From the desk of Steve Kogan on Thu, 2011-01-20 21:22 This is Part 3 of "'I See Further Than Others': Reflections On Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West and The Hour of Decision", a serial essay by Steve Kogan. In translation, “the decline of the west” recalls Edward Gibbon's “the decline and fall of the Roman empire,” but “der untergang des abendlandes” projects an image of time and space in the decline of "the evening lands," hence the "twilight of the west" (1). To visualize the title in this way is to prepare oneself for what follows, for it is not an introduction to a narrative or a theory of history but an image that evokes a particular region at a particular time of day, and it expresses an entire world view by association with the earth and sky. Myths are made of such stuff, as Spengler underscores in his many discussions of the early high cultures, and they are also the key to his "soul-portraits" of history, which he depicts in view of Nietzsche’s writings on the Olympian myths and the mythopoeic imagination.History As An Aesthetic Phenomenon
Friday, 21 January 2011
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