In the Preface to Book I of The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler proudly declared that his work was 'a German Philosophy'. There was no incompatibility between this and a history of the world. For universal history showed the Germans to be the most important people in the 'Faustian Civilisation' of Europe, itself the motor of modern development. German philosophy alone had scaled the mental heights where the whole of this mighty process could be comprehended. Hence world-history was Teutonic self-understanding, and part of its preparation for dominance in the coming Age of Caesarism.

LRB 24 January 1980 | PDF Download