When Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) wrote THE DECLINE OF THE WEST in 1918, followed by a revision and second volume in 1923, it was taken in high regard by the post-World War I public, especially in Germany. It’s message of gradual, phased but continuous decline of Western culture and civilization since about the thirteenth century seemed to resonate with people at that time.
Basically he compares Western society, which he calls ‘Faustian’ culture, to classic Greco-Roman society (‘Apollonian’) and Arabian society (‘Magian’), as well as others. In each of these he sees politico-cultural characteristics arising from tribal society, which he sees as having “no State”, through eight distinct phases of statehood, and development of arts, architecture and even mathematics; finally to dissolve into again tribal society. Apollonian culture of course completed its phases many centuries ago, and Magian completed its with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.But Western (Faustian) culture is in its sixth phase of “contending states” since 1815, and Spengler predicted that it would enter its seventh phase of “Caesarism”, or a world imperium, about 2000.