Spingler’s Conception of the Decline of Civilizations

Abstract

The idea of the decline of civilizations is one of the most important issues and topics that have occupied and greatly concerned the human mind in general and the Western mind in particular because the human being hardly thinks about his past and present without vehement aim to plan for the future. As such, the interest in the fate of each civilization and its future generates a permanent anxiety caused by the uncertainty of the future; therefore, what relates to the fate of each civilization and its future in light of the challenges it faces as well as what it generates of anxiety and confusion, occupies people’s attention strongly because it forms a mixture of what they expected and what slipped their attention. Accordingly, reading history of each civilization reveals that the most ancient civilizations and the most powerful and great ones could not stand and were not destined to survive, but rather they all met the same inevitable fate that awaits them, which is perishing, as confirmed by the perception of the German thinker Oswald Spengler, who is one of the most prominent Western thinkers who scrutinized The issue of the decline of civilizations, as his theory reflected the fears that swept and haunted the peoples of Europe after World War I, after the West emerged economically and demographically devastated. The rapid spread of fascism and Nazism in Italy and Germany, accompanied by fear and anxiety about destiny and future, positioned West’s thought on edge, which made Spengler’s theory a turning point in European history in particular.