Oswald Spengler and German Historicism

The aim of the article is to consider the problem of the correlation between the categories of Oswald Spengler's cultural-historical and political conception with the basic methodological and political principles of German historicism. The sources of the study are Spengler's works. As a research method, a comparative historical method is used, which makes it possible to consider Spengler's cultural, historical and political concepts in the context of German historicism. The past century, since the publication of the first volume of The Decline of the West, showed an unabated interest in Spengler's intellectual heritage, which is based on the fact that the author is rightfully considered to be the ancestor of the civilisational concept in the study of history. Despite the fact that Spengler criticised the preceding humanitarian tradition, his theoretical-methodological and political views were completely in line with German historicism. The latter was a form of special ideological, theoretical, methodological and political state of German humanitarian thought, which considered history from a certain angle as the existence of autonomous, individual, unique phenomena differing from natural entities in cognitive methods, and having a dialectical development. Despite the fact that Spengler criticised the traditional academic historical science, he remained within the framework of the basic principles of German historicism. In an effort to destroy the progressive image of the 19th-century history, he returned to this image in the form of "heroic pessimism" of a man of Western civilisation. He separated natural and historical being into world-as-nature and world-as-history, rejected a natural science approach in explaining history, and, at the same time, while mocking the principle of dialectics, he still likened the rhythm of historical development to a biological natural rhythm. The authors come to the conclusion that, not accepting Eurocentrism, according to his ideas, as a representative of Western culture the only one remaining in history, Spengler largely remained on Eurocentric positions. The author of The Decline of the West brought to a logical conclusion the principle of individualisation of historical phenomena, expanding it to the size of a giant cultural-historical type, which he masterfully described in the style of German historicism. In the political doctrine, Spengler spoke as an apologist for the national state, based on estate-corporate principles. Despite the fact that The Decline of the West and other Spengler's works formally go beyond the framework of German historicism, his cultural-historical and political concept was an attempt to revise its basic ideological and theoretical-methodological values and principles in the conditions of the crisis of historicism.

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