The Decline of the West

Blurb

The Decline of the West, or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. Spengler revised this volume in 1922 and published the second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, in 1923.
The book introduces itself as a "Copernican overturning" operating as a paradigm shift involving the rejection of the Eurocentric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval-modern" rubric. According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. He recognizes eight high cultures: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican, Classical, Arabian, Western or "European-American." Cultures have a lifespan of about a thousand years. The final stage of each culture is, in his word use, a "civilization".
Spengler also presents the idea of Muslims, Jews and Christians, as well as their Persian and Semitic forebears, being Magian; Mediterranean cultures of the antiquity such as Ancient Greece and Rome being Apollonian; and the modern Westerners being Faustian.