Counter-Currents
580 words
Oswald Spengler was born on this day in 1880. For his contributions to the philosophy of history and culture, Spengler is one of the most important philosophical influences on the North American New Right, largely by way of his disciple Francis Parker Yockey. Spengler is often wrong, but even when he errs, he does so magnificently.
Spengler’s magnum opus is The Decline of the West, 2 vols. (1918 and 1922). He also wrote three shorter books: Prussianism and Socialism (1919), Man and Technics (1931), and The Hour of Decision (1934).
There is little worthwhile secondary literature on Spengler in English, and much of it appears on this site. I also recommend John Farrenkopf’s Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics.
Spengler is one of the most often-tagged figures at Counter-Currents.
Here are the main works we have published by and about Spengler:
By Spengler:
- “Is World Peace Possible?”
- “The Colored World Revolution,” Part 1
- “The Colored World Revolution,” Part 2
- “Pessimism?”
- “Nietzsche and His Century”
- “Prussians and Englishmen,” Part 1
- “Prussians and Englishmen,” Part 2
- “Prussians and Englishmen,” Part 3
On Spengler:
- Kerry Bolton, “Oswald Spengler: May 29, 1880–May 8, 1936”
- Kerry Bolton, “Nietzsche and Spengler: Preface to Thinkers of the Right”
- Domitius Corbulo, “The Faustian Soul and Western Uniqueness”
- Ricardo Duchesne, “Oswald Spengler and the Faustian Soul of the West.” Part 1, Part 2
- Richard J. Herbert, “The Question of Race in Spengler and its Meaning for Contemporary Racialism”
- Greg Johnson, “Is Racial Purism Decadent?” (translations: French, Spanish)
- Margot Metroland, “Oswald Spengler & the Controversy of Caesarism”
- Margot Metroland, “Spengler, Yockey, and The Hour of Decision”
- Richard Moore, “Oswald Spengler”
- Revilo Oliver, “Oswald Spengler: Criticism and Tribute”
- Quintilian, “Spengler on Causation”
- Quintilian, “Spengler on Fate”
- Quintilian, “Spengler on Unfrutifulness”
- A. E. Stern, “Between the Heroic & the Immeasurable: The Historical Background of Oswald Spengler’s Philosophy of Science”
- Robert Steuckers, “Atlantis, Kush, and Turan: Prehistoric Matrices of Ancient Civilizations in the Posthumous Work of Spengler,” Part 1, Part 2
- Robert Steuckers, “Evola and Spengler” (in Czech)
- Keith Stimely, “Oswald Spengler: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas”
Articles Making Substantial Mention of Spengler:
- Kerry Bolton, “A Contemporary Evaluation of Francis Parker Yockey,” Part 1
- Kerry Bolton, “Australian Artists of the Right: Norman Lindsay,” Part 1, Part 2
- Kerry Bolton, “Wall Street and the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution”
- Collin Cleary, “Becoming Who We Are: Leftist Eurocentrism and the Destiny of the West” (in French)
- Collin Cleary, “Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization,” Part 2, Part 3
- Collin Cleary, “Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition,” Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
- Jared George, “Rock ‘n’ Roll & The European Soul”
- Alex Graham, “Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness”
- Derek Hawthorne, “D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love: Anti-Modernism in Literature,” Part 3
- Nicholas R. Jeelvy, “Biospenglerianism”
- Greg Johnson, “Historicizing the Historicists: Notes on Leo Strauss’ ‘The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,’ Part 1”
- Greg Johnson, “Our Marx, Only Better: Vico & Modern Anti-Liberalism”
- Eugène Montsalvat, “Contra Faustian Man” (in French)
- Revilo Oliver, “Lawrence R. Brown’s The Might of the West”
- Revilo Oliver, “The Shadow of Empire: Francis Parker Yockey After Twenty Years”
- Christopher Pankhurst, “Toward a Right-Wing Hauntology”
- William Pierce, “The Faustian Spirit” (in French)
- William Pierce, “Purpose in Life”
- Ted Sallis, “The Overman High Culture: Future of the West” (translations: French, Portuguese)
- Interview with Robert Steuckers
- Robert Steuckers, “Postmodern Challenges: Between Faust and Narcissus,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (Portuguese translation here)
- Lucian Tudor, “The German Conservative Revolution and its Legacy”
- Scott Weisswald, “Changes’ Fire of Life”
- Francis Parker Yockey, “Culture (December 1953)”
- Francis Parker Yockey, “Thoughts Personal and Superpersonal” (Excerpt)
- Francis Parker Yockey, “Thoughts Personal and Superpersonal: Prussianism and Americanism”
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
5 comments
Fantastic resources. Thanks for this awesome series of remembrances of rightist intellectuals and artists. CC is really becoming my go-to place whenever I want to learn about some person or aspect of the Right (ie, I’ll do an internal search of CC first, to see what I can learn before going anywhere else, buying books, etc). The scale of what of lasting intellectual value is now on offer here is enormous.
A podcast or two ago someone asked about going back in time and changing the outcome of one battle….
I would get in that time machine and head on over to Dien Bien Phu 1954. And tell the French high command to pull out their forces from that jungle fortress before the Viet Minh could trap and destroy them.
Dien Bien Phu is widely touted by communists and third world revolutionaries as ending the “myth” (ala Joseph Campbell) of Western-White supremacy. A third world people defeated a White led imperial French force which included many elite units like the paras. The battle’s aftermath played out in massive anti-European uprisings in Asia and Africa, the 1956 Anglo-French Suez debacle, the American failure in Vietnam, the downfall of Rhodesia and South Africa, and now the mass migrations into Europe and North America.
The ongoing wars in the Persian Gulf region need to be considered in this light. The American-led victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military, starting with the Desert Storm campaign of 1991 and then concluding when US troops rolled into Baghdad in 2003, seemed to turned this situation around. The Western world destroyed a strong third world power and then for a few years under the aegis of the Global War on Terror appeared to have seized the mantle of global supremacy.
But that supremacy dissipated in the wake of the seemingly endless insurgencies which broke out in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the ongoing chaos of the Color Revolutions. Western world supremacy during 1991-2003+ really was a facade, based on briefly held military-technological advantages.
And now the third worlders smell blood. They flood into White countries and stake out their territories which they defend with force and mass action (aka No Go Zones). There are one, two, three many Dien Bien Phus in Malmo and Rotherham and Minneapolis. The recent capitulation of Western elites before BLM reflects either an unprecedented treachery on the part of those elites, or a civilization which has been hollowed out and can not even defend its own memorials, i.e., on the Decline.
The psychological-political implications of the US wars in the Persian Gulf, I think, have yet to be fully understood. These just may be a continuation of what got started at that battle over a remote jungle fortress in Vietnam back in 1954.
This also suggests a tactic. If somewhere a Western-White force could win a decisive victory in battle over the third worlders (preferably those now rioting within Europe or North America) and then make that victory stick, the situation just might turn around.
As the saying goes, something to think about in the continuing chaos…
I’d like to note that the following Spengler works are available in English:
Rogue Scholar has made a complete two-volume edition of Decline and a new edition of Hour of Decision.
Vintage has the standard one-volume abridgment of Decline. I don’t know if Oxford is still publishing their edition.
Arktos has Men and Technics and an upcoming two-volume edition of Decline.
Kerry Bolton’s Black House Publishing has Prussian Socialism which includes ten other Spengler essays.
I have the full two volumes of Decline in hardback in the ‘classic’ Atkinson translation. Book of the Month Club of all publishers had them as a selection at some point 25-30 years ago. Is there known to be anything wrong with that translation?
I haven’t heard anything bad about Atkinson’s translations. I know Arktos only did some polishing up for their Men and Technics edition.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.