The Decline of the West, Volume 1, is the first part of Oswald Spengler’s sweeping and controversial philosophy of history, first published in German in 1918. Spengler argues that civilisations, like living organisms, pass through predictable cycles of birth, growth, maturity, and decay, rejecting the idea of history as a single line of progress.
This volume, subtitled in its full form as concerning form and actuality, sets out his comparative method and his vision of distinct cultures, each with its own soul and destiny. Drawing on art, mathematics, science, and politics, Spengler develops his morphology of world history and his prognosis for Western civilisation. Hugely influential and widely debated, the work remains a landmark of twentieth-century thought about the rise and fall of cultures.