to the lees"

He recalls how his travels to distant quarters of the world, exposed him to many different types of people and culture, telling us...

"For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manner, climates, councils, governments
Maybe not least, but honoured of them all"

Ulysses recounts how it was through travelling that he was able to experience the thrill of battle while fighting the Trojan war; how he had...

"Drank delight of battle with my peers
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy"

He goes on to explain to us that his travels and encounters have shaped who he is: "I am a part of all that I have met" he proclaims; and it is only when he is travelling that the "margin" of the globe he has not yet traversed shrinks and fades and ceases to goad him, saying....

"Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and ever when I move"

Ulysses then tells us again how boring it is to be anchored in one place; how to remain stationary is to "rust" rather than to shine; how it is like pretending that all there is in life is the simple act of breathing. His own spirit still constantly yearns for new adventures, for new excitements, for novel experiences that will broaden his horizons. He fervently desires...

"To follow knowledge like a star
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought"

In the final stanza of the poem, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, voyaged and weathered life's stormy seas. He declares that although he and they are now old men, they still have the potential to do something noble and honourable before "the long day wanes." He exhorts them...


"'Tis not too late, to seek a newer world
Push off, and sitting well in order smile
The sounding of the furrow; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars, until I die...
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"

Thus, in Tennyson's "Ulysses" all of the essential attributes of the adjective "Faustian"are neatly condensed and crystallised...

* The restless desire to strive forward - to reach beyond the limits of the visible.

* The compulsion to break through the finite limitations and mundane boundaries that restrict the scope of everyday life to what is mundane, banal and spiritually stultifying.

* The irrepressible presence of a strong, robust will "to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."


Lastly, what strikes me as being perhaps the most important fact of all regarding "Ulysses" is that Tennyson composed it shortly after hearing of the death of his close friend, Arthur Hallam, in 1833. "Ulysses" is best understood as an elegy for a dearly cherished friend. The character Ulysses in the poem symbolises the grieving poet. The tragic loss of his friend, bought with it a vivid awareness for Tennyson that - ( as he put it) - "death closes all", by which he means that we, human beings, are all born to die and for us, death is "finis" ( i.e. dead IS dead). Thus, in the words of his poetic character "Ulysses", we are, in fact, hearing the devastated Tennyson exhorting himself to "rally" - to keep pushing forward, to keep fighting and keep striving forth despite the tragic loss of his friend. Through Ulysses he is commanding himself not to falter and fall, to "dig deep" and find the moral courage to to stay strong; to never cease the heroic battle that is to ardently "hammer" some kind of decent meaning for his life out of an utterly meaningless and absurd world.

Thus, IMO, the "Faustian" soul of Western man can be understood as a uniquely strident, combative and passionate denial of philosophical nihilism. But that's enough for one post. I will conclude what I wanted to say about the primal GROUND of the Western ("Faustian") soul in a separate post.

Regards

John

"Western" is an amalgam of cultures stretching from the Levant, Greece, Rome, Northern Africa, Scandinavia, Finland (can't leave out the Finns, Balkans, Russians, etc.) and more. — Bitter Crank

Before I discuss "The West", I must say,"Thank you" very much for your kind advice about cutting and pasting photos on the internet. Unfortunately I am still unable to do this. I could not use your tips, because I do not have an "Apple" computer. My lap - top is called a "Chromebook" ,and try as I might, I simply cannot get it to cut and post images?)

BC

I agree with you that Western civilization is a cultural amalgam; though I object to your intimation that it is a kind of "mongrel bitch", a creature who is a result of the crossing of all sorts of completely different breeds of dog. It is a mistake to conceive Western civilization in this this kind of way.

I fully understand that when one is faced with such complex and difficult questions as: "What is the nature of the West/Western civilization"? What is bone fide Western culture? "What was the true ground of the Western Soul"? It is all too easy to respond by saying: "Geez... well, that's a big question you know; the notion of "the West" (the Occident) - the idea of a uniquely Western culture/civilization, has been kicking around for a mighty long time ! Expert historians in the mainstream academy tell us that Westerners have been on the scene for at least a 1000 years to date - ( and many scholars insist that the" West" actually began thousand of years before this, namely, with the "miracle" of Classical Athenian antiquity). In any case, throughout their long history, Westerners, have, we know been possessed of an intense wanderlust and they have travelled to countless different lands across all four quarters of the globe. Given the fact that since the era of the Vikings, Western man has continually set sail across the world on voyages of discovery, and given that ,in consequence, Westerners have over the centuries, encountered, interacted with, and lived among legion different ethnic and cultural groups, and given that they have borrowed so many important ideas from these different groups of peoples that I think, we are left with no real option but to" throw up our hands" and say that "The West" has pretty much always been, a giant, polymorphous hodge-podge - a king-sized cultural/civilizational "dog's breakfast."

As I say, I agree with notion that the West is "an amalgam". The way I conceptualise Western civilization is by arguing that it is the child of two parents. To use Spengler's terminology, one parent is Apollonian culture, ( the culture of Classical Greco-Roman civilization) culture; the other is "Magian "culture ( the culture of Islamic/Judeo-Christian worlds). Thus, Western/ "Faustian" culture/civilization is affiliated with the culture of Classical Athenian/Roman antiquity and with the Islamic/Judeo-Christian world, but it is nonetheless a unique entity; just as a child is unique being who is created by and affiliated with, but not in any sense identical to either of it's parents.

I think it is worth emphasising the point, that is, that the terms: Western ("Faustian") culture/ civilization and Classical Greco-Roman ("Apollonian") culture/civilization are not synonymous; because this represents one decisive step forward in the monumental task we have of of trying to sort out what exactly we mean when we use terms like "The West" and "Western culture/civilization" Western/("Faustian") culture/civilization did not begin in the 5th century BC in Athens with Cleisthenes' and his famous political reforms. Classical Athenian culture does not equate to "Faustian" /(Western) culture. Western ("Faustian") culture and Ancient Athenian/Roman) culture are two very different "balls of wax", so to speak. What Spengler refers to as the the "Faustan" soul ( the unique metaphysic/spirit that perfuses and animates Western culture) is, metaphysically speaking, entirely different to the "Apollonian" Soul that infused of ancient Greco-Roman culture.

Where is the evidence to substantiate this claim, you ask?

There is no shortage of evidence, and I will again defer to Spengler in setting out some illustrations and explanations for you now below... (You will note that in my posts on this thread, I take Spengler to be the foremost authority to date on the nature of Western culture/civilization and the "Faustian"/Western soul. The reason for this is that I think the account he provides of the "Faustian" soul and its cultural manifestations in "The Decline of the West" (1922) is so well supported with concrete historical evidence ( of the kind that any modern reader can access and examine in detail for himself at the touch of a button on his computer !) that one has no optionbut to accept his thesis.

"Apollonian" (Ancient Greco-Roman) Culture/Civilization.

Spengler allocates each of the major world civilizations that have emerged what he calls a "prime symbol". As I mentioned in an earlier post the "prime symbol" of "Faustian" Western soul is infinity in the sense of infinite extension in space. Spengler views "Apollonian" (ancient Greco-Roman)culture/civilization are being very different from "Faustian" and the "prime symbol" he assigns to the "Apollonian"/Classical soul it is (quote):

"the material, sensuously-present and individual body"

The Classical soul is obsessed with everything that has to do with physical tangibility, even Greek metaphysis, for example, Plato's theory of Forms, has an implicitly sensual tactility. Likewise, the Stoic philosophers regarded even the properties and relations of things as "bodies". Chrysippus, for example, viewed the Divine Pneuma as being a body. In the field natural philosophy, Democritus is another Apollonian soul fixated on the concrete and finite. In his atomic theory, he proposed that everything was made up of tiny, indestructible, individual, material bodies called "atoms". Democritus believed that these tiny atoms were physically indivisible, i.e; one could not cut an atom in half and then cut the the half into two quarters, the quarters into two eighths and so on ad infinitum He also hypothesised that human vision consisted in our eyes being penetrated by material particles of the things that we are seeing.

For the Classical Greco-Romans, their (metaphysical) ideal was the physical body, in particular, the perfectly defined, precisely-chiselled, muscular, athletic, naked human body. In many of their finest marble and bronze statues like "The Discus Thrower", the statues of Heracles, son of Zeus or the magnificent marble sculpture "Laocoon and his Sons", etc; there is a strict harmonizing and balancing of body proportions in accordance with the mathematical "Golden Ratio". In sum, these statues represent an obsessive/ meticulous/ perfectionist/sensual/ corporeal aesthetic. They exemplify the fixation of the Apollonian Soul with what is: near, concrete/material, finite and restrained, wholly appreciable (visible), tactile,"present", clearly defined, controlled and delimited... As Spengler puts it...

"The Classical statue in its splendid bodiliness - all structure and expressive surfaces and no incorporeal arriere - pensee whatsoever - contains without remainder all that Actuality is for the Classical eye. The material, the optically definite, the comprehensible, the immediately present."
For the "Apollonian" Soul, everything needed to be kept in-bounds, that is why the ancient Athenians saw an ideal ideal city state as being one that could be seen within the 360 degree horizon that was created for an observer when he stood atop the Acropolis and looking around to see what could be seen.

We see the same fixation with the finite, near, and present in Classical cosmology. "Apollonian" cosmology was Ptolemaic (geocentric). When Aristarchus, the ancient Greek astronomer presented the first known heliocentric (Copernicus defers to him, BTW) model of the solar system it was rejected by Aristotle, Plato and other Athenian thinkers/ cosmologists who favoured a geocentric model. The claim that the Earth was moving through space around the sun vexed the "Classical soul", because to suggest this, was, of course, to open the door to the infinite, and the ancient Greeks were very intent indeed on keeping the infinite locked out of their world-view. They absolutely did not want to hear about things, especially their own Earth, flying through a boundless, infinite void They only wanted to hear about things that were close to hand, things that they could readily see and touch, in particular,individual things that were finite, "corporeally -present" The "Apollonian" soul craved a reality wherein all things were emphatically concrete and discrete, where they possessed a conspicuous, sensual/perceptual tactility. Spengler provides a neat summary of the Classical Greco-Roman universe in the following passage from "The Decline"...

"The Classical universe, the "Cosmos" or well-ordered aggregate of all near and completely viewable things, is concluded by the corporeal vault of heaven (the "firmament"). More there is not. The need that is in us to think of "space" as being behind as well as before this shell was wholly absent from the Classical world-feeling."

The "prime symbol" of the "Apollonian soul" (or, if you like, the ideal metaphysic of Classical Greco-Roman civilization) , which is "the material, sensuously-present individual body" and this "world feeling" as Spengler calls it can be seen very clearly in Classical architecture. Here, noblest and most exemplary expression is probably in the stone body of the Classical temple. Consider, for instance the typical Doric temple, this consists of a windowless rectangular inner chamber called a "cella" or "nao" surrounded by an outer perimeter of robust and relatively squat "Doric"- style, fluted, stone columns. These massive columns appear to bore into the ground the Temple sits upon and there is an overall impression of them forming an imposing closed rank ; this is expressly intended to convey to the observing eye that here is a solid "body" with no Inward. As architectural works, the Doric temples have a purely external effectiveness, they are seen set upon the landscape as a massive, weighty and majestically static image, but they deny and artistically disregard the space within, they viewed this space as being in the category of, "that which which is held to be incapable of existence". Like all of the other cultural expressions of the "Apollonian soul" Classical Greco-Roman architecture is characterised by individual structures ("bodies"): finite, concrete/material," present" and immediately appreciable, restrained/orderly, "tactile" , decisively bounded, minimalist ( in the sense of exhibiting a primal elegance of form) Here, to conclude this paragraph on "Apollonian" architecture, are some lucid insights from Spengler's "Decline of the West"...

"...the Greek culture is that of the small, the easy, the simple. Its technique is, compared with Egyptian or Babylonian, a clever nullity. No ornamentation shows such a poverty of invention as theirs, and their stock of sculptural positions and attitudes could be counted on one's fingers. In its poverty of form, which is conspicuous, even allowing that at the beginning of its development it may have been better off than it was later, the Doric style pivoted everything on proportion and measure. Yet, even so, what adroitness in avoiding ! The Greek architecture with its commensuration of load and support and its peculiar smallness of scale suggests a persistent evasion of difficult architectural problems that on the Nile and, later, in the high North were literally looked for, which moreover were known and not burked in the Mycenaean age. The Egyptian loved the strong stone of immense buildings; it was in keeping with his self-consciousness that he should choose only the hardest for his task. But the Greek avoided it, his architecture first set itself small tasks, then ceased altogether. If we survey it as a whole, then compare it with the totality of Egyptian or Mexican or even, for that matter, Western, we are astounded at the feeble development of the style. A few variations of the Doric temple and it was exhausted. It was already closed off about 400 when the Corinthian capital was invented., and everything subsequent to this was merely a modification of what existed...The result of this was an almostbodily standardisation of form-types and style-species. One might choose between them but never overstep their strict limits - that would have been in some sort an admission of an infinity of possibilities. There were three order of columns ( i.e; Doric, Ionic and Corinthian) and a definite disposition of the architrave corresponding to each; to deal with the difficulty (considered as early as Vitruvius, as a conflict) which the alternation of triglyphs and metopes produced at the corners, the nearest intercolumniations we narrowed - no one thought of imagining new forms to suit the case. If greater dimensions were required, the requirements were met by superposition, juxtaposition, etc; of additional elements. Thus, the Colosseum possesses three rings, the Didymaeum of Miletus three rows of columns in front, and the Frieze of the Giants of Pergamum an endless succession of individual and unconnected motives."

I could, of course, ramble on and discuss the "prime symbol" of Apollonian soul culture as it reveals itself in other branches of Classical culture, literature, for example, and so on but this post is already too lengthy.

To summarise, my objective in this post has been to argue that Classical Greco-Roman culture/civilization is not, as is widely presumed, equivalent to Western culture/civilization. What we call "The West" was not born in Athens in 500.BC. The nature of "Faustian"/ Western soul; that is, the nature of the essential, inner spiritual characteristics of the Western man, are very different from those of the Classical Greco-Roman/"Apollonian" man. (And) this his being the case, "Faustian" culture/civilization and "Apollonian" culture/civilization are, in turn, wholly and fundamentally different from one another.

So, finally, if there are no objections, I will hereby declare that we have made some modest, though very encouraging progress in the formidable task of attempting to clarify what exactly that controversial term "The West" truly means.

Regards,

John

Thank you very much indeed for your advice re books dealing with this topic.

Regards

John

No, I don't think one could say that Spengler had any kind of explicit "normative" agenda to press in his analysis of Western high culture and the nature of the Faustian"/Western soul, generally speaking. You are, however, right to note that I do. I knew that this would the first query I would receive when I referred to
events in the West's history such as: the Spanish conquest and colonisation of the Americas; the waging of large-scale, offensive war in the form of Western Europe's medieval Crusades during 11th, 12th and 13th centuries; the bloody Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer wars that paved the way for the British conquest of South Africa in the late 19th century, as accomplishments.

I view these violent, agonistic, European military campaigns and wars and the many others like them as uniquely Western events; as events that were, in turn, pure expressions of the "Faustian "soul: its primeval will to fame and glory through conquest; its restive, aggressive expansionist disposition that is fired by an intense lust for: fame; its intense urge to the proud display of outstanding heroism; its restive desire to realise the sacred creed of "death before dishonour" in combat on the field of battle and such like.

As a modern -day Westerner I make no apology for this violent , agonistic aspect of Western culture, and, broadly speaking, I absolutely do not accept that I am obliged to feel any sense of guilt, shame or disgrace whatsoever for the conduct of my culture/civilization either in the past or present. So, in answer to your question, I certainly do see events in Western history like the rise of British imperialism as accomplishments. That is, for me the imperialist expansion of, say, the former British empire was a very good thing (I still view it as a very positive achievement, both in the normative/ moral sense and also in many other respects beside). Moreover, it was, in my opinion, a perfectly healthy, natural phenomenon.

I have run out of time right now, so I will finish explaining my position (as I have set it out in the paragraph above) in detail, as soon as I am free to continue.

Regards

John

CTW,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my last post. It is much appreciated as I find the topics we are looking extremely interesting.

In concluding your post (above) you say that...

"... Western civilization, to the extent it can be said to be of the European tradition, looks back to the Roman Empire and Republic"

I'd like to begin my response by suggesting that we should make a point of clearly differentiating the terms "culture" and "civilization" as they are applied to "The West". Might I suggest the following criterion for "civilization", namely, a civilisation is created when a people and their culture construct large/extensive, stable, physical and organizational structures and facilities ( i,e buildings, bridges, roads, water supply and sanitation systems, etc.) that are intended to ( and indeed do) endure for long periods of time, like, for instance, the great pyramids, the Sphinx and the other great monuments that are hallmarks of the ancient Egyptian civilization.Similarly, the majestic stone architecture of the ancient Greeks in, for example: monuments like the Parthenon, giant, imposing temples like the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the massive Theatre of Dionysus (built in 600 BC to accommodate 20,000 persons and still standing today), the many, exquisite marble and bronze sculptures including: "The Winged Victory"; the "Venus de Milo"; "Laocoon and His Sons" that have endured to date over the past 3-4 millenia. All these things were crafted/built to last - and to last for a long time.Had they not been created/ constructed by the ancient Greeks, we could not really talk of an ancient Athenian civilizationper se. In the same way, it was the ancient Romans' planning and building of many great: amphitheatres (like the Colosseum); remarkable aqueducts; stone bridges; extensive systems of roads; baths, temples etc; that are the sine qua non of what we call the great ancient Roman civilization Other examples of great civilisations are : the Mayan-Aztec civilisation; the Chinese, in the Empire they established between 221 BC and 1912 AD; the medieval Arabic civilization that flourished between the 8th and 14th centuries in the era known as "The Islamic Golden Age.".

There are very many different ethnic groups and tribes throughout history who have possessed quite unique, and distinctive cultures, but never managed to create a genuine civilizations. The Australian aborigines are just one example. The aboriginal tribes of Australia have occupied the continent for tens of thousands of years, and throughout this time they did manage to develop a rudimentary culture. The various different Aboriginal tribes have, for example: their own special styles of primitive art work; their own collections of myths and legends; music and dance, unique forms of spirituality/"religosity and so on. But the Australian aboriginals were a nomadic, stone-age, hunter-gather people, and thus when the first British colonists arrived on Australian shores the later half of the 18th century they noted that the indigenous Aboriginals had no metal and had not discovered the wheel or agriculture, let alone created anything at all in terms of any kind of substantial, sophisticated, "permanent" infrastructure intended to endure over long periods of time time Thus, the expression "aboriginal civilization" is clearly an oxymoron.

I mentioned to you that I thought the German philosopher of history, Oswald Spengler, provided some very interesting insights into the history and nature of Western civilization in his major work, "The Decline of the West" (1922). Spengler argued that the Western civilization was unique and it was inspired by an unusually vibrant , dynamic and expansive culture. He called this Western culture, "Faustian" culture. Faustian (or Western) culture was, in turn, animated by a distinctive personality type - (a primal, inner psyche)- that had corresponding attributes. Spengler referred to this peculiar/idiosyncratic Western psyche as the "Faustian Soul" and he gave it the "prime symbol" infinity, meaning infinite extension, or as he put it. "pure and limitless space." Of the "prime symbol", Spengler writes...


"...it does not actualise itself; it is operative throughout the culture at large, the form - sense of every man, every community, age and epoch and dictates the style of every life expression. It is inherent in the form of the state, the religious myths and cults, the ethical ideals, the forms of painting and music and poetry, the fundamental notions of each science - but it is not presented by these."


Spengler saw in the "Faustian" soul of the West, a primeval-irrational will to power; it was not a calm, disinterested, rationalistic ethos that was at the heart of Western particularity, rather, it was a highly agonistic, energetic, goal-oriented desire to break through the unknown, to supersede the norm, and to achieve mastery. The "Faustian" ( Western) soul was, in short, governed by an intense urge to transcend the (finite) limits of existence, by a highly energetic, restless, fateful being, by (to quote Spengler), "an adamantine will to overcome and break all resistances of the visible." He used terms like: "fighting"; "progressing"; "overcoming of resistances", "against what is near, tangible and easy" to describe the fiery, agonistic, temperament of the Faustian soul's expansionist preoccupation/s.. And this fierce, combative dimension of the Western soul - its will to forcefully defy and overcome impediments and limitations, its restless desire to prevail, at any cost, in the quest for domination and, in particular, for personal glory and honour is clearly evident throughout the entire record of Western history. One of the great flaws with the 20th century's traditional accounts of Western history in our older university textbooks was that they limited Western distinctiveness solely to the intellectual and artistic spheres, the only achievements mentioned are in the form of great books and great ideas, These older texts retailed a peaceful, scholarly "grand narrative" whose central themes were "Great Works", written by "Great Men" in conditions of "Liberty" No attention was ever given to The West's achievements in warfare, conquest, exploration and heroic leadership. The reality of Western colonialism across the world, the comparatively higher frequency and broader scale of warfare among Westerners relative to the people of other civilizations, the invention of far more destructive military weapons, the international slave trade, the unprecedented destruction of the civilizations of the Americas, etc; all of this was conveniently filtered out of the traditional academic account of the accomplishments of Western culture/civilization..

As I mentioned above, Spengler gave each of human history's major civilizations ( Egyptian, Chinese, Aztec, Babylonian, Classical, etc.) a "prime symbol". He spoke of a civilization's "prime symbol" inwardly binding together all of the different expression forms of all the different cultural branches of a civilization. Spengler gave the West/ "Faustian culture/civilization the "prime symbol" of infinity ( "infinity"in the sense of infinite extension in space). In other words the restless, impulsive yearning and striving for the boundless that characterises the "Faustian" soul was not restricted to the arts and sciences, but present in the culture of the West at large. Spengler wrote, for example, of the "bodiless music" of the Western composer ( e,g. Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven) in which he says: " harmony and polyphony bring (the composers) to images of utter "beyondness" that transcend all possibilities of visual definition"[/i].In the fine arts, the Baroque era landscapes of the French artist, Claude Lorrain are also used by Spengler to illustrate a uniquely Western cultural achievement ( on a personal note, I would have used Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes to demonstrate the point) To continue.. Spengler views the style of ancient Classical Athenian and Roman artwork as being the product of a culture that is very different to "Faustian"/Western culture and he uses Lorrain's painting to explain, noting how (quote):

"The Classical relief is strictly, steareometrically set on a plane, and there is an interspace between figures but no depth, A landscape of Claude Lorrain, on the contrary, is nothing but depth. All bodies in it possess an atmospheric and perspective meaning purely as carriers of light and shade, every detail being made to subserve its illustration. The extreme of the disembodiment of the world in the service of space is Impressionism".

In "Faustian" architecture, the soaring spaciousness of the West's medieval Gothic cathedrals with their "form-feeling" of (quote), "pure, imperceptible, unlimited space" is uniquely "Faustian". Equally, in Western literature, Spengler notes the unique temperament of the "Faustian" soul in its "infinity - wistfulness"; he sees this (distinctively Western) soul clearly manifesting itself in, for example: the ancient Nordic "Edda", "Beowulf", the heroes of the Grail, Arthurian and Siegfried sagas, and Cervantes' "Don Quixote, forever roaming in the infinite. In mathematics, the invention of differential calculus by Newton and Leibniz was, Spengler, argues, a quintessentially Western cultural achievement. He regarded this mathematics as an acute expression of the "Faustian souls "tendency toward the infinite" and he describes it using terms such as : "the infinite continuum"; the exponential logarithm and it's:"dissociation from all connection with magnitude" and transference to "a transcendent relational world." Finally, and very briefly, in science the West's development,( roughly one hundred years ago,) of Quantum Mechanics as a new form of physical theory is another very good example of how the irrepressibly determined "Faustian" soul restlessly strives ever toward the infinite/infinitesimal

In the paragraph above, I have discussed only what might be described the peaceful/civilized/intellectual branches of Western culture: music, painting, mathematics, literature, and science, but, as mentioned above, Spengler argued that the achievements of the "Faustian" Soul were not restricted merely to the arts and science/mathematics - that is, to "Great Ideas" - but were present in Western culture/civilization at large. The point I would like to make is that:* (1) in the waging of offensive wars, such as the series of medieval Crusades; * (2) in the history of Western conquest and colonization from: the era of the Vikings of the 7th-9th century, to the 15th century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in South America by Cortes; to the British seizure of "The Union of South Africa" as a dominion of their empire following victories in the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer wars, in the Portugese "reconquista", the Belgians@ military expedition in the African Congo, the British colonization of Australia and their subjugation of the native Aboriginal population in the late 18th century; * 3) the uncommonly violent history of Europe overall, i.e; the comparatively large number of brutal armed conflicts and fully-fledged wars that have been waged in Europe by Western Europeans;*(4) beginning in 1450, the West's creation of a brutal,; transatlantic African slave trade that would, over the coming centuries, develop into a massive international industry. All of these events are, it must be emphasised, uniquely Western, they are all accomplishments of precisely the same primal "Faustian" soul that inspired for example: the invention of differential calculus; the West's Impressionist and Baroque artworks, the boundless, polyphonic music of Wagner and Mozart; the masterpieces of medieval Romanesque and Gothic architecture like Chartres Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral and Durham Cathedral; the creation, in literature, of Shakespeare's famous character,
the brooding prince,"Hamlet", Cervantes' immortal "Don Quixote", the timeless myth of King Arthur's Knights setting forth on a valiant, illimitable quest for the sacred Holy Grail ,and so on...

It could be objected that medieval and modern Westerners are not uniquely militaristic and imperialistic; and that other great world civilizations have also engaged in warfare and territorial expansion. This, of course, is true; but the point Spengler stresses about "Faustian"/(Western) warfare and colonisation ( i.e. the forceful conquest, occupation and rule of distant lands and their peoples), is that history clearly demonstrates Western Europeans have always been more intensively militaristic and aggressively expansionist as well as more innovative and obsessive about improving the techniques, organization, tactics and strategies of warfare than have other great "high cultures"/civilizations. I agree.

It seems to me that it has become very fashionable in the modern academy and increasingly in Western society at large, to criticize and denounce the West, - to condemn Westerners for their culture's long catalogue of wars, violent colonizations (conquest/subjugation/exploitation) of other cultures, persecutions and such like, that have "blighted" every stage of their civilization's history. As far as I am concerned Westerners today ought feel no need at all to apologise for the dynamic, expansionist disposition of their culture; because the fact is, in short, that the "Faustian" soul's restive, "adamantine" will to break through and innovate has proved absolutely indispensable to human progress over the past 6000 years to date. Rather than guilt, what the modern Western man is, I believe, well justified in feeling, and celebrating is a tremendous sense of pride in the great achievements of his culture and the power of his civilization.

The expansionist disposition of the West was, as I say, indispensable, and it was, in turn, chiefly driven by an intensely felt desire to achieve great feats and heroic immortality. All of Western civilization's greatest men were impelled by a desire to perform unmatched deeds. Cortes, for example, was motivated by an immense ambition for glory and honour; he believed that (quote) " it is better to die worthily than to live dishonoured." David Hume the British philosopher, was likewise chiefly motivated by the pursuit of fame; "the love of literary fame" he confessed, is "my ruling passion". Napoleon too, was suffused with a grandiose temperament and an insistent will to accomplish great deeds. In his book entitled, "Thoughts", he writes..."I came to believe in myself as an unusual person and became consumed with the ambition to do the great things that until then had just been a fantasy." Also, Hitler, who fervently declared in 1931, two years before he seized power in Germany:"I intend to set up a thousand-year Reich and anyone who supports me in this battle is a fellow - fighter for a unique spiritual - I would say divine - creation ...", is a case in point.

Briefly, in the personalities of all of the West's great military and political leaders, and in the majority of its greatest artists, scientists and philosophers we find present: a staunch individualism that is typically accompanied by an aloof, abstracted loneliness. Of this loneliness, Spengler writes:

"The Faustian soul -whose being consists in the overcoming of presence, whose feeling is loneliness and whose yearning is infinity - puts its need of solitude, distance and abstraction into all its actualities, into its public life, its spiritual and artistic form-worlds alike."


In conjunction with this, other hallmark characteristics of the "Faustian"/Western soul include: heroic-defiant, grandiose and "aristocratic" personality traits; a restless desire to "crash through", to vigorously challenge existing boundaries and limits, to forcefully "break through" established norms and achieve extraordinary feats of progress. This restless urge to transcend the limitations of the mundane and finite and strive toward the infinite was, in the case of the great men of Western history predominantly driven by an intense, obsessive, vainglorious lust for approbation and adulation - it was the means they used to win for themselves outstanding fame, great honour and glory, and thus secure their ultimate goal... personal immortality

All in all I think Spengler's account of the nature of the "Faustian"/Western Soul is quite compelling in that it has astonishing explanatory power when it comes to making sense of our Western culture and ; civilization both throughout the era of modernity the era of the Renaissance and the early medieval period in Western Europe after the first stirrings of the Cluniac reform c.1000 ( named for Cluny Abbey in Burgundy, France) which also marked the very first emergence of Western architecture on the grand scale. This architecture then almost literally "went viral" throughout the 11th and 12th centuries in North Western Europe. Notable examples being: the Romanesque/Gothic Durham Cathedral (constructed between 1093 and 1133) and Canterbury Cathedral (built by Lanfranc between 1070 and 1077) as well as the magnificent Chartres Cathedral in France (constructed between 1194 and 1220). With respect to the definition of "civilization" that I proposed above, I think the giant , stone architecture (e.g. Cathedrals) that was rapidly erected just after the time of the Cluniac reform mark the true beginning of Western civilization ( at least in the sense that I defined the term at the start of this post). In saying this, I agree with Spengler that Classical Athenian and Roman culture/civilization ( which he calls "Apollonian") is very different in a number of important ways from "Faustian"/Western Culture/civilization. I can present the historical evidence for this claim in a separate post, if you are interested in knowing what it is?

What to you make of Spengler's notion of the "Faustian"/Western soul, CTW? Do you think his thesis has merit ?

To conclude. Personally. I find Spengler's account of the nature of the "Faustian" soul very compelling and very sound in that it clearly and consistently explains the origin and form of a tremendously diverse range of Western cultural achievements both past and present. Given this, the most intriguing and important question, for me, remains: "What was the original ground of the "Faustian" (Western Soul)" Here, unfortunately, Spengler is quite vague; for instance, he refers "a Nordic world stretching from England to Japan" and later, principally to the barbarian peoples of Northern Europe who lived in a"harsh"," very cold", "Nordic climate" I think when he refers to "barbarian peoples", Spengler actually means the ancient proto - Germanic peoples who are believed to have emerged during the Nordic Bronze Age in southern Scandinavia.

Anyway, to "cut to the chase", I have a theory that the Vikings ( "Norsemen") of the 7th - 10th century played a pivotal role in the birth of our unique Western civilization and I would be happy to outline it for you in a separate post if you are interested (as I see I have already rambled on far too long in this post!)

Regards,

John

Dear CTW (and Unenlightened),



Before I discuss -(as I promised I would)- the matter of the style of the artwork the Vikings carved onto their longboats, and, what precisely this has to do with the primal essence of Western culture, I would like to object to the claims made by yourself and Unenlightened (above), namely, that the ancient Greeks and Romans were the sole source of Western civilization. I think you would find that position very difficult to defend in a debate with any professional historian/s who specialise in the field; or for that matter any reasonably well -read adult. I must say that I am extremely surprised that an ostensibly intelligent and literate, as yourself, could be possessed of such a profoundly mistaken notion as (quote):

"They (the ancient Greeks and Romans) still are ( the sole source of Western culture/civilization). We've been trying to be what they were, or what we think they were, since the 5th century."

When it comes to discussing the foundations of Western civilization, most historians and philosophers in the mainstream academy, regard the "Athens and Jerusalem" paradigm as having been validated. This is the notion that Western civilization was grounded in the two cities of Athens and Jerusalem. Though it is rooted in the historical reality of the two ancient cities of Athens and Jerusalem, the "Athens-Jerusalem" formulation is essentially symbolic. "Athens" represents a philosophical-scientific approach to actuality, while "Jerusalem" represents a scriptural tradition of disciplined insight.

In terms of human goals, "Athens" represents cognition; "Jerusalem", spiritual perfection. From its very beginning, genuine, (bone fide) Western culture can be understood as the unique expression of a tense, vibrant dialectic operating between these two opposing poles. Over the centuries to date, the dialectic has swung back and forth, though "The West" has never chosen finally between "Athens" and "Jerusalem"; rather, it has always chosen BOTH. In fact, the maintenance of a dynamic tension between the two has indeed been absolutely essential to the West, because it is the existence of this tension which has always nourished FREEDOM. A choice entirely for "Athens" would be potentially totalitarian,and I seriously doubt that a philhellene like CTW would find life very congenial in Plato's Republic (!) ; while a choice entirely for "Jerusalem" would be potentially theocratic or monastic. Thus, it is the tense, dynamic interaction between the two, the ongoing dialectical struggle between the spiritual cities of "Athens"and "Jerusalem" that is precisely what is responsible for the unique and distinctive nature of Western culture and civilization. It is this dynamic, robust and vibrant bipolar dialectic that is the primal source of the key hallmarks of Western culture and civilization, namely: the inexorable, muscular will to overcome, and if necessary, destroy, any finite boundary or limit that would thwart an implicit expansionist yearning;
an energised, intelligent striving for the infinite and eternal; an implicit desire to bathe that which is solely rational/technical/scientific/mechanical in a sublime light of divine beauty; a ceaseless, restive urge to infuse that which is finite and material with the essence of that which is infinite and ethereal, and, in turn, to endow that which is infinite and ethereal with properties of the concrete and material.

One need only examine some of the great achievements of the West to confirm this. For example : the giant Skyscrapers of a city like New YorK; NASA's Apollo project which shot Neil Armstrong and his crew all the way up to the moon; the development of Quantum Mechanics as a new form of physical theory. In these things "Athens", (cognition and science) may seem foremost, but they are clearly also the representation of a spiritual aspiration ("Jerusalem"), a yearning for the infinite. THAT is what motivated the architects who planned the Empire State building, THAT is why the US was so determined, at any cost, throughout the 1960s to put a man on the moon. The realisation of these technical/scientific feats simultaneously bears witness to a deep spiritual yearning; a restless desire to reach up and "touch" the boundlessness of the heavens above, to reach out and challenge the infinite. The great medieval legend of the quest " 'cross all quarters of the globe" for the "Holy Grail", was ,likewise, a singularly and distinctively Western achievement. Neither the Greeks of ancient Athens, nor the Romans ever crafted a legend anything like that of "The Quest for the Holy Grail."

One the other hand, in the majesty and splendour of , say, Chartres Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral; in the poetry of Gerard Hopkins, T.S. Eliot and Percy Byssche Shelley; the spiritual aspiration of "Jerusalem" is foremost, but the mind of "Athens" remains a palpable presence. For example, there is a beautiful little passage Shelley wrote in 1821 - (one I always send in a card to friends who have lost a loved one) - where we see the dialectic illustrated very literally. Here it is...

"Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere they fair light had fled.
Now, having died thou art as Hesperus,
Bringing new splendour to the dead."

Note Shelley's use of the ancient Greek ("Athenian") term"Hesperus"; in Athenian mythology, "Hesperus" was, Plato himself tells us, the planet Venus (the Evening Star).

To continue. If I were forced to chose just one figure from Western history whom I felt exemplified the spirit of Western culture in what was closest to its most pure form, I think the figure I would have to chose would be Cervantes' immortal character, "Don Quixote" ( "The Man of La Mancha"). In second place- very close behind - would be our own era's brilliant, wheelchair- bound physicist, the late Stephen Hawking.

When Cervantes sold the publishing rights to his novel "Don Quixote" 1604, he could never have imagined that the book's hero would be the inspiration for a major Broadway hit in America three and a half hundred years later. The Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha" ran for years (from 1965 into the early 1970s, if I recall) and is best remembered by many for its theme song, "The Impossible Dream", which the character of Don Quixote sings when he asked by his sweetheart, "Dulcinea", what the purpose of his quest is. For me, the lyrics of this song perfectly capture the essential soul - (the unique "metaphysic") - of the West . (And) because I am a Robert Goulet/"Camelot" tragic, I will now transcribe the lyrics of "The Impossible Dream" in their entirety for you to ponder....

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into Hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
Then my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still stove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star


As I suggested above, an individual like Stephen Hawking very much exemplifies the Quixotic dimension of the Western soul in that although bearing the burdens of a devastating medical affliction, he stubbornly refused to ever give up. He never ceased striving - reaching forth into the boundlessness of the cosmos in search of answers to some of humanity's greatest puzzles. He quite literally used mathematics ("Athens") as a lever to push himself out into the (spiritual) realm of infinite space ("Jerusalem").

We gain some further insight into the authentic nature of the Western soul in a rather unlikely place, namely, a 4 -volume, American comic book mini-series that was published in 1986, it featured Batman and was called "The Dark Knight Returns". To "cut to the chase", there is a great line from Batman in one of these comic books, wherein he reveals his personal philosophy. To set the scene for you, Batman is lying on the ground with three broken ribs due to a fight he has just lost with Superman ( Clark Kent), he is in pain and cannot get to his feet.. We then read how he raises his head, looks up to Superman, (who is standing above him), and says...

"You sold us out Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson...lying on this street...shaking in deep shock...dying for no reason at all. The showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to."

Thus we see how Batman, - unlike Superman ( who, in "The Dark Knight Returns" series, is depicted as a privileged alien born with special super-human powers) -, knows that human beings are innately tragic, vulnerable creatures who are born to suffer and then die. And he knows as that for humans, death is finis (i.e. dead is dead) Batman, in short understands that nihilism is the brutal truth of human existence, that human beings are thrown, at birth, into an absurd, irrational reality, one that is without exception an utterly meaningless "vale of tears", where they are pre-destined to struggle and suffer continuously from cradle to grave for absolutely no reason ( at least no reason that they will ever comprehend) . He has learned that given the irrefragable truth of nihilism, there is only one real choice we have in life: either, to give up and concede defeat in the face of nihilism ( i.e. to die, spiritually, living out a life that is like a slow-motion, extended-release suicide) or, to decide we must (somehow) summon the personal, moral courage and strength to strive onward and upward regardless, which will, in turn, demand that we forcefully impose our own will upon the face of the terrifyingly absurd and completely meaningless reality of the world. He figures that choosing this later option is the only way we might ever have a chance to live a life that "makes sense". What really makes Batman a superhero is the fact that he knows FOR CERTAIN - (having, as a child, witnessed his own parents die painful and meaningless deaths in the gutter)- that nihilism is a terrible truth, but despite knowing this for a fact, he intentionally opts to defy it. This, of course, demands tremendous existential moral courage and that is what makes Batman the archetypically Western superhero that he is. Ditto individuals like Stephen Hawking, Columbus, Galileo, Edgar Alan Poe and George Gordon ( Lord Byron); they were all quintessentially quixotic Western heroes.



What you fail to appreciate, Ciceronianus, is that were it not for the triumph of Christian Church in Western Europe in the 11th/12th century, there would BE NO Western civilization as we know it. There would be: no Chaucer; no Shakespeare; no Goethe; no medieval code of Chivalry championed by "Knights in shining armour"; no Crusades; no King John signing off on the "Magna Carta" in 1215; no Christopher Columbus setting forth to "Sail the Ocean Blue in Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two", no Galileo, no Copernican revolution;
no Renaissance, no Rembrandt, no Michelangelo - no statue of "David"; no Wagner; no Immanuel Kant crying: "Sapere Aude !", no Robert Boyle inventing modern chemistry in a cramped, dimly-lit, backroom" laboratory", no Industrial Revolution in England, no Charles Darwin, no Albert Einstein, no nuclear energy; no Thomas Jefferson writing America's "Declaration of Independence", no Adam Smith jotting down his remarkable "Wealth of Nations" in 1776; no Henry Ford mass-producing motor cars for the people; no Jumbo Jets; no NASA -no Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969 ( now THAT was amazing!); no Juno Probe sending close up shots of Europa to us on our iPhones; no "Silicon Valley; no Internet, and so on and so forth.

In conclusion, let me explain it to you like this...

If you look back at the history of mankind, you will find that there have been certain times - three or four of them, actually - when man has suddenly made the kind of giant-sized, "quantum leaps" forward that would have been unthinkable under ordinary evolutionary conditions. One such time was about the year 3000 BC when all of a sudden civilization appeared; not only in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but in the Indus Valley. Another was in the late 6th century BC when there was not only the miracle of Ionia and Athens where philosophy, poetry, science and art achieved a zenith that would not be reached again for some two thousand years, but also in India, where a great spiritual enlightenment took place, the like of which has never to date been equalled.

A third radical "quantum- leap) forward in human progress - and the one to which I would now like to draw your focussed attention in some detail - took place in the year Eleven (11) Hundred. This third giant change shook the whole globe including India, China and Byzantium, but its strongest and most dramatic effect was in Western Europe. Here, it was like a monumental "Russian Spring" (I mean "Russian Spring" in the sense of a liberating Krushchevian "thaw"); in every major domain of human life activity: action, education, interpersonal relationships, philosophy, politics, organization, technology and so forth, there was, in short, an extraordinary unleashing and outpouring of energy and an intensification of the vitality, "espirit" and "elan" of human Being. I am not making all of this up, BTW, Ciceronianus, you will find these facts clearly recorded in any authoritative, mainstream historical reference text. At this particular time in Western Europe, Popes, Emperors, Kings, Bishops, Saints, Scholars and Philosophers all became larger than life characters; likewise the incidents of history - in great heroic dramas or magnificent symbolic acts that still fire the imagination of the West today. For example, the great Arthurian Legends...the immortal tales of Camelot, Avalon, the Knights of the Round Table, Excalibur, Merlin the magician and the "Lady of the Lake", Sir Lancelot du lac and his beloved Queen Guinevere - all cracking stuff that yet captures the hearts and minds of modern Western man today. (In the United States, for instance, the name "Camelot" is still a universally accepted sobriquet for John F Kennedy's administration; while in England today, every schoolboy still knows that the engines which powered the legendary British "Spitfire" aircraft in the Second World War were called "Merlins", a nod to their technical wizardry which gave the heavily outnumbered RAF Spitfires a critical edge in aerial combat against the invading sorties of German ME-109 "Messerschmitt" fighters throughout the desperate "Battle of Britain" (in 1940).

Concrete, empirical EVIDENCE of this third heroic outburst of energy, this sudden, "seismic" surge in confidence, this rapid growth in man's strength of will and intellect that occured in Western Europe in the 11th century is still clearly visible today. All you need do to see it for yourself is travel to England and visit Canterbury Cathedral or Durham Cathedral. When you stand, for the first time, directly before these giant, complex, orderly, majestic mountains of stone you will be struck absolutely silent and still with a profound sense of reverential awe. For despite all of the modern West's mechanical skills and the grossly inflated scale of our current materialism, Canterbury and Durham Cathedral remain a most formidable proposition. These magnificent stone structures rose out of pretty much nothing, just a modest of small churches and wooden houses; and this, in itself, was not remarkable in any sense. What IS remarkable, what IS so absolutely extraordinary about the construction of these Cathedrals is something most people do not appreciate, namely, that these monumental buildings were fully completed from scratch very quickly, i.e;in a single life-time. Chartres Cathedral in France is another excellent example.( NB: If ever you want to totally "blow your mind" there is no need to use illicit psychedelic drugs; just travel to France, get on a bus to Chartres and walk inside that Cathedral. If this doesn't blow your mind within 5 seconds then you aren't a human being ( at least, not a normal one !).

To continue.These kind of astonishing changes naturally imply the presence a new social and intellectual background. They imply amongst other things great wealth, stability, technical skill and above all else the CONFIDENCE and resolve to push through a long-term project. So how , exactly, did all of this suddenly appear in Western Europe in the 11th century ? Well, there are many valid answers to the question. But one is OVERWHELMINGLY MORE IMPORTANT than all of the others, and this is the triumph of the Church.

It can very convincingly argued, CTW, that Western civilization was, first and foremost, a creation of the Church. When I say "the Church", I absolutely do not mean the Church in the sense of that which is a repository of Christian truth and/or spiritual experience. I mean "the Church" in the sense that Western Europeans in the 11th and 12th century would have thought of her, namely, as a POWER... as "ECCLESIA" ! - sitting like a mighty, sovereign Empress in absolute authority above her subjects. The Church at this time was - I hasten to add - powerful for some very positive reasons. Most men of intelligence naturally and normally took holy orders, and had ample opportunity to rise from positions of obscurity to immense influence. In short, the Church was a thoroughly and genuinely democratic institution where ability, be it administrative, diplomatic or purely intellectual was always able to make its way.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I could ramble on forever, and this post is already too long. But I hope you have learned something, CTW, in particular, that Athenian/Roman culture and civilization to not equate to Western culture and civilization; also that Western civilization began in the 11th century in Western Europe, and were it not for the existence of the Christian Church what we refer to today as "Western civilization" (i.e; "The West" ) would never have existed.

Interesting, isn't it !

Kindest Regards,

John

CTW,

I'll get back to you in a few hours time. Thanks for looking at the artwork the Vikings carved into the prow and keels of their wooden longboats that I referenced. I hope you'll find what I have to say about it in the context of the origins of Western culture/civilization of some interest.

Kindest Regards,

John

Dear CTW and/or anyone else who might be interested,

I wanted to send a "link" to show you all something ( some photographs), in the context of this discussion of Western culture/civilization we are having, but my technical knowledge of computers/the internet is very poor unfortunately. (I am a stubborn, old, male Luddite in this respect !)

Still, if you are interested in seeing what I wanted to post to you, tap in the words: "Carving on a 9th century Viking boat" on your google search engine and then press enter. This should bring up a Website with the title: "Carving on a 9th century Viking boat/Things/Viking ship, Vikings..." , now click on this heading. What should then come up is a series of good quality photographs that show details of the ornamental carvings the Vikings cut into the prow and keels of their wooden longboats. (Let me know if this doesn't work) Now spend some time having a close look at these designs and then get back to me. ( I am ultimately wanting to demonstrate something I think is quite interesting regarding Spengler's conceptualisation of the essence of Western culture. What I'm talking about is pretty much my own discovery, so I'm rather proud of it !!)

Kindest Regards

John

Bitter Crank,

I had been very interested in discussing "The West" ( Western culture/civilization) as it was conceptualised and described by Oswald Spengler in his controversial, though well-known, major work, "The Decline of the West". In particular, I was hoping to discuss with you the primal (anthropological) origins of Western culture as Spengler seems to have understood them.

Unfortunately, my post was deleted, probably because any discussion of Spengler's work as it relates to what he called Western ("Faustian") culture and civilization today has been prohibited (deemed "taboo"). The reason for this censorship is, I think (?), because Spengler is judged to have been a racist by the contemporary Liberal-progressive establishment, and thus, any mention of his work, especially as it bears on the topic of Western culture/civilization is now regarded as being "beyond the pale" of legitimate discussion in polite/civilized society. (Strangely, Spengler's formal conception of "race" was, as it happens, purely "metaphysical" and not at all rooted in any kind of deterministic (biogenetic) Darwinian evolutionary theory.) .

This is a terrible shame, I think, because Spengler's analysis of the history and nature of "Faustian" (Western) culture and civilization in "The Decline of the West" is a fascinating exercise in the philosophy of history. "The Decline" has been roundly criticized over the years to date since the first fully revised edition of the text was published in 1922 for many good reasons ( e.g. the mysticism and intuitionism the author relies upon to ground some of the important claims made in the book. Equally, however, there is much Spengler had to say about Western culture/civilization in "The Decline" that is clearly very well-reasoned and logically coherent indeed (not to mention well-supported by an abundance of readily accessible empirical, historical evidence.

It is frustrating that one cannot, it seems, even mention his name now on a philosophy forum; and especially for me in this instance, as I felt that you may well have been able to provide some material help for me with regarding the particular query I had about the history of "The West".

Regards

John

PS: Please don't think I am being lazy in requesting this advice. I have spent many hours reading scholarly critiques of Spengler's "Decline of the West", but it seems to me that no one has any decisive views on this particular matter ?

Regards

John

I am very interested in Oswald's Spengler's analysis of Western culture/civilization. Spengler refers to Western culture as "Faustian". I realise that Spengler's work in the philosophy of history, in particular, his major thesis,"The Decline of the West" (1922)" is very controversial, but I am fascinated by the account of the history/nature of "Faustian culture" ( which he argues first emerged in Europe around 900 AD) that is set down in "The Decline". I think that even the harshest of his critics would have to concede that Spengler's account of the nature and history Western/Faustian Culture is fascinating and compelling; especially in the sense that the empirical evidence he provides to develop and support his arguments is very concrete and easy to verify ( especially today in the era of the internet, where facts can be checked, and good quality images of historical/cultural objects called up at the touch of a button). .

Spengler says little about the primordial origins of the "Faustian Spirit", he alludes very briefly (literally only 2 or 3 times) to the "Nordic" people Northern Europe, by which I think he is referring to either the ancient Germanic tribes ( the Saxons, the Jutes, the Angles, etc) or possibly, the Vikings of Scandinavia ( i.e. the countries we call Denmark, Sweden and Norway, today).

The more I read on the topic of Spengler's conception of "Faustian Culture" ( and its hallmark characteristics both physical and psychological), the more I am inclined to feel that if Spengler were alive today to "fill in some of the gaps" for us , relating to his work, he would probably identify the Vikings, who appeared on the map of world history in the 7th (?) century, as the first genuinely Western (Faustian) people; that is, the first "fully fledged", bone fide Westerners.

If anyone has an expert knowledge of Spengler's work ( the kind that I ,unfortunately, lack), and how it is interpreted by current experts in the mainstream academy, I would be very grateful if they could tell me whether or not the idea of the Vikings being the proto- (Spenglerian) Westerners seems a reasonable supposition.



Thanks if you can help (!)

John

Suppose a husband and wife have a child with Down's Syndrome whom they have always loved dearly are cared for in an exemplary manner.Is the dominion - in terms of the strict discipline and physical restraint, etc; - that these parents must often exercise over their DS child's behaviours on a day-to-day basis ( or even hour -to hour) unethical?

Regards

John