Oswald Spengler, Technology, and Human Nature

Abstract

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) is a neglected figure in the history of European philosophical thought. This article examines the philosophical anthropology developed in his later work, particularly his Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (1931). My purpose is twofold: the first is to argue that Spengler's later thought is a response to criticisms of the “pessimism” of his earlier work, The Decline of the West (1919). Man and Technics overcomes this charge by providing a novel philosophical anthropology which identifies technology as the highest expression of human cognitive and creative capacities. The second is to suggest that in his later period Spengler presents an affirmatory account of modern technology as the final stage of human cultural evolution. I conclude that by providing a philosophical anthropology that reconciles technology with human nature, Man and Technics represents an important development of Spengler's theory of human culture.

Notes

Notes

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Alex Carruth, Peter Boyce Le Couteur, Stephen R. L. Clark, David E Cooper, Arlette Frederik for comments on this paper and to Kerstin Maier for suggesting some pertinent literature.

1. Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (1931), trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976); hereafter references to this work are cited in the text.

2. On Spengler's pertinence to early twentieth-century German politics and philosophy, see Dina Gusejnova, “Concepts of Culture and Technology in Germany, 1916–1933” Journal of European Studies 36 (2006): 11–16. For Spengler's place within post-Kantian Germany philosophy, see David E. Cooper, “Reactionary Modernism” in German Philosophy since Kant, ed. Anthony O’Hear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 291–304.

3. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (1922), 2 vols., trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

4. See William H. McNeill, “The Changing Shape of World History” History and Theory 34 (1995): 8–26.

5. James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 2000), vol. 4, 2312.

6. Stuart H. Hughes, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate (London: Transaction, 1952), 1,

7. Quoted in William H. Drey, Perspectives on History (London: Routledge, 1980), 100.

8. Quoted in Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 335. The term “Heidegger's children” is taken from Richard Wolin, Heidegger's Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

9. Quoted in Hughes, Oswald Spengler, 127.

10. Quoted in Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 196; original emphasis.

11. See Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter (1932), in Essays II (Stuttgart: Klett, 1964).

12. Walter Benjamin, “Theories of German Fascism” (1930), in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimenberg (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 159–64; quotation from 162–64.

13. Stefan Zweig, “The Monotonisation of the World” (1925), in Kaes et al., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, 397–400; quotations from 397 and 400.

14. Quoted in Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 196–97.

15. For a discussion of Spengler's “mythopoeia” see David E. Cooper, “Modern Mythology: The Case of ‘Reactionary Modernism’” History of the Human Sciences 9 (1996): 25–37.

16. Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1977), 60, 79; original emphasis.

17. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. Maudemaire Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), §23.

18. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 69.

19. Spengler, Decline of the West, 411.

20. Thomas Parke Hughes, Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 57.

21. See David E. Cooper, “Technology: Liberation or Enslavement?” in Philosophy and Technology, ed. Roger Fellows (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), 7–18.

22. See Franco Volpi, “Heidegger Lettore Edito e Inédito di Spengler” in Sul Destino – Estetica, ed. Stefano Zecchi (Bologna: II Mulino, 1991), 209–49.

23. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977), 14f.

24. See David E. Cooper, Heidegger (London: Claridge, 1996), 59f.

25. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 65.

26. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 57.

27. Tony Pinkney, “Romantic Ecology” in A Companion to Romanticism, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 418.

28. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 63.

29. Stephen R. L. Clark, “Tools, Machines and Marvels” in Philosophy and Technology, ed. Roger Fellowes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 175, 162.

30. Langdon Winner, “Technologies as Forms of Life” in Technology and Values, ed. Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Laura Westra (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 58.

31. Quoted in Peter Boerner, Goethe, trans. Nancy Boerner (London: Haus, 2005), 42.

32. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 16.

33. Gilbert F. Lafreniere, The Decline of Nature: Environmental History and the Western Worldview (London: Academica Press, 2008), 37.

34. Spengler, Decline of the West, 249.