Reviews for Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life

The average rating for Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-01 00:00:00 Bryan Sillman The problem of man's destiny In this book Spengler examines technics, which he defines as the tactics of living, i.e. what one does with tools, rather than the tools themselves. Spengler traces the history of technics in three phases: Stage 1 The Hand The genesis of man is the hand (see Animal Farm), which Spengler believes occurred as a sudden mutation. It made man creative. Stage 2 Speech (and Enterprise) Speech then arose for needs of conversation or command (not thought or judgement). It is the means to collective doing (enterprise). It emancipated the intellect from the hand. Man then separated into commanders and obeyers; individual lives mattered little at this time according to Spengler; what mattered was the whole, the tribe, the sea voyage or building project. But the obeyers (hands) increased, and thus personality developed, as a protest against man in the mass. Last Stage Terminator: Rise of the Machines The city then developed, and thought/intellect became rootless (although the city still drew its material sustenance from the land). Roger Bacon's 'Scientia experimentalis' (1200s) was 'the interrogation of nature with the rack, screw and lever'. God became an 'infinite force' rather than a personified Lord on a throne. Monks tried to find 'perpetual motion', which some saw as devilish. Eventually machines grew so complex that leaders and led no longer understood each other. A spiritual barrenness set in, and leaders became divorced from the people. Nordic Man became spiritually enslaved to the machine. European, Faustian culture is the most tragic culture, due to the conflict between its comprehensive intellectuality and its profound spiritual disharmony. So the Faustian mind became weary of machines, and returned to contemplating nature (the green movement, the new age movement etc.). Man took refuge from civilisation. We can see this currently, with Nordics pursuing worthless degrees in 'womyns studies', while STEM positions in Western unis are occupied mainly by Chinese and Indian students. Spengler thinks the export of white technics to the non-white world spelled the former's doom, as the latter have no spiritual attachment to technics (except, maybe, the Japanese?). For non-whites, Spengler claims, technology is merely a weapon to be used against the Faustians who invented it (and he wrote this before mass immigration!). But he then goes on to give his famous pronouncement that 'optimism is cowardice', that we must all die like the Roman soldier at his post. With this pronouncement, Spengler reveals himself to be part of the problem. Why didn't he anticipate space travel, the ultimate technics? It can still serve as a point of revival for Faustians! What could appeal to their romantic impulses more than wanting to stand on the moons of Neptune? Although Spengler claims the struggle between man and nature 'ends' with the Faustian culture, at one point he tentatively suggests a successor culture may arise 'on the plains between the Vistula and the Amur' (i.e. a Slavic-centred culture). Given the current suicidal path Western Europe is following, this may turn out to be one of his more accurate predictions.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-03 00:00:00 ROB THOMAS Everyone instinctively knows which parts of Friedrich Nietzsche's work must be played down or rendered harmless'and there are many. The results went on display a while back in the Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, or as I like to call it, Honey I Shrunk Zarathustra! Even that "God is dead" business, which was none too scandalous in 1882, is now teachable only with a nervous eye on the frowners in class. (He only said "God," kids, he said nothing about Allah!) The man himself would not have been surprised by the turn things have taken. If he were still up in the Alps, he would be nodding grimly down at the many atheists, feminists, and homosexuals who welcome the growing presence of a religion that reviles them. This was what Nietzsche meant by decadence: a readiness to act against one's own obvious interests. But we may now use that word only with a smile, when the dessert comes out. Harder to render campus-friendly is Nietzsche's more straightforward disciple Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), who was buried with a copy of Zarathustra. The good news is that he refused to serve the Nazis. The bad news? They were too left-wing for his liking. That's not quite as awful as it sounds. As far as he was concerned, all ideologies catering to the human herd, from communism and Hitlerism to liberal democracy, were on the left and beneath contempt. What he wanted was a German Caesar and a meritocratic elite of true individuals with'to quote a Nietzschean pop song'no time for losers. This still makes him a fascist in the catch-all sense now current.