Can Foundationalism Reverse the Decline of the West?

A Spenglerian reading of Charles Haywood's 'The Foundationalist Manifesto'

One thing that surprised me more than anything else in the past year was when Charles Haywood told me he had never read Oswald Spengler. Between his predictions of regime failure and his writings on Caesarism, I was sure Haywood was channeling Spengler as a primary ideological influence. As it turns out, he is not. He just ended up reaching a lot of the same conclusions about the state of Western Culture and where it is headed.

Best known for his book reviews, former shampoo manufacturing tycoon Charles Haywood put forward Foundationalism. Foundationalism seeks to give mankind back his future. How does Foundationalism stack up to Spengler's assessment that the West is in decline? Is it enough to reverse the trend, or at least to provide the best possible pivot so that what's left of the Western treasure can survive? Charles Haywood's Foundationalism is best seen as a fighting stance, poising us to weather the storm as the West creeps further into its decline.

The Foundationalist Manifesto is not a philosophical tome, an ideological construction, or a re-writing of history. He makes this very clear in the introduction. It will not put forward a new ideology; it is not meant to solve everything. Rather, it is meant to provide some guideposts for how to deal with the crisis of the modern world. These guideposts point in a specific direction, meant to maximize human flourishing and enable each man to achieve meaning and transcendence.

The asteroid miner who knows his Aristotle and his Aquinas and extracts metals to build great works with a picture of Henry the Navigator in his rocket ship—he is a Foundationalist.

Haywood describes Foundationalism as "the politics of future past." It draws on the old universal truths found in the Western tradition and seeks to build a positive future. It is not an impotent desire to return to some previous mode of human organization, like the 1950s or the Middle Ages. Haywood states, " There is no return; the way is shut. What is instead needed is a new thing, just as the Enlightenment was a new thing and as the flourishing of Western medieval thought was a new thing. Erase the errors and begin again; Foundationalism ushers in the new dawn." Trying to restore the past is a fool's errand. We can only learn from what came before to build a positive vision of the future.

Foundationalism Poster by WILL

The Impetus for Foundationalism

Enlightenment philosophy holds the primary blame for the current state of things. The Enlightenment privileged the individual's freedom to do whatever he wished above all else. It promises, with fingers crossed, the "wholesale human emancipation from all unchosen bonds." The result of this promise has only been vice and degradation.

The change must be drastic. There is no room or time for incremental adjustments to the project of modernity as it stands. It needs to be uprooted and replaced with new roots. Thankfully, many of those roots already exist. "Foundationalism does not aim to conserve," Haywood states, "It is a wholesale rebellion against the powers of the modern world, which realizes that those powers must be shattered, the world must be broken, to clear the way for new growth."

We have hit the bottom. We are experiencing a civilizational winter. Spengler describes how the rationalists and the progress-philistines, both descendants of the Enlightenment, fester resentment among the vulgar to weaponize them against the noble and virtuous. This is the Enlightenment method for social change that has been engaged time and time again over the last three centuries. You deserve what they have! They should not have it! It is not fair, go take it from them! From the French Revolution to the Black Lives Matter riots, it is the same playbook. It is the entropy of democracy and liberalism. This mechanism does not go away unless Enlightenment liberalism goes away. Haywood is right to call for a drastic change.

He puts forward 12 pillars of Foundationalism, each of which we will review and evaluate from Spengler’s perspective whenever applicable. I encourage you to go read the manifesto on TheWorthyHouse.com. Under each pillar, he links to multiple book reviews in which he discusses the ideas behind these pillars further.

1. Space

2. Mixed Government of Limited Ends and Unlimited Means

3. Virtue Politics

4. Sex Role Realism

5. Subordination of Economics to Politics

6. Intermediary Institutions

7. Subsidiarity

8. Hierarchy and Order

9. Christian Religion

10. High Culture

11. Techno-Optimism

12. Nationalism

Space

Haywood insists that space is a critical element for human flourishing. "Space is the crux of all things for the future of Man," Haywood states. Space is an endless frontier, with trillions of planets waiting to be discovered and understood. Other than the deep seas and likely parts of Antarctica, space is the last frontier for the Faustian spirit to conquer, and it is far more vast in its scope than those other two.

He says that opening up the conquest of outer space will allow for the rebirth of "a mental attitude that views great deeds achieved through daring and a love of excellence, exemplified by modern achievements in Space, as it was exemplified in exploration and conquest during the creation of today’s world by the Christian West, and only by the West, over the past eight hundred years." Space exploration could be a nexus for cultural inspiration.

This will also enable a new boon of scientific and technological achievements. However, Haywood states that transhumanism and other technological domains that deny human dignity should be suppressed, as well as the social sciences.

Space exploration was a foreign concept to Spengler, but he doubtlessly would have recognized it as a Faustian calling. Today, Elon Musk and others seek to expand our frontiers with hopes and determination to colonize Mars. The idea of colonizing Mars highlights the point that Charles Haywood is making. If we were to entirely reorient society around Mars colonization, it would lead to drastic social changes. Diversity at the expense of meritocracy would go by the wayside. Useless and pointless programs in science, economics, and business would also be shut down. Achievement at the expense of ideology - the Faustian way.

Elon Musk stated last week that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a necessary prerequisite for space exploration:

Starship will make life multiplanetary, preserving life as know from extinction events on Earth, so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy. There is more government regulatory smothering every year. If this continues, all large projects in the United States will be illegal.

Haywood responded:

The DOGE will not be permitted unless the Regime is destroyed first, you know. And then the DOGE won't be needed.

Mixed Government

Foundationalism does not posit one specific governmental system over another but rather supports any form of government that can effectively promote human flourishing. Like Spengler and Plato, Haywood understands that governments change in shape over time. Therefore, "the structure of Foundationalist government will inevitably change over time." The core is promoting a mixed government with limited ends but unlimited means.

The most stable kind of government is a mixed government that protects "the collective of society in its spiritual aspect" and represents a positive vision of nationhood and nationality. Foundationalist government could be Caesarist, or it could be aristocratic, but it should not be democratic. As Spengler discusses, the masses are only ever mobilized toward vulgar and resentful ends. Mass democracy is a mechanism for the weak to destroy the strong and exact vengeance on the noble. Democracy is a vector toward degradation, inherently entropic.

A cohesive social body allows for a limited government to do what is necessary. If tradition and custom are in their proper places, people will not want greater government intrusion into their daily lives. But the few things that a Foundationalist government does do, it should do them well. Unlimited means for the limited ends of the state. Law and order, the protection of property rights, and national security are critical duties for the government. In the modern democratic regime, the state is expansive, infiltrating every aspect of society. Every aspect of society is bureaucratized in a Kafkaesque nightmare as law and order erodes. We have a large and weak government. We need a small but strong government.

Virtue

Virtue must be restored. The moral politics of emancipation and equality should go away. Virtue is necessary for the social body to function cohesively. Haywood demands the return of social stigma and taboo surrounding vice. In the modern regime, quite the opposite is the case. Vice is promoted. The only stigma is stigmatizing. Spengler made few normative comments about virtue. He argued, however, that the aristocracy, which is eroded by the rootless masses of communists and liberals, is the fertile ground for high culture, which births virtue.

Sex roles

Foundationalism and fundamentally anti-feminist. Men and women are different, and their differences are complementary. They both have critical roles in society that cannot be fulfilled by the other. The same goes for the family, the microcosm of society. The idea that men and women can freely choose their paths and that gender roles are not important is absurd. Haywood states that the role of women is inward facing, whereas for the man it is outward facing. This relationship between the sexes needs to be restored. Haywood states:

No-fault divorce will be banned. Adultery will be socially punished and result in legal debilities. Modern technology that erodes healthy relationships between men and women, from Tinder to online pornography, will be rigorously suppressed.

The goal, across all of society, is to return to a natural partnership between men and women. This is very much not a siloed partnership, where the man and woman each operate completely separately in pursuit of a unified goal. Instead, there is necessarily overlap—a woman advises her husband in his role outside the home, and the husband assists his wife in her roles inside the home, in particular with children, especially with boys as they come of age, but also simple relief of the drudgery that characterizes much household work. But human nature dictates that those spheres and roles be different.

Spengler makes a similar point in The Hour of Decision, stating:

The meaning of man and wife, the will to perpetuity, is being lost. People live for themselves alone, not for future generations. The nation as society, once the organic web of families, threatens to dissolve, from the city outwards, into a sum of private atoms, of which each is intent on extracting from his own and other lives the maximum of amusement - panem et circenses. The women's emancipation of Ibsen's time wanted, not freedom from the husband, but freedom from the child, from the burden of children, just as men's emancipation in the same period signified freedom from the duties towards family, nation, and State. (page 116)

In a properly functioning society, everyone has various duties. Feminism has allowed men and women to escape their respective duties to the detriment of all.

Subordination of Economics to Politics

Foundationalism recognizes the importance of private property, but it is not in favor of radically free markets. Virtue is more important than purely free markets, and too much economic concentration is corrosive. The economy should serve the political program, not the other way around. Central planning, consumerism, and rent-seeking should be suppressed.

Spengler emphasizes the importance of wealth for High Culture to develop and flourish. There must be a comfortable living standard for great painters, authors, and architects to create great work. He also recognizes that economics should be subordinate to politics. When economic thinking rules and political thinking goes by the wayside, so does the good of the nation.

When the economic leader is given a say in the direction of the nation rather than the statesman and the man of decision, both politics and the economy will suffer. Spengler argues that "Without a strong policy there has never and nowhere been a healthy economic system, although materialistic theories teach the contrary" (Hour of Decision, page 25). Adam Smith argued that this was not the case, but his country's economic domination came about as a result of colonialism, which was a project of statesmen.

Work should be real and focused on societal flourishing. Our economy is filled with fake jobs, paper pushers, and managerial doers of nothing. Law and financial engineering are bloated beyond belief. And that says nothing about the bureaucracies in Washington, D.C.

Read more about Spengler’s writings on this subject here:

Intermediary Institutions and Subsidiarity

Haywood speaks highly of intermediary institutions as a replacement for the bloated structure of government social programs. Schools, clubs, and Churches.

That which could be handled on the local level should be handled on the local level. This is the principle of subsidiarity. Environmental policy, gun policy, and education policy should be handled at the lowest possible level. The only thing to be handled by the central government should be large and expensive projects that need the central government. Welfare, aid, and any kind of charitable social work will be privatized. Haywood states:

All charitable aid will be taken out of the hands of governments, and given to private organizations, who will be tasked with using that aid to reward virtue and punish vice. Yes, this will result in severe restrictions on autonomy for the recipients. That’s a feature, not a bug. But it will also result in the ability for most of the poor to regain their dignity, especially if coupled with other political changes.

To my knowledge, Spengler did not write on Subsidiarity as such. However, he would have seen the centralization of welfare and socialist-style subsidization into a central government as antithetical to the aristocratic spirit that drives High Culture forward.

Hierarchy and Rank

Haywood argues in favor of a general understanding of the importance of hierarchy and rank within a Foundationalist society. Foundationalism is reality-focused. Hierarchical order is fundamental to reality. Spengler wrote that order and rank are critical components of High Culture.

Culture is an organic growth, Spengler argued. And when it exists properly, there is a correct understanding of the rank and position of men in society's hierarchy. Those in the highest rank, the most refined, the ruling families and circles, produce, preserve, and hold the traditions and customs that establish the destiny of the Culture.

Culture, in its healthy state, is not subjected to rational classifications and economic assessments. The onset of economically assessing the whole of society is a sign that the society is in decline, "for under this standard it is the mere amount of money that counts, not the social position in which it was acquired and turned into a real possession" (The Hour of Decision page 49). Under economic analysis, differences in rank are merely a difference in degree: people are differentiated by their income brackets and assets in possession. This is an improper view because it cannot account for the differences in the blood that create rank and nobility.

Christianity

Foundationalism demands a virtuous citizenry and sees Christianity as a suitable means toward that end. Christianity and Western history are deeply tied to one another. You can have Christianity without the West, but you truly cannot have the complete Western tradition without some degree of a Christian understanding of the world.

That being said, I have not studied a great deal of what Spengler wrote about Christianity. In The Decline of the West, it comes up a few times, but I have not studied those sufficiently to give a verdict of whether or not Spengler would enthusiastically approve or vehemently reject this pillar of Foundationalism. Neither is the most likely verdict. Please check out this piece by my friend and fellow Spenglerian:

Spengler on Jesus Christ

High Culture

Haywood states that High Culture is important for Foundationalism. Art and architecture, as well as patronage networks that motivate artisans to create classical art, should be promoted. Need I say more? One could say that Spengler's entire project was describing and categorizing High Culture, identifying why it rises and how it falls. However, Haywood argues that Foundationalism does not necessarily need to create new culture. Rather, it should draw on the classical traditions. "Foundationalism has no need to create anything that is new, though some organically developing novelty is to be expected." In the age of civilizational winter, whatever comes next will be new. It will most likely draw on the past, just as Faustian Culture drew on Classical Culture, but it is also likely to reform whatever it brings along with it into new cultural forms.

Techno-Optimism

Foundationalism wants to give us back our future. Getting the future back means technology must improve, and we should not be scared of it. Luddism is the enemy.

Haywood states: "High culture, and the drive to create a successful society, always revolves around cities, and therefore technology. Foundationalism strives to offer a goal for, and outlet for, and inspiration for, human aspiration, and rural life cannot build spaceports (aside from today not occupying the daily life of any significant percentage of the population). Technological striving will be demanded and therefore honored."

This plank is unsurprising, considering the first pillar of Foundationalism: space travel. But Haywood also implies that technology will improve life on Earth as well, not through some eschatological singularity or transhumanist immortality, but through creating technology that improves human life. He notes that some object that technology is inherently anti-human, but Haywood argues that the atomization brought on by technology is a choice, not an inherent feature of technological advancement.

Spengler argues in Man and Technics that the drive for further technical achievement is not a choice. It is driven by the inner necessity of the Faustian spirit. It is a spiritual calling, the beast of prey within which demands continual achievement and discovery. But technical achievement is also dangerous for the West.

For the non-Westerner, technology is an opportunity to get revenge on the West. Spengler argues that once the rest of the world is successful in defeating the West, there will be a rapid collapse in technical ability. The rest of the world can use the technical processes, but they are not as inventive, and they do not have the same Faustian drive that motivates the intense determination to reach every new peak. Instead, they use it to lash out against Western civilization.

Read more on this subject here:

Nationalism

Foundationalism is in favor of nationalism. Globalized economics that harms the industrial base of a country, as well as the mass migration that displaces domestic culture and workers, should be stopped. The nation should serve the people within, not the people without. Spengler would agree on this point. He supported the restoration of Prussianism in the West to create a strong and collective-focused national identity. Nationalism is a necessity, not just for Foundationalism, but for any nation to thrive as such far into the future.

Conclusion

Spengler famously wrote, “Optimism is cowardice.” History is driven forward by destiny. Destiny cannot be escaped. Civilizational winter means doom for Western Culture. We must recognize our place in history.

But this does not mean there is no place for Foundationalism. The Faustian spirit continues to strive and try despite all odds. As men of the West, we have to march ever-onwards, especially if it seems that there is no hope. Foundationalism is a suitable guide in our march. Maybe, just maybe, Foundationalism could give us back part of our future and provide consolation and well-being in the medium term.

Who knows, maybe in the long term, something will break the Spenglerian cycle. It is impossible to say because Spengler’s cyclical understanding of history is not scientific. It is a poetic understanding of history. That does not make it more or less true; it just makes it harder to definitively say we can break out of it.

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