The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actualitySpengler, Oswald
Philosophy
The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actuality
Spengler, Oswald
Civilization -- History
concerning time they do not even occur, and in fact one cannot see any
relation which could connect them with what is said there. But only this
spatial form enables time and space to be brought into functional
interdependence as magnitudes _of the same_ order, as four-dimensional
vector analysis[110] conspicuously shows. As early as 1813 Lagrange
frankly described mechanics as a four-dimensional geometry, and even
Newton’s cautious conception of “tempus absolutum sive duratio” is not
exempt from this _intellectually inevitable_ transformation of the
living into mere extension. In the older philosophy I have found one,
and only one, profound and reverent presentation of Time; it is in
Augustine—“If no one questions me, I know: if I would explain to a
questioner, I know not.”[111]
When philosophers of the present-day West “hedge”—as they all do—by
saying that things _are_ in time as in space and that “outside” them
nothing is “conceivable,” they are merely putting another kind of space
(Räumlichkeit) beside the ordinary one, just as one might, if one chose,
call hope and electricity the two forces of the universe. It ought not,
surely, to have escaped Kant when he spoke of the “two forms” of
perception, that whereas it is easy enough to come to a scientific
understanding about space (though not to “explain” it, in the ordinary
sense of the word, for that is beyond human powers), treatment of time
on the same lines breaks down utterly. The reader of the “Critique of
Pure Reason” and the “Prolegomena” will observe that Kant gives a well-
considered proof for the connexion of space and geometry but carefully
avoids doing the same for time and arithmetic. There he did not go
beyond enunciation, and constant reassertion of analogy between the two
conceptions lured him over a gap that would have been fatal to his
system. _Vis-à-vis_ the Where and the How, the When forms a world of its
own as distinct as is metaphysics from physics. Space, object, number,
notion, causality are so intimately akin that it is impossible—as
countless mistaken systems prove—to treat the one independently of the
other. Mechanics is a copy of the logic of its day and vice versa. The
picture of thought as psychology builds it up and the picture of the
space-world as contemporary physics describes it are reflections of one
another. Conceptions and things, reasons and causes, conclusions and
processes coincide so nicely, as received by the consciousness, that the
abstract thinker himself has again and again succumbed to the temptation
of setting forth the thought-“process” graphically and schematically—
witness Aristotle’s and Kant’s tabulated categories. “Where there is no
scheme, there is no philosophy” is the objection of principle—
unacknowledged though it may be—that all professional philosophers have
against the “intuitives,” to whom inwardly they feel themselves far
superior. That is why Kant crossly describes the Platonic style of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account