The Decline of The West - A General Context

A General Context

Spengler relates that he conceived the book sometime in 1911 and spent three years in writing the first draft. At the start of World War I he began revising it and completed the first volume in 1917. It was published the following year when Spengler was 38, and was his first work, apart from his doctoral thesis on Heraclitus. The second volume was published in 1922 and thus Oswald Spengler spent over a decade writing The Decline. The first volume is subtitled "Form and Actuality", the second volume is "Perspectives of World-history ". Spengler's own view of the aims and intentions of the work are sketched as usual in the Prefaces and occasionally at other places.

The book has received unfavorable reviews from most scholars, even before the release of the second volume. The veering toward right wing views in the second volume confirmed this reception and the stream of criticisms has continued for decades. Nevertheless in Germany the book enjoyed popular success: by 1926 some 100,000 copies were sold.

A 1928 Time review of the second volume of Decline described the immense influence and controversy Spengler's ideas enjoyed during the 1920s: "When the first volume of The Decline of the West appeared in Germany a few years ago, thousands of copies were sold. Cultivated European discourse quickly became Spengler-saturated. Spenglerism spurted from the pens of countless disciples. It was imperative to read Spengler, to sympathize or revolt. It still remains so."

Spengler presented a world-view that resonated with post-WWI German mood - a view of democracy as the type of government of the declining civilization. He argued that democracy is driven by money-breeding and therefore easily corruptible. Spengler initially supported the rise of a strong-willed leader type of government as the next phase after democracy fails.