[Main Blog Post] Understanding Spengler's Decline of the West Bit 3: The Soul Image

[jprussell]

I've gotten to one of the juicier bits of Decline of the West - the "Soul Image" that defines different Great Cultures. Here's the post.

Comments

[deketemoisont]

I intend to make a much longer comment at a later point, but on the assumption that this will be most read in the next 48 h:

1) I've heard about the Classical, Magian, and Faustian soul images as described by Spengler everywhere else already! Do you find the others, as seemingly everyone else, not worth talking about, or not enough material for doing so?

2) I want to mention that Elias Canetti, in Crowds and Power, compares "national crowd symbols" (unfortunately the only part I read) for a number of countries (as you might expect, all European, considering Jews were overwhelmingly European at the time): for English ... no crowd, but the sea, a ship, crew, and captain; for Germans, a forest, sometimes marching; for Swiss, the mountains; for Dutch, dykes, sometimes only inside themselves, who'd rebuild the physical ones after breaking them upon invaders; for French, a recent one - the storming of the Bastille; for Spanish, a bullfighter and the watching crowd; for Italians - united Italy hadn't yet obtained one, ancient Rome being perceived to belong to "humanity" and Fascism having failed to give it a new one; for Jews, wandering across the desert.

3) some typos, but I only want to mention this because of the most hilarious one (almost "dawizard"-level), which involves "heimjunge".

4) may your next rest be fruitful!

[jprussell]

I look forward to a longer comment when you get the chance!

1) Fair enough - mostly it's that Spengler obviously has far less to say about any of those, and I lack the encyclopedic knowledge to take my own stab at it. He does talk a bit about the Egyptian, comparing its linearity to the Faustian Soul Image, but rather than a line extending into infinity, it is a set path with known waypoints and a definite end (deriving, of course, from the Nile). If I remember right, he briefly mentions the Chinese and Mesoamerican Soul Images, but I don't even remember what he says they were - likely that's on me, but it's also an indication of how little Spengler had to say on them. A further wrinkle, if I remember right, is that Spengler assumed that all of East Asia had only the Chinese as a Great Culture, and everybody else was pseudomorphosing them at best, which I suspect downplays the original contributions of the Koreans and Japanese, despite an obvious and heavy Chinese influence.

2) Interesting - I assume these are the metaphors folks from these countries used when describing crowds and/or "the people"? From the examples, it seems especially to have focused on what metaphors used for political leadership of those crowds (e.g. "steering the ship of state" or "leading the people across the desert"). On this post's topic, it's maybe most interesting how much diversity there is in these metaphors, if they're all Faustian as Spengler says.

3) So, are you reading "heimjunge" as a typo? That was a lame attempt to render "homeboy" in German, but if I made a hilarious interlingual faux pas, please do let me know.

4) Thank you! Kids were a lot today, and I was trying to handle more so their mother could enjoy Mothers' Day, and then a huge tree in our yard fell down - so we're all fine and I'll be okay, but some rest will likely do me good.

[deketemoisont]

3) Oh, for frack's sake! For whatever bizarre reason, I assumed it was mispasted where it was and the intended word had been "he" - nope, it makes perfect sense (should be capitalized?). OTOH: those of you who know the "dawizard" error can skip straight to the "Other Contenders" section at https://selinker.livejournal.com/32929.html .

[jprussell]

Hah! Not sure if I should count this as a win or a hilarious loss.

I didn't know about "dawizard," despite seeing the Encyclopedia Magica books on the shelves and wanting them, as I wanted all TSR splatbooks of the time. That's a truly funny story, not getting how "ctrl+f" works is a wonderful moment in time. As for the other contenders, I had heard of the King James one, but those are pretty great.