My Take | Is the West in decline?
- Oswald Spengler may have the answer, which may be more right today than when he first published his famed work a century ago
Some literary works are better known for their titles than contents. Just think of The Age of Anxiety, a long poem by W.H. Auden. It can be used to describe practically every generation, from baby boomers to Generations X, Y and Z. But I don’t personally know anyone who actually read it. Then there is The Decline of the West, by Oswald Spengler.
With a title like that, you can be sure people will be forever citing it even if they haven’t read a word. But I do know a few people who have read it, or some of it, including the ex-chairman of a major company in Hong Kong.
It’s said to be the favourite book of the influential right-wing British philosopher Roger Scruton, who died in January. Businesspeople tend to be on the right, or right of centre, and the book generally appeals to those on the right just like Marx does on the left.
Published in two volumes in 1918 and 1922, it has never been out of print. People in desperate times or from societies in turmoil, especially in the West, will always refer to it. The first volume was released as the imperial German army collapsed, leading to defeat and the subsequent German revolution.
The second came out at the height of hyperinflation during the Weimar period, whose traumas have had a profound effect on Germans, even today. In his memoir Inside the Third Reich, about his relationship with Hitler, Albert Speer remembered how The Decline of the West made a deep impression on him as a young man and that it was the bible of university students of his generation, many of whom ended up joining the Nazis.
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Can globalisation survive coronavirus or will the pandemic kill it?
If you had lived in those times, Western civilisation must seem to have been collapsing. Today, after the global financial crisis, and with the collapse of the liberal-political consensus, with the retreat of globalisation, the ongoing unprecedented global pandemic and the rise of the Chinese bogeyman, the West again must feel like it’s under assault.