Tacitus

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 AD 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major worksthe Annals and the Histories examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to (presumably) the death of emperor Domitian in AD 96. There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including one four books long in the Annals. Other writings by him discuss oratory,Germania and the life of his father-in-law Agricola, mainly focusing on his campaign in Britannia. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.

APPROACHES TO HISTORY This Approach introduces students to the work of cultural and social anthropologists, to the way it has influenced the thinking of historians in recent decades. As with the other Approaches, the aim is to offer students new broader perspectives on the ways in which the past can be studied and to think more carefully about the concepts they use. The four broad sub-themes and supporting bibliographies allow students to read some of the classic works of anthropology and thereby appreciate the diversity of ways in which anthropologists have approached the study of humans in the present. Students can consider the extent to which functionalism and field studies at a micro level have influenced historical work, or the possibilities for historians of the cultural anthropology exemplified by the work of Clifford Geertz. Students will also be encouraged to take note of the extent to which there is a two-way interaction between anthropology and history

and to consider the implications of the intense self-criticism of anthropology as an agent of colonialism. Family and kinship This topic offers students the chance to analyse how anthropological work has sharpened historians understanding of the central role of family and kinship structures in societies and of the diversity of forms which these structures may take. As a central topic of much anthropological work it exemplifies the way anthropological approaches have been contested and have developed over the last half century from the stress on scientific categorization in the mid-twentieth century to the more recent emphasis of Pierre Bourdieu on fluidity and improvisation. Religion, Magic and Popular Culture This topic examines an area where the debt of many historians to the work of anthropologists has been extensive and has opened up a number of lively debates. The work of Evans-Pritchard or Clifford Geertz and its influence on historians such as Keith Thomas or Robert Darnton offers a classic example. At a general level the topic encourages students to examine why religion and magic make sense to their participants and to consider the limitations of concepts such as popular culture. The construction of history This topic explores the way anthropologists have looked at and thought about the past, be it myths, genealogies, oral histories, or the work of professional historians, as an attempt by participants within a society to explain who they are and to legitimize, contest or make sense of the world as it is. Students are encouraged to consider the applicability of such interpretations to historical testimonies and records from the past or indeed to the work of professional historians and anthropologists in the present. ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY The aim of this Approach is to introduce history students, very familiar with working with the evidence of words and texts, to a different type of evidence for the human past: mute material remains. The course underlines the very considerable strengths of material objects as evidence, but also their limitations, and how they are subject to varying interpretations. It also offers a chance to show how an archaeological approach has altered historians perceptions of the past. The course, while arranged thematically, introduces students to aspects of archaeological methodology (such as how to find and interpret traces of buried landscapes). It is not centred around theoretical debates within Archaeology

itself, though students may engage with these if they wish. The introductory explanations and attached bibliographies give some idea of how each theme might be studied though each can equally be approached with a different set of examples, chosen from any period. It is also possible to centre a topic on a specific site or group of material (e.g. for Burials the Spitalfields crypt, or the Sutton Hoo barrows). Landscape This topic will introduce students to many of the different types of surviving evidence for ancient landscapes (crop-marks revealed through air-photography; pottery-scatters through field-survey; modern topographical features; etc.). It will show how we can read in the landscape changing patterns of economic exploitation, settlement and ideology. Production and exchange This topic explores the evidence for the manufacture and exchange of goods examining both production sites and the distribution patterns of archaeologically identifiable products. Burial: belief and social status In this topic students are invited to consider the extent to which the dead, and what is buried with them, can provide evidence of belief and social differentiation. ART AND HISTORY The goal of this Approach is to broaden the historians sensitivity to an infinite variety of visual evidence. In most history writing, disproportionate attention is paid to written sources: this course is designed to foster a more balanced approach. However, using visual evidence is far from simple. Art in this context is very broadly defined, to include not merely the western canon of high art, but the entire gamut of material cultural production, and its consumption. The short bibliography can be supplemented with case-studies from different periods and places. Indeed, students should be encouraged to engage in detail with particular images including any to be found in Oxfords museums and galleries. While for brevity and convenience it is largely focused on western art traditions, this is not intended as any constraint on the scope of the course. The course is structured around four broad and overlapping themes. Creation and consumption The first theme relates to the social context of art: how, precisely, are the variety and changes in artistic production (styles of painting, forms of architecture, etc.) related to contemporary social developments? Consideration needs to be given not only to structures of patronage, but also to broader issues of markets and consumption.

Art and politics The second theme includes, but extends beyond, the use of visual imagery as a form of propaganda. Images have been deployed for subversive, no less than authoritarian, purposes. Analysis often reveals a creative tension in the interpretation of an image, whose true meaning is contested. The idea of the history of art: displaying, writing and collecting The last theme is the particularly western way in which the history of art has been conceived. This notion has been profoundly influential (through collecting, the construction of museums, art writing and art history), and rewards study. The postmedieval European idea of fine art is a highly particular category: to recognize it as such is to become more fully aware of the richness of a far more inclusive realm of visual culture beyond the fine arts, both in European and non-European traditions. ECONOMICS AND HISTORY The aim of this Approach is to introduce students to the ways in which economic models and statistical sources can be used to understand history. It encourages students to tackle the central issue of how economic development has changed the character and quality of human life and, to this end, to look at the ways in which economics has tried to define and measure concepts such as character and quality. The course can be approached both by taking a broad perspective on the economic evolution of the globe and by looking at specific thematic issues and case studies in different periods, for example the role of technological change. As with the other Approaches, it is organized around four broad themes. In the course of these students will be introduced to the grand theories of economic development expounded by Adam Smith, Robert Malthus and Karl Marx; the ways in which historians have sought to apply, refine, or refute these grand theories in the light of evidence from different times and places can be closely assessed. Economics and population change This topic looks at what determines the rise and fall of population and how population change affects living standards and income distribution. How do Malthusian population dynamics relate to family structure, inheritance, marriage customs, and the roles of men and women? Can long run growth patterns be explained by preventive and positive checks? Does overpopulation remain an explanation of poverty and a threat to sustainable development? Economics and social structure Can history be divided into stages like feudalism and capitalism as Marx argued? Is capitalism more conducive to economic development than other social structures? Do diminishing returns or class conflict explain the distribution of

income? Is culture explained by technology and economic organization? How do free market development, government regulation, or state ownership advance or hinder the interests of either the population as a whole or specific groups within the population? SOCIOLOGY AND HISTORY The aim of this Approach is to introduce students to the discipline of sociology, to explore ways in which sociological method has influenced historians, and to look at ways in which sociology and history over the years have diverged or converged. Students are introduced to the discipline of sociology as the study of man as a social animal, shaped by social institutions but at the same time able to construct or reconstruct them. How much scope different sociologists give to the individual and human agency is discussed. The course is organized around four broad themes. Sociological techniques The approach of sociology to sources, concepts, the comparative method and grand theory is compared to that of historians, and examples from the hybrid of historical sociology are examined. The traffic is not all one way and the appeal to some sociologists of the narrative and biographical approach is also illustrated. Social stratification This topic introduces students to the sociological theories of social stratification, especially those of Marx on class and Weber on social status, and examines how they have set the agenda for much social history. It also explores how such concepts have lost some of their explanatory force and how historians have refined them in new and exciting ways. Power and authority This topic examines ways in which sociologists have conceptualized the state and political institutions and at how they have analysed political obedience in terms of power (coercion) and authority (the recognition of legitimacy). It explores different notions of power developed by theorists such as Foucault, and ideas of bureaucracy, social discipline, revolt and revolution. Ways in which historians have used or developed these ideas are discussed. Sociology and religion This topic examines ways in which religion has been treated by sociologists. It looks in particular at the concept of the secularization of modern society, both as a debate among sociologists of religion and as a research question for historians who have refined and challenged the theory in the light of empirical evidence.

Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. In 1920 Spengler produced Prussiandom and Socialism (Preuentum und Sozialismus), which argued for an organic, nationalist version of socialism and authoritarianism. He wrote extensively throughout World War I and the interwar period, and supported German hegemony in Europe. Some National Socialists (such as Goebbels) held Spengler as an intellectual precursor but he was ostracised after 1933 for his pessimism about Germany's and Europe's future, his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority, and his critical work The Hour of Decision. Historical Framework
More than simply a pessimistic eulogy to the West, Decline of the West begins by establishing a historical framework in opposition to the current West European scheme of history, in which the great Cultures are made to follow orbits round us as the presumed centre of all worldhappenings, is the Ptolemaic system of history . In its place, Spengler introduces the idea of world-history, which widens the scope of historical inquiry beyond the Western European scheme that is predicated on an arbitrary lineage from ancient Greece to the European Enlightenment. This new system admits no sort of privileged position to the Classical or the Western Culture as against the Cultures of India, Babylon, China, Egypt, the Arabs, Mexico separate worlds of dynamic being which in point of mass count for just as much in the general picture of history as the Classical, while frequently surpassing it in point of spiritual greatness and soaring power . He humbly calls this non-centered form of history the Copernican discovery in the historical sphere, through its radical departure from existing historical schemas. Spengler articulates the problem of Civilization as the primary focus of his inquiry because it crystallizes the decline, death, and posthumous extension of world cultures. He differentiates between culture and civilization, suggesting,Civilization is the ultimate destiny of the Culture

Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, death following life, rigidity following expansion petrifying world-city following mother-earth and the spiritual childhood.The distinction between civilization and culture is analogous to the difference between the Greek soul and the Roman intellect.Civilization represents petrified or reified culture, divorced from the soul and process of becoming, and ultimately signifying the swansong rather than the apex of a cultures development. For Spengler, the German poet Goethe best epitomizes the dynamic philosophy of Becoming through his emphasis on development and growth in his works Wilhelm Meister and Poetry and Truth, in contrast to the static philosophy of Being represented by Aristotle and Kant .Goethes concept of living nature emphasizes this thing-becoming and opposes the world-as-organism, dead nature to living nature, law to form, which is propagated and expressed by civilization.Decline of the West is also based partly on Friedrich Nietzsches philosophy, particularly. Thus Spake Zarathustra, where, according to Spengler, he brilliantly and theatrically formulates the creative will-to-life. For Spengler, Goethe and Nietzsche form the two great pillars of German intellectual life, representing the apotheosis and decline of Western culture respectively.Unlike Goethe who was able to understand and solve the great [formal] problems of his time as a recognized member of his society, Nietzsches nihilism shatters the ideals of his own culture and protests passionately against everything contemporary, if he was to rescue anything his forebears had bequeathed to him as a cultural heritage.Nietzsches concept of the transvaluation of all values, or the affirmation of new values of life and pleasure over Christian suffering and chastity, epitomizes a dynamic philosophy of Becoming, much like Goethes idea of living nature.Nietzsche also bequeaths to Spengler the tools to issue his diagnosis of decline, such as the idea that a civilization in its death throes begets no more, but only reinterprets it assumes that the genuine act of creation has already occurred, and merely enters upon an inheritance of big actualities.Nietzsches concept of the Will to Power, or the primary driving force of man, manifests itself in the creative, destructive Will in history that Spengler seeks to chronicle. Thus, in a way, Nietzsche also provides Spengler with a lifeaffirming emphasis on dynamism and individualism that uneasily coexists with his fatalistic pessimism.

Spenglers Modernist Inheritance

Although he saw modernist art, such as atonal music and abstract painting, as manifestations of cultural decay, Spengler himself was influenced by the principles of modernism. Like John Maynard Keynes, T.S. Eliot, and other modernists, he attacked the immense optical illusion that pervaded an existing world order and peoples attendant unshakeable belief in the efficacy of such orders .His insistence on writing non-linear history while decentering the dominant, Eurocentric scheme of history echoes the alternative narrative approaches of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce Like other modernist writers who rejected the conventional narrative techniques and experimented with narrative chronology, Spengler breaks with his predecessors to reject the linear narrative of history. Spengler and modernist writers altered existing representations of through historical and literary means respectively conceptions that seemed to be corroborated by Einsteins theory of relativity, which espoused that the measurement of time and space is dependent on the position and velocity of the observer.

Spenglers scathing critique of historiography, specifically the subdivision of history into ancient, medieval, and modern, creates a radical break with the practice of history. He consciously breaks with the professional historian, who sees history as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding onto itself one epoch after another. The false, parasitical linearity of the professional historians approach mirrors civilizations stifling influence on culture and thingsbecoming. In his emphasis on becoming instead of being, Spenglers philosophy of history has a curiously modernist tenor; he is keenly aware of the radical instability and flux of life that cannot be captured through static forms. He recalls Henri Bergson's concept of duration, which can only be grasped through simple intuition of the imagination rather than objective science or logical analysis.Spengler writes: I see, in place of the empty figment of one linear history which can be kept up only shutting ones eyes to the overwhelming multitude of fact, the drama of mighty Cultures . For Bergson, no two moments can be the same; for Spengler, no two cultures or cultural moments can be the same. He writes, Each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return . Underscoring the ephemeral, inimitable nature of each culture, Spenglers view of history and temporality is colored by a profound sense of unrecoverable loss, much like Eliot's The Waste Land. Perhaps at his most modern, Spengler privileges cultural relativity and renounces the Eurocentric vantage point of other historians in a way that strongly resonates with his contemporary reader. Spengler criticizes Western philosophers, such as Nietzsche, for failing to consider vantage points outside of a narrow linear frame of Western history, suggesting: It is this that is lacking to the Western thinker, the very thinker in whom we might have expected to find itinsight into the historically relative character of his data, which are expressions of one specific existence and one only . Ironically, Spengler seems to have inherited this idea from Nietzsches concept of perspectivism, which holds that there is no absolute, God's eye standpoint from which one can survey everything that is.In a way, Spengler outdoes Nietzsche in his own relativism. Paradoxically, the thinker who has often been co-opted by the right berates Nietzsche for his lack of historical and cultural relativity. Conservative appropriations of Spenglers ideas have often prompted historians to overlook Spenglers opposition to imperialism and biological definitions of race. Implicit in Spenglers analysis of civilization is a critique of imperialism, which is civilization unadulterated because it petrifies and disseminates a dying or dead culture to all parts of the globe (28). An empire disregards the historically contingent and individual status of world-history by blindly imposing its own forms onto other cultures. Empires, such as the Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese, become phantom civilizations or dead bodies that live on for hundreds of years after their deaths through their imperial domains. Spengler dismisses 19th century ideas of race as a biological phenomenon as well as pseudoanthropological claims about the phrenology of cultures. Instead, he suggests that the idea of race derives largely from a geographic location and that race-expression is completely transformed in the migration and movement of peoples. 'race' in this connexion must not be interpreted in the present-day Darwinian sense of the word. It cannot be accepted, surely, that a people were ever held together by the mere unity of physical origin, or, if it were, could maintain that unity for ten generations. It cannot be too often reiterated that this physiological provenance has no existence except for sciencenever for folk-consciousnessand that no people was ever stirred

to enthusiasm by this ideal of blood purity It is the incoordination of this (wholly metaphysical) beat which produces race hatred. His ideas about race fundamentally opposed National Socialism, which predicated its policies on a biological distinction between the "Aryan" and Jewish race. Due to his opposition to the racist biology of Nazism, Spenglers books were eventually banned during the Third Reich. Spenglers rebuttal of 19th century and Nazi race theories positions him as a modern, if not modernist thinker, who sought to break with the outdated methods of his predecessors and conservative contemporaries by renouncing Western claims to universality and supremacy.

Organic View of History

In his self-described organic theory of history, Spengler labels cultures as organisms, a concept which he derives from Goethes idea of living nature . Living nature encapsulates the the idea of becoming from a standpoint of the phenomenal world in motion, which is best studied through erfhlen or living into rather than by dissection. He writes, I see worldhistory as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms. Drawing heavily on natural, biological terms, such as properties of species, he compares humans to butterflies and orchids, describing the way cultures spring with primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle. By appealing to biological and organic forms, Spengler seeks to naturalize his theory of history in a way that recalls Herbert Spencers attempts to extend evolutionary biology into sociology and ethics. His method of studying history draws heavily on analogy, through which the form and duration can be calculated from available precedents . Northrop Frye suggests that Spenglers analogical method regarding cultures rests on a further analogy between a culture and an organism. Curiously, however, one of Spenglers major critiques of existing historical scholarship is that History was seen as Nature (in the objective sense of the physicist) and treated accordingly, it is to this that we must ascribe the baneful mistake of applying the principles of causality, of law, of system . Yet, this baneful mistake seems to be precisely what Spengler is in danger of committing by uncritically using the organism as an analogy for society, thereby treating history like nature. Paradoxically, as I will later suggest, under Spenglers microscope, history becomes a study of things-become, where even the thingsbecoming are transformed into lifeless forms . The discipline of history, like other forms of inquiry, risks killing things-becoming in order to classify and analyze them. Spenglers organic analogy breaks down when he tries to assert that each culture is selfcontained like a peculiar blossom or fruit, a claim which has little basis in reality. After all, Spengler himself describes the ways that various cultures impact others through empire and trade, propagating their influence long after their declines. This complex network of influences seems to complicate his naturalistic analogy; a butterfly or orchid does not continue beyond its physical existence in the same way that Plato or Greek philosophy does. At times, Spengler undermines his own argument by forcing historical developments into his organic paradigm.

Western Civilization and its Discontents

Ultimately, according to Spengler, Western or Faustian culture is characterized by its restless thrust toward the infinite and unattainable, or the conception of mankind as an active, fighting, progressing whole . The Faustian individual strives to direct the world according to his will. In architecture, the infinity-seeking Faustian tendency is most apparent in the endless vertical thrusts of Gothic cathedrals and the depth-experience of paintings, in which parallel lines meet in infinity. From its inception around 1000 with the Cluniac reforms, the Faustian civilization marked a radical break with its predecessors, the Apollonian (Classical) culture and the Magian (Judeo-Arabic) culture . According to Spengler, the differences between Faustian and Apollonian art are instructive: The Apollonian form-language reveals only the become, the Faustian shows above all a becoming. Yet, according to Spengler, after nearly 900 years of dominance, the Faustian era has reached its death throes. He writes, the future of the West is not limitless tending upwards and onwards for all time but a single phenomenon of history. Like other modernists, he attacked the positivistic, Enlightenment myth of unending progress based on universal criteria. Harbingers of this cultural decay were, among other things, atonal music, avant-garde art produced for oversensitive connoisseurs, manipulation of the public opinion by mass media, and imperialism. Much like Goethes Faust becomes shackled by his insatiable quest for knowledge, Faustian man has become the slave of his creation, particularly through the machine which enslaves both the worker and entrepreneur. For Spengler, Caesarism is another manifestation of this decline, as authority becomes increasingly concentrated in the hand of one person and the modern institutions of the state begin to disintegrate. Even modern writers, such as Nietzsche and Ibsen, who embraced the possibilities of a true philosophy, also exhausted them . Towards the end of volume two, Spengler becomes increasingly bitter and pessimistic in his invective against the decay of modern society, and begins to betray his own principle of historical relativity. As Helps astutely observes, his claim to observe from a neutral standpoint shows a neglect of the relativity which is his favorite weapon. If the whole of reality is being constantly transformed in a continuum of aspects from perpetually changing viewpoints, it must be impossible to obtain a precise picture.in spite of his self-proclaimed non-centered history, Spengler uses the printing press, Goethe, and NietzscheGermanic historyas his primary historical markers. Perhaps stepping out of himself to view his theory against the backdrop of his peculiar world-historical moment, Spengler might suggest that his own historical framework is a reification of the dynamic impulses of German or Western European culture. It is ironic that the thinker who opposed theories as mummified versions of things-becoming became best known for a taxonomy of decline that perhaps prematurely petrified his own culture.Perhaps, this contradiction can best be attributed to the tensions between Spenglers metaphysical aims and his historical project; narrating history necessarily reifies the past as a thing-become in order to represent and study it.

1. H. Stuart Hughes, "Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate," New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1952. 2. Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. 3. Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. 4. For instance, in his poem, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Ezra Pound wrote that a botched Western civilization was an old bitch gone in the teeth. Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, New York: New Directions, 1957. 5. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, "The Weimar Republic Sourcebook," Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 6. Oswald Spengler, "The Decline of the West," New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. 7. Spengler writes, That which Goethe called Living Nature is exactly that which we are calling here world-history, world-as-history. Goethe, who as artist portrayed always the life and development of his figures, the things becoming and not the thing-become For him the world-as-mechanism stood opposed to the world-as-organism, dead nature to living nature, law to form 8. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze, Munich: 1937. 9. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze, Munich: 1937. 10. Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science," trans. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books: 1974. 11. In his address on the occasion of Nietzsches eightieth birthday in 1924, Spengler wrote: His ultimate understanding of real history was that the Will to Power is stronger than all doctrines and principles, and that it has always made and forever will make history... to him the most important thing was the image of active, creative, destructive Will in history. Oswald Spengler, Nietzsche And His Century, Spengler, Reden und Aufstze, Munich: 1937. 12. Ultimately, Nietzsches doctrine of the bermensch and eternal recurrence combine to inform Spengler's emphasis on individual creative power and its reflection of the absolute patterns of human society, which culminates in a vehement elitism. Kevin McNeilly, Cultural Morphologies: Yeats, Spengler and Adorno, Irish University Review. 13. Spenglers quotation is reminiscent of the opening lines of Keynes "Economic Consequences of the Peace": Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms, pursue our animosities and particular ambitions, and feel ourselves with enough margin in hand to foster, not assuage, civil conflict in the European family. John Maynard Keynes, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920. 14. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An introduction to Metaphysics, New York: First Carol Publishing Group, 1992.

15. Spengler recalls the sense of decay and disillusion captured in modernist literature: You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922. 16. Robert Wicks, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008. 17. Curiously, Spengler personally advocated the development of a German empire. 18. Northrop Frye, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, Daedalus. 19. The modernist German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was deeply influenced by Spengler, similarly emphasized an organic mode of building that sought to place his architectural theory into a naturalistic framework. In his educational curriculum, Mies emphasized dependence on the epoch and the obligation to realize the potentialities of organic architecture. Werner Blaser, "Mies van der Rohe," Basel: Birkhuser Verlag fr Architektur, 1997. 20. Arthur Helps, "Oswald Spengler," The Decline of the West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. 21. McNeilly writes, He demands purity, depth and objectivity but cannot manage to achieve a holistic critical perspective without in some sense betraying the historical organism, the actual becoming he wants to describe. Kevin McNeilly, Cultural Morphologies: Yeats, Spengler and Adorno, Irish University Review.