Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:08:28.925Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The challenge of Spenglerian pessimism to Ranke and political realism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

John Farrenkopf
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The crisis in Communism and the apparent end of the Cold War have provoked a resurgence of liberal optimism and Western triumphalism. Recent visions of a peaceful world have been conjured up, only to be overtaken by war in the Persian Gulf and the threat of global recession. Awareness of the dark side of international relations in the twentieth century persists despite the irrepressible hopes of many of its students. At this juncture in history, therefore, when eternal hope once again collides with recurrent despair, it is timely to consider the international relations thought of Oswald Spengler, the author of The Decline of the West and ‘pessimist extraordinary’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 267 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the Earhart Foundation, the Germanistic Society of America, the Fulbright Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, for generously providing research grants for my work on Spengler. I am grateful to Professors Kenneth W. Thompson and Inis L. Claude of the University of Virginia for their unflagging support an d for offering insightful criticisms of my doctoral dissertation which constitutes the foundation of this essay. I would also like to express my appreciation to Professors Nikolaus Lobkowicz and Karl Graf von Ballestrem of the University of Eichstatt for currently supervising my research activities.

References

1 ‘Oswald Spengler, Philosopher, Dies’, The New York Times, 9 May 1936, p. 15.Google Scholar

2 Gilpin, Robert, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, in Keohane, Robert O. (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York, 1986), p. 304.Google Scholar

3 Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984), p. 245.Google Scholar

4 Grieco, Joseph M., ‘Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism’, International Organization, 42, 3 (Summer 1988), p. 486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Gilpin, ‘Political Realism’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism, p. 321.

6 Joll, James, ‘Two Prophets of the Twentieth Century: Spengler and Toynbee’, Review of International Studies, 11 (1985), p. 103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, and Fukuyama, Francis, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest, 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18.Google Scholar

8 Carr, Edward Hallett, ‘Die Geschichte wiederholt sich nicht. Oswald Spengler and A. Toynbee’, in Die Kultur, 5, 92 (1956/57).Google Scholar

9 The significance of Spengler to the study of international relations is hardly considered a t all in the comprehensive survey of contributions to international relations theory by Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff. He is only discussed briefly in this work in the context of his place in the ‘bellicist’ tradition, a militarist school of thought appearing in the West after the French Revolution. James E. Dougherty and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, (3rd edn, New York, 1990), p. 204. In Parkinson, F., The Philosophy of International Relations: A Study in the History of Thought (Beverly Hills, 1977) no mention is made of Spengler.Google Scholar

10 See the following works. Toynbee, Arnold, Civilization on Trial (New York, 1948), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Shotwell, James T., ‘Spengler’, ch. in The Faith of an Historian and Other Essays (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Carr, ‘Die Geschichte wiederholt sich nicht’; Henry A. Kissinger, ‘The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant’ (AB thesis, Harvard University, 1951); with respect to Aron, Merlio, Gilbert, Oswald Spengler: temoin de son temps (Stuttgart, 1982)Google Scholar; and with respect to Niebuhr, Thompson, Kenneth W., Masters of International Thought (Baton Rouge, 1980), p. 27Google Scholar. Christoph Frei, a Swiss doctoral candidate preparing an intellectual biography of Morgenthau, informed me that Morgenthau always kept his copy of Spengler's major work within easy reach on his bookshelf. In a letter to the author, dated 11 August 1988, Halle retrospectively gave eloquent expression to the powerful influence exercised by Spengler upon his intellectual development: ‘as a high school student in the 1920s, I read The Decline of the West almost as if what it presented was a religious revelation. Although the old man I hav e since become no longer regards it as such, it remains, inevitably, the template on which my mind was formed in terms of the way I understand history.’

11 For a provisional attempt at exploring ho w Spengler's ideas might be reformulated into a theoretical stance on international politics see Farrenkopf, John, ‘Oswald Spengler's Philosophy of World History and International Polities’, PhD thesis, University of Virginia, 1989.Google Scholar

12 Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, 1986), p. 15.Google Scholar

13 Weber did read at least some of Ranke's works during the first year of his university studies and later embraced the Rankean teaching of the primacy of foreign policy in espousing a Weltpolitik for Wilhelmine Germany . Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, 1890–1920 (2nd rev. edn, Tubingen, 1974), pp. 4 and 85.Google Scholar

14 Holbraad, Carsten, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London, 1970), p. 89.Google Scholar

15 The pithy phrase, the primacy of foreign policy, was purportedly coined by Dilthey in his relections on Ranke's power-political ideas. Heffter, Heinrich, ‘Vom Primat der Aussenpolitik’, Historische Zeitschrift, 171 (1951), p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Butterfield, Herbert, Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship (Cambridge, 1955), p. 112.Google Scholar

17 Ranke, Leopold von, Die grofien Mdchte, ed. Meinecke, Friedrich (1833; Leipzig, 1941), pp. 25 and 59.Google Scholar

18 Leopold von Ranke, Aus Werk und Nachlafi, ed. Walther Peter Fuchs and Theodor Schieder, vol. II, Uber die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, ed. Schieder, Theodor and Berding, Helmut (Munich, 1971), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

19 Ranke, Leopold von, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 43 4, Serbien und die Tiirkei im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1879), pp. 518–19.Google Scholar

20 Burckhardt, Jacob, Force and Freedom, ed. Nichols, James Hastings (New York, 1955), pp. 35–7.Google Scholar

21 Thus, his famous remark to Thiers in November 1870; ‘the war is not against France in and of itself, who we would wish to see a certain size, but directed rather against the politics of Louis XIV’, Ranke, Sdmtliche Werke, 53/4, p. 591. Quoted in Skalweit, Stephaen, ‘Ranke und Bismarck’, Historische Zeitschrift 176 (1953), p. 285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ranke, Leopold von, Politisches Gespräch, ed. Srbik, Heinrich von (1836; Leipzig, 1941), p. 52.Google Scholar

23 Ranke, Politisches Gespräch, p. 58.

24 Ranke, Politisches Gespräch, pp. 42ff.

25 Spengler, Oswald, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologic der Weltgeschichte, vol. II, Welthistorische Perspektiven (Munich, 1923), p. 555.Google Scholar

26 Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. II, pp. 555—6.

27 Ritter, Gerhard, ‘Wissenschaftliche Historie Einst und Jetzt’, Historische Zeitschrift, 202 (1966), p. 579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Iggers, Georg, The German Conception of History (rev. edn, Middletown, Conn., 1983), p. 89Google Scholar. For a discussion of the Ranke Renaissance, see the following: Dehio, Ludwig, ‘Gedanken iiber die deutsche Sendung, 1900–1918’, Historische Zeitschrift, 170 (1950), pp. 479–502Google Scholar; Dehio, Ludwig, ‘Ranke und der deutsche Imperialismus’, Historische Zeitschrift, 174 (1952), pp. 307–28Google Scholar; Fehrenbach, Elisabeth, ‘Rankerenaissance und Imperialismus in der wilhelminischen Zeit’, in Faulenbach, Bernd (ed.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Deutschland: Traditionelle Positionen undgegenwärtige Aufgaben (Munich, 1974), pp. 54–65Google Scholar; and Srbik, Heinrich Ritter von, ‘Der Wiedergewinn wissenschaftlichen Ebenmasses und die Rankerenaissance im zweiten Deutschen Reich’, ch. in Geist und Geschichte vom deutschen Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart, vol. II (Salzburg, 1951).Google Scholar

29 Holbraad, Concert of Europe, p. 95.

30 Iggers, German Conception of History, p. 130.

31 See Iggers, Georg, ‘Heinrich von Treitschke’, in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, vol. II, (Göttingen, 1971), pp. 66–80.Google Scholar

32 Dehio,’Ranke’, p. 310.

33 Dehio,’Ranke’, p. 313.

34 Dehio, ‘Gedanken’, p. 483.

35 Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 147.

36 Dehio, ‘Ranke’, p. 315.

37 Dehio,’Ranke’, p. 318.

38 Dehio,’Ranke’, p. 319.

39 Dehio, ‘Ranke’, p. 320.

40 Butterfield, Herbert, ‘The Balance of Power’, in Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin (ed.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, 1966), p. 139.Google Scholar

41 Butterfield,’The Balance of Power’, p. 142.

42 Butterfield, ‘The Balance of Power’, p. 147.

43 Spengler's advocacy of the modern ‘Roman’ imperial project is graphically shown in the following excerpt from his wartime correspondence: ‘Follow Prussian history in its wonderful organic climb upwards: Fehrbellin 1675, Friedrich Wilhelm's organization of the state and army 1720, the Silesian Wars 1742–1763, Leipzig 1813, Sedan-Versailles 1870 and at last 1915, so you will find, on the one hand, a monstrous advance on the path to world power, as only the Romans from 300 to 50 B.C. have experienced…’. Spengler, Oswald, Briefe: 1913–1936, ed. Koktanek, Anton M. in collaboration with Manfred Schroter (Munich, 1963), p. 42. Letter dated 14 July 1915.Google Scholar

44 Ranke, Leopold von, Das Briefwerk, ed. Fuchs, Walther Peter (Hamburg, 1949), p. 518. Letter dated 25 May 1873.Google Scholar

45 Ranke, Leopold von, Sdmtliche Werke, vols. 53/4, ed. Dove, Alfred (Leipzig, 1890), p. 665.Google Scholar

46 See Schopenhauer, Arthur, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. II, ed. von Loehneysen, Wolfgang Frhr. (1819; Darmstadt, 1968), pp. 566ff.Google Scholar

47 As he wrote in a memorandum during World War I to Kaiser Wilhelm II which was apparently never sent. ‘But the spirit of the Germans, with their machines, billions of marks, railroads, and steamships will rale the world… Thenew Germany will be present everywhere with its best powers—in Buenos Aires and Shanghai, in San Francisco and Capetown’ (original emphasis).Politico no. G5–13, Spengler Archive.

48 Spengler sees the history of modern international politics as revealing a significant evolutionary pattern. ‘With the murder of Wallenstein, French culture triumphed over the Spanish in Europe, Bourbon over the Habsburg. 1800 the struggle has turned from the dynastic into the national form: English against the French nationality, 1900 into the economic: Berlin against London-New York.’ Spengler, Briefe, p. 108. Letter dated 1 September 1918.

49 Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus, pp. 50–51.

50 Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus, p. 88.

51 Spengler did toy with the idea that the United States instead of Germany might attain global primacy. In the second volume of The Decline of the West he observed, the ‘rise of New York to a world city through the War of Secession of 1861–1865 is perhaps the most momentous event of the preceding century’. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, II, p. 117.

52 As Gilpin observed, in discussing how the ‘classical’ realists ignored the economic component of international affairs, ‘the early postwar generation of American realists, despite their other virtues, had their eyes fixed so firmly on the power struggle between the superpowers that they overlooked the economic relations beneath the flux of political aspirations’. Gilpin, ‘Political Realism’, p. 310.

53 Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, II, p. 583.

54 Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, II, p. 594.

55 Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, I, p. ix.

56 Scholars in the English-speaking world have failed to note that Spengler profoundly changed his philosophy of world history. See in this regard, Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar, Mazlish, Bruce, ‘Spengler’, ch. in The Riddle of History, the Great Speculators from Vico to Freud (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, Dray, William, ‘A Vision of World History: Oswald Spengler and the Life-Cycle of Cultures’, ch. in Perspectives on History (London, 1980)Google Scholar, Hughes, H. Stuart, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, Fennelly, John F., Twilight of the Evening Lands: Oswald Spengler—A Half Century Later (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, and Fischqr, Klaus P., History and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West (Durham, NC, 1977).Google Scholar

57 Toynbee, Arnold J., A Study of History, vol. I-XII, (London, 1934–61)Google Scholar. A leading authority on Toynbee has recently suggested that he may have been well advised to have written a second book on world history instead of completing A Study of History. ‘Toynbee's transvaluation of values between the time he planned his great work and the time he completed it was so far-ranging that he might have been wiser to abandon his original outline entirely in 1946, and write a new and different book to explain his revised vision of the pattern and meaning of history.’ McNeill, William H., Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (New York, 1989), p. 227.Google Scholar

58 Spengler, Oswald, Der Mensch und die Technik. Beitrag zu einer Philosophie des Lebens (Munich, 1931), pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

59 Harold and Sprout, Margaret, Towards a Politics of the Planet Earth (New York, 1971), pp. 11 and 27. Original emphasis.Google Scholar

60 See Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik; Spengler, Oswald, Urfragen: Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, ed. Koktanek, Anton Mirko in collaboration with Manfred Schröter (Munich, 1965)Google Scholar; and Oswald Spengler, Frilhzeit der Weltgeschichte: Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, ed. Anton Mirko Koktanek in collaboration with Manfred Schroter (Munich, 1966). The latter two posthumous works, containing material from his literary estate, have not been translated into English.

61 Spengler, Frühzeit der Weltgeschichte, no. 147, p. 485.

62 Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik, p. 27.

63 Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik, p. 52.

64 Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’

65 Spengler, Oswald, Jahre der Entscheidung, part I, Deutschland und die weltgeschichtliche Entwickiung (Munich, 1933).Google Scholar

66 In Morgenthau's concise formulation, ‘politics is engaged by rational men who pursue certain rational interests with rational means’. Morgenthau, Hans J., ‘The Nature and Limits of a Theory of International Relations’, in Otto-Czempiel, Ernst (ed.), Die Lehre von den internationalen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1969), p. 69.Google Scholar

67 Keohane, Robert O., ‘Realism, Neorealism and the Study of World Polities’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism, p. 7.Google Scholar

68 Waltz, Kenneth N., ‘Reflections on “Theory of International Politics”: A Response to My Critics’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism, p. 331.Google Scholar

69 Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics (New York, 1981), p. 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 ‘The expansive tendency is a doom, something daemonic and monstrous, which seizes the mankind of the world-city stage, presses it into its service, consumes it, whether it desires to or not, whether it comprehends it or not.’ Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, I, p. 49.

71 Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus, pp. 6–7.

72 Spengler, Jahre der Entscheidung, pp. xi and 16.

73 Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik, pp. 58–61.

74 Martin Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ in Butterfield and Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations, p. 26.

75 Waltz, Kenneth W., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA, 1979), p. 66.Google Scholar

76 Gilpin, War and Change, p. 230.

77 In 1948, Toynbee manifested his imperturbable confidence in human progress, asserting, ‘our post mortem examination of dead civilizations does not enable us to cast the horoscope of our own civilization or of any other that is still alive. Pace Spengler, there seems to be no reason why a succession of stimulating challenges should not be met by a succession of victorious responses ad infinitum’ Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, p. 12.

78 McNeill, William H., ‘Winds of Change’, Foreign Affairs, 69, 4 (Fall 1990), p. 175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Carr, Edward Hallett, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of Internationa! Relations (New York, 1939), p. 89.Google Scholar