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Oswald Spengler was one of the most important thinkers of the Weimar Republic. In Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline, Ben Lewis completely transforms our understanding of Spengler by showing how well-connected this philosopher was and how, at every stage of his career, he attempted to intervene politically in the very real-life events unfolding around him. The volume explains Spengler’s politics as the outcome of a dynamic interplay between his meta-historical considerations on world history on the one hand, and the practical demands and considerations of Realpolitik on the other hand.
“Lewis is right to question the majority view that [Spengler] remained wedded to his deterministic fatalism. His Spengler embraces the dual role of observer and actor, intent on identifying the new emperor whose global exploits will sweep aside the ills of majority rule and socialism.” • Osman Durrani, Times Literary Supplement
“Lewis's biography illuminates both the subtle and the significant transformations within Spengler's thought…Recommended.” • Choice
Our lot as English speakers interested in the ideas of this Weimar philosopher has improved significantly with the publication of Ben Lewis’s Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline ... Just as Lewis has helped rescue [the work of] Karl Kautsky, he also brings to life a Spengler who has been overshadowed by his own (misunderstood) masterpiece.” • Matthew Miller, Cosmonaut Magazine
“The Spengler that emerges from Lewis’s closely argued and persuasive book is in equal parts a mystic, a self-publicist, a keen-eyed critic of liberal humbug, a romantic and a fool, who in helping to persuade millions of people to choose the paths of blood and iron, protected nothing of the past he was trying to save.” • Magazine - Lives; Running
“Oswald Spengler remains an enigmatic figure. Fiercely opposed to the biologistic racism that has dominated right wing thinking in the European-West, he was also a staunch ‘Caesarist’, agitating for dictatorial political institutions that could realise his hopes for a non-Marxist socialism. Lewis’s book is an outstanding contribution to understanding this, by turns, most compelling and disturbing of thinkers.” • Simon Glendinning, London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Revisiting Spengler’s political writings beyond the Decline of the West, Lewis recovers Spengler’s actual significance as a political thinker from the Weimar years to the Third Reich. The first study in English to address the complexity of his fraught relationship with both socialism and liberalism, it is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the evolving character of German political thought of this period in its original context.” • Dina Gusejnova, London School of Economics and Political Science
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1. Oswald Spengler’s Life and Work: A Chronological Overview
Chapter 2. Spengler Reception and Research
Chapter 3. Decline, Determinism and Development
Chapter 4. Faustian Zivilisation: Prognosis and Perspectives
Chapter 5. Spengler’s Prussian Socialism
Chapter 6. Rebuilding the German Reich: Illusion and Failure
Chapter 7. Decisive Years: Spengler and National Socialism
Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
Index