{"product_id":"2940015858495","title":"The Decline of the West: The Complete Edition","description":"TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt must be left to critics to say whether it was Destiny or Incident — using these words in the author's sense — that Spengler's \"Untergang des Abend-landes\" appeared in July, 1918, that is, at the very turning-point of the four years' World-War. It was conceived, the author tells us, before 1914 and fully worked out by 1917. So far as he is concerned, then, the impulse to create it arose from a view of our civilization not as the late war left it, but (as he says expressly) as the coming war would find it. But inevitably the public impulse to read it arose in and from post-war conditions, and thus it happened that this severe and difficult philosophy of history found a market that has justified the printing of 90,000 copies. Its very title was so apposite to the moment as to predispose the higher intellectuals to regard it as a work of the moment — the more so as the author was a simple Oberlehrer and unknown to the world of authoritative learning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpengler's was not the only, nor indeed the most \"popular,\" philosophical product of the German revolution. In the graver conjunctures, sound minds do not dally with the graver questions — they either face and attack them with supernormal resolution or thrust them out of sight with an equally supernormal effort to enjoy or to endure the day as it comes. Even after the return to normality, it is no longer possible for men — at any rate for Western men — not to know that these questions exist. And, if it is none too easy even for the victors of the struggle to shake off its sequelae, to turn back to business as the normal and to give no more than amateur effort and dilettantish attention to the very deep things, for the defeated side this is impossible. It goes through a period of material difficulty (often extreme difficulty) and one in which pride of achievement and humility in the presence of unsuccess work dynamically together. So it was with sound minds in the post-Jena Germany of Jahn and Fichte, and so it was also with such minds in the Germany of 1919-1910. To assume the r\u0026amp;le of critic and to compare Spengler's with other philosophies of the present phase of Germany, as to respective intrinsic weights, is not the purpose of this note nor within the competence of its writer. On the other hand, it is unconditionally necessary for the reader to realize that the book before him has not only acquired this large following amongst thoughtful laymen, but has forced the attention and taxed the scholarship of every branch of the learned world. Theologians, historians, scientists, art critics — all saw the challenge, and each brought his apparatus criticus to bear on that part of the Spengler theory that affected his own domain. The reader who is familiar with German may be referred to Manfred Schroeter's \"Der Streit um Spengler\" for details; it will suffice here to say that Schroeter's index of critics' names contains some 400 entries. These critics are not only, or even principally, general reviewers, most of them being specialists of high standing. It is, to say the least, remarkable that a volcanically assertive philosophy of history, visibly popular and produced under a catchy title (Reklamtitel) should call forth, as it did, a special number of Logos in which the Olympians of scholarship passed judgment on every inaccuracy or unsupported statement that they could detect. (These were in fact numerous in the first edition and the author has corrected or modified them in detail in the new edition, from which this translation has been done. But it should be emphasized that the author has not, in this second edition, receded in any essentials from the standpoint taken up in the first.)","brand":"Sweet and Maxwell, Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47069767467248,"sku":"2940015858495","price":9.25,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940015858495_p0.jpg?v=1763625779","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940015858495","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}