Oswald Spengler facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Oswald Spengler
Born	Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880-05-29)29 May 1880 Blankenburg, Brunswick, Germany
Died	8 May 1936(1936-05-08) (aged 55) Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Alma mater	University of Munich University of Berlin University of Halle
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Goethean science Conservative Revolution
Thesis	Der metaphysische Grundgedanke der heraklitischen Philosophie (The Fundamental Metaphysical Thought of the Heraclitean Philosophy) (1904)
Doctoral advisor	Alois Riehl
Main interests	Philosophy of history, political philosophy
Notable ideas	The decline of the West
Influences Leo Frobenius Johann Wolfgang von Goethe G. W. F. Hegel Heraclitus Friedrich Nietzsche Arthur Schopenhauer Johann Joachim Winckelmann Ernst Mach
Influenced Theodor Adorno Northrop Frye Karl Haushofer Ernst Jünger George F. Kennan Henry Kissinger H. P. Lovecraft Malcolm X Henry Miller Paul Nitze J. Ortega y Gasset Arnold J. Toynbee Leo Strauss G. H. von Wright Julius Evola Francis Parker Yockey Michel Aflaq
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Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler ( 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art and their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.

Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to roughly 200 years of Caesarism (extraconstitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of the central government) before Western Civilization's final collapse.

Spengler is regarded as a nationalist and an anti-democrat, and he was a prominent member of the Conservative Revolution. However, he criticised Nazism due to its excessive racism. Instead, he saw Benito Mussolini, and entrepreneurial types, like the imperialist mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, as embryonic examples of the impending Caesars of Western culture, notwithstanding his stark criticism of Mussolini's imperial adventures.

He strongly influenced other historians, including Franz Borkenau and especially Arnold J. Toynbee and other successors like Francis Parker Yockey, Carroll Quigley and Samuel P. Huntington.