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Michael Kunze, Oswald Spengler
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Introduction
It is a tradition at Counter-Currents to remember the great German
philosopher of history, Oswald Spengler, on the anniversary of his
birth, the 29th of May. This year, I would like to take the time to
critically reflect on Spengler’s views of race within his magnum opus,
The Decline of the West (1918–22), and, in particular to discuss the importance these ideas hold for modern day racialists and ethno-nationalists.
Some of these issues were touched on by Greg Johnson in his 2010 essay, “
Is Racial Purism Decadent?,”
and my arguments here are largely in response to some of the questions
he poses therein. In brief, my intent with this piece is to (1) provide a
brief overview of Spengler’s racial doctrine, (2) illustrate the
disjunctions existing between the Spenglerian conception of “race” and
materialistic ones, and (3) to explore what the Spengler being correct
on the question of race means for those currently involved in the
various shades of racial preservationism common among Counter-Currents’
readership.
When discussing “race,” it is common parlance among racial
preservationists to adopt usages of the term derived from the great
physical anthropologists and anthropometrists of the early 20th century.
It is in works such as Carleton S. Coon’s
The Races of Europe (1939) or Bertil Lundman’s
Nordens Rastyper
(1940), that the highly developed and nuanced models of the different
human races are exemplified. And, it is from works such as these that
contemporary discourses on race within preservationist circles find
their genealogical root. Primary examples of this can be seen in the
wide selection of early-twentieth century literature hosted on the
website of the Society for Nordish Physical Anthropology (SNPA)[1]—an
organization “founded in January 1999 […] by three university students”
with the goals of reviving the theories of “the nature and phylogeny of
human biodiversity” which dominated academia “prior to 1950.”[2] The
SNPA’s website is presently hosted by a racial preservationist web
forum, The Apricity, one of whose most active sub-forums is devoted to
classifying both forum members and celebrities according to the racial
typologies such as Lundman’s or Coon’s.[3] The deep relationship between
pre-1950 physical anthropology and contemporary racialist discourse is
hardly unique to The Apricity, and can be found throughout racialist
websites and forums.
This biological view of race—focusing both on the phenotypical and
genotypical variations both within and without Europe—is, however, quite
far from what Spengler means when uttering the word “race.” While he
does not deny that there is a biological dimension to race, Spengler
does not
reduce race to biology.[4] Rather, for Spengler, the notion of race was one which
included the material, but
supervened over it
to include psychological and cultural dimensions as well. Later in
life, this non-reductionist position would put him at odds with the
high-profile members of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party
(NSDAP), particularly with Alfred Rosenberg, whose racialism bore more
in common with Lundman and Coon’s physical anthropology than with
Spengler’s anti-materialism.[5] What, however, is meant by an
anti-material conception of race? If Spengler did not reduce race to
physical characteristics, how
did he understand it?
Spenglerian “Race”
In his own words, Spengler defines a race as “the cosmic-plantlike
side of life, of Being, [which] is invested with a character of
duration.”[6] Race is, he tells us, “determined by the fact that the
bodily succession of parents and children, the bond of the blood, forms
natural groups, which disclose a definite tendency to take root in a
landscape”—with “race” standing in for the “fact of a blood which
circles, carried on by procreation, in a narrow or wide landscape.”[7]
Prima facie,
this definition of the term does not sound too far a cry from those of
the physical anthropologists. However, as Spengler develops his thesis
within
The Decline of the West, his position emerges as one which is far closer to the
völkisch landscape mystics of the
Bodenbeschaffenheit
movement, such as Hermann Keyserling.[8] We see this connection
emphasized in the relationship Spengler postulates between race,
landscape, language, and culture. In terms of the connection between
race and landscape, we see Spengler advocating for a fundamentally
formative and governing impact of the latter upon the former:
A race has roots. Race and landscape
belong together. Where a plant takes root, there it dies also. There is
certainly a sense in which we can, without absurdity, work backwards
from a race to its “home,” but it is much more important to realize that
the race adheres permanently to this home with some of its most
essential characters of body and soul. If in that home the race cannot
now be found, this means that the race has ceased to exist. A race does
not migrate. Men migrate, and their successive generations are born in
ever-changing landscapes; but the landscape exercises a secret force
upon the plant-nature in them, and eventually the race-expression is
completely transformed by the extinction of the old and the appearance
of a new one. Englishmen and Germans did not migrate to America, but
human beings migrated thither as Englishmen and Germans, and their descendants are there as Americans.[9]
In this, we see that Spengler’s view on race is such that it can be essentially treated as a
function
of a specific landscape and place—with individual races being
inextricably tied to their geographic birthplaces as peoples.[10] The
differences between this conception of racial formation and Darwinian
models of evolution are more pronounced when we consider as well that
Spengler’s philosophy treated a race not as a collection of related
organisms, but rather as a
single organism, and that the
physical and psychological formation wrought by the landscape was
collective rather than individual in nature. This collectivism is seen
in the relationship Spengler posits between race and language as well,
with the two complementing one another in a way analogous to body and
mind in an individual:
In the limit, every race is a single great body, and every language the efficient form of one
great waking-consciousness that connects many individual beings. And we
shall never reach the ultimate discoveries about either unless they are
treated together and constantly brought into comparison with one
another.[11]
This relationship between a people’s race and its language, then, is
one wherein each necessarily complements one another, with both being
fundamentally necessarily to the integral unity of the singular
organism. Carrying the metaphorical comparison between the individual
and the people further, we see
culture emerge from this
race-language dyad as the natural expression of the two as they exist in
the world. Spengler sees language as essentially two-fold, being
divided into
talk and
speech, with each linguistic mode being proper to one “of the two primary Estates” such that “
talk belongs with the castle [the state],
and speech to the cathedral [the
church].”[12] By means of its expression through these two estates,
Spengler sees language as participating in the “waking relation that
has Culture, [and] that
is Culture.”[13] In this way, culture emerges as the
activity of the interaction of the bodily race and mental language of a people with their given landscape.
This conception of mankind which Spengler elucidates is not
anti-material in that it denies the material dimensions of race, but is
so in that it does not treat a people as being reducible to mere
physiological characteristics and differences. For Spengler, the very
term “people” is not a simple designation for a group with physical or
political or linguistic ties, but is “a
unit of the soul,”
designating a unified collective spiritual internality shared by all
members of the group.[14] For Spengler, this racial soul was expresses
most fully through the peoples’ modes of cultural production—namely
through the arts. He saw racial virility as being intimately tied to
artistic expression, with the development of High Art being “a mark of
race,”
rather than of learning.[15] He tells us that “the great art by which
the Culture finds its tongue is the achievement of race and not that of
craft.”[16] In this, Spengler is saying that the art whose expression
comes to
define a people (e.g. the relationship between Gothic architecture and Western man) is essentially
racial
in nature, and not a learned skill—insofar as the art itself is the
cultural “vocalization” of the race’s experience of the world.[17]
It is with this sense of both the terms “race” and “art” that we can
make sense of Spengler’s assertion that “the creators of the Doric
temples of South Italy and Sicily, and those of the brick Gothic of
North Germany were emphatically race-men, and so too the German
musicians from Heinrich Schütz to Johann Sebastian Bach.”[18] For, in
this, he is saying that these great artists throughout history
exemplified through their works the inner
experience of their race, and as such were great
men of race.
The art of these great men, which forms the core cultural expression of
Western man, is for Spengler, thus seen not as the products of artistic
education achieved by individuals. Rather, it is a fundamentally
racial production, which can no more be separated from the
race
of the people who birthed it than can that race from its language, nor
the race from its landscape. It is through cultural production
generally, and through art particularly, that the genius of the race is
made manifest—its strength and vitality being translated into forms
which supervene over the brute materiality of phenotype and genotype.
Questions of Preservation
If Spengler is correct, what does this mean for contemporary
racialists and racial preservationists? To begin, let us examine one of
Spengler’s best known statements on the question of racial purity and
preservation, from
The Hour of Decision (1943):
But in speaking of race, it is not
intended in the sense in which it is the fashion among anti-Semites in
Europe and America to use it today: Darwinistically, materially. Race
purity is a grotesque world in view of the fact that for centuries all
stocks and species have been mixed, and that warlike—that is,
healthy—generations with a future before them have from time immemorial
always welcomed a stranger into the family if he had “race,” to whatever
race it was he belonged. Those who talk too much about race no longer
have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong
one, which has a nation within it. This manifests itself above all in
self-evident elemental fecundity, in an abundance of children, which
historical life can consume without ever exhausting the supply.[19]
In this passage, we see Spengler vehemently rejecting the
purity-based racial theories prevalent within the NSDAP. But, what is
the nature of this strong rejection? At its root, what we see in
Spengler is a sharp contrast between his characterization of (a) the
raceless man’s engaging in
discourse on race and (b) the man of race’s non-discursive
lived experience of race.
The former discursive behavior, we see Spengler treat as degenerate and
weak—the latter non-discursive behavior, as vital and strong. As
Johnson notes, one of the key differences between these two behaviors is
the activity’s vector; where “racial consciousness is backwards looking
[…] the feeling of race is forward-looking.”[20] The former is an
after-the-face reflection on the past activities of race men; while the
latter is the present experience
of the man of race, impelling him to reach new creative heights in the cultural expression of his race.
Spengler would argue, then, that the discursive activities of
contemporary racialists and racial preservationists on maintaining
racial purity not only miss the point of race entirely by reducing it to
mere physical characteristics, but also that such discursive action is a
decadent and unhealthy way of approaching race. The man of race would
view, Spengler tells us, such concerns with racial purity as entirely
backwards-looking, seeking to preserve what his race
once was.
However, the non-discursive experience of one’s race is correspondingly
forward-looking, seeking to actualize and create a strong and vital
future culture. Johnson tells us that Spengler would argue that “the racial purist looks to the past, not the future, because
he does not have the vitality in him necessary to create a future.”[21]
The racial consciousness of the preservationist is defined entirely by
his race’s past—a past which is, by definition, immutable and fixed; his
engagement with race, then, is wholly discursive, merely
talking of past glories and present ills. It is not defined by the action born of the inner experience of race-feeling itself.
These unhealthy manifestations of discursive preoccupations with
racial purity run counter to the healthy non-discursive race-feeling and
its resulting cultural production not because the discourse of the
purist
is wrong. Indeed, as Johnson argues, “decadent people can be right, and healthy people can be wrong.”[22] However, in terms of
effective action,
there are more important things than simply holding “correct” opinions,
or engaging in “correct” discourses. What is needed so much more than
mere discourse is the
action
which springs naturally from the healthy man of race’s vitality. In,
correctly in my estimation, judging “White nationalism in America” as
“as overwhelmingly degenerate movement,” Johnson concludes his musings
on Spengler by asking the question: “what would a vital white
nationalism look like?” We know now what a movement whose primary
activity is
discourse on race looks like; it is what we have
today—a decadent movement which produces a near endless stream of
discussion and literature on the topic of race. How would a vital and
healthy movement differ from this? Johnson speculates:
A vital white nationalist movement would
be a utopian, progressivist, eugenicist mythical-cultural phenomenon. It
would not be founded on empirical studies of how race influences
culture. It would not propagate itself through academic conferences and
policy studies. It would be founded on a grand culture-creating,
race-shaping myth, propagated through art and religion, that enthralls
and mobilizes a whole people. It would be less concerned about the race
we were or the race we are than about the race we can become.[23]
In terms of Spenglerian views on the question of race, we can imagine a healthy movement as one whose primary activity is not
discourse, but
cultural production. A healthy movement would not necessarily be wholly
unconcerned with
“correct” discourse on race, but its dominant and overriding concern
would be the cultural production stemming from the non-discursive
experience of the vital feeling of one’s race. The healthy movement
would by defined not by polemic literature on the “dangers” of
race-mixing, but by grand works of art expressing the inner experience
of the race. It would be a movement whose “celebrities” were not the
authors of books on race, but men whose entire being was devoted to the
furtherance of their race’s artistic expression.
In this way, Richard Wagner, stands forth as the near-ideal example of Spengler’s man of race. Wagner was not
unconcerned
with the question of race, or with discourse on race, but when we look
at the scope of his life and work, his activities were overwhelmingly
defined by cultural production rather than discourse. We remember Wagner
not primarily for his writings on race. Rather, we remember him because
the art he produced was a force of nature, which expressed to purely
the soul of his race that it drew together thousands upon thousands of
the German people—giving rise to sweeping cultural movements. Taking
Wagner as our paradigm, then, we should perhaps revise our questions.
Rather than asking what would a vital movement look like, perhaps we
should ask how can I
become a Spenglerian man of race? It is my contention that if we are to succeed—to
win,
as Johnson puts it—it will not be through the endless discourse we have
engaged in thus far; nor will it be through grand plans to re-shape the
movement from the top-down.
Our success will come through individual change and progress. It is not necessary that we
cease engaging in racialist discourse, or that such discourses are
wrong,
but this is not the means of our victory. Rather than through imitation
of racialist authors like Francis Parker Yockey, our success will come
through the imitation of cultural producers like Wagner. Naturally, such
a movement
would be characterized by
physical vitalism and fecundity as well, but it would not be
limited to such. It would be equally—if not moreso—characterized by
cultural
fecundity and strength. In this way, a reevaluation of our very idea of
“race” in Spenglerian terms proves to be of the utmost importance in
providing a pathway to success.
Bibliography
Bolton, Kerry. “Oswald Spengler: May 29, 1880–May 8, 1936.”
Counter-Currents Publishing: Books Against Time. 29 May 2012.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/oswald-spengler/ [accessed 25 May 2015].
Borthwick, Stephen M. “Historian of the Future: An Introduction to
Oswald Spengler’s Life and Words for the Curious Passer-by and the
Interested Student.”
Institute for Oswald Spengler Studies.
https://sites.google.com/site/spenglerinstitute/Biography [accessed 25 May 2015].
Brown, David Henry. “Metaphysical Presuppositions in Spengler’s
Der Untergang des Abendlandes.” PhD diss., McMaster University 1979.
Coon, Carleton S.
The Races of Europe. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939.
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/racesofeurope.htm
Dreher, Carl. “Spengler and the Third Reich.”
The Virginia Quarterly Review: A National Journal of Literature and Discussion. 15, no. 2 (1939).
http://www.vqronline.org/essay/spengler-and-third-reich [accessed 25 May 2015].
Duchesne, Ricardo. “Oswald Spengler & the Faustian Soul of the West, Part 1.”
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———. “Oswald Spengler & the Faustian Soul of the West, Part 2.”
Counter-Currents Publishing: Books Against Time. 5 January 2015.
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“Essays & Excerpts.” Society for Nordish Physical Anthropology.
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/index2.htm [accessed 25 May 2015].
Farrenkopf, John. “Spengler’s Historical Pessimism and the Tragedy of Our Age.”
Theory and Society 22, no. 3 (1993): 391–412.
———. “Spengler’s Theory of Civilization.”
Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology 62, no. 1 (2000): 23–38.
“Introduction.” Society for Nordish Physical Anthropology.
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/introduction.htm [accessed 25 May 2015].
Johnson, Greg. “Is Racial Purism Decadent?”
Counter-Currents Publishing: Books Against Time. 10 July 2010.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/07/is-racial-purism-decadent/ [accessed 25 May 2015].
Lundman, Bertil.
Nordens Rastyper: Geografi och Historia. Verdandis Småskrifter 427. Stockholm: Albert Bonnier, 1940.
Noll, Richard.
The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Spengler, Oswald.
The Decline of the West. 2 vols. Revised edition. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961.
———.
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Notes
[1] “Essays & Excerpts,” Society for Nordish Physical Anthropology.
[2] “Introduction,” Society for Nordish Physical Anthropology.
[3] “The Apricity: A European Community.”
[4]
Farrenkopf, “Spengler’s Historical Pessimism and the Tragedy of Our
Age,” 395; Borthwick, “Historian of the Future”; Johnson, “Is Racial
Purism Decadent?”.
[5] Dreher, “Spengler and the Third Reich”; Bolton, “Oswald Spengler.”
[6] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:113.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Noll,
The Jung Cult, 95–103.
[9] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:119.
[10] Brown, “Metaphysical Presuppositions in Spengler’s
Der Untergang des Abendlandes,” 223.
[11] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:114.
[12] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:153.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:165.
[15] Spengler,
The Decline of the West,
[16] Ibid.
[17]
Farrenkopf, “Spengler’s Historical Pessimism and the Tragedy of Our
Age,” 396; Farrenkopf, “Spengler’s Theory of Civilization,” 24–25.
[18] Spengler,
The Decline of the West, 2:118–19.
[19] Spengler,
The Hour of Decision, 219.
[20] Johnson, “Is Racial Purism Decadent?”
[21] Johnson, “Is Racial Purism Decadent?”
[22] Johnson, “Is Racial Purism Decadent?”
[23] Johnson, “Is Racial Purism Decadent?”
