FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY: CONSERVATIVE INTERPRETATION (OSWALD SPENGLER)

Abstract

The article analyzes the political and legal views of Oswald Spengler in the context of the problems of freedom and responsibility. Ideas of the thinker are revealed using a comparative approach. O. Spengler formed his views under the influence of the analysis of culture history, that became the basis for the formation of the views of cyclical human civilizations. O. Spengler has concluded that all civilizations have a certain duration and will inevitably collapse. In his opinion, in the 20th century began the decline of the most powerful, compared to the previous, Western (European-American) civilization. The thinker believed that there were neither political and legal nor spiritual and cultural ways to prevent this. Oswald Spengler, recognizing the extraordinary technological progress of the Western civilization, doesn’t correlate them with a political and personal freedom. Thereby mechanically extrapolates the previous history into the future. While Western civilization was formed as a balance of freedom and responsibility, its history is a story of expanding the boundaries of freedom, combined with the consent to take the consequences of its own decision. An overlay of previous experience is possible if European civilization abandons its own tradition of willingness to be engaged in a constructive activity. It is dangerous to combine a paternalistic mood of a part of the society with the aggressive and devastating activism of the rest. Whether the accuracy, or the falseness of Spengler’s predictions will be determined not by the level of his analytical predictions but by our ability to make responsible decisions in the unfavorable conditions of the continuous crises, and preserving prudence in the conditions of civilizational challenges.