Faustian Culture Has Doomed Itself
Oswald Spengler's 'Man and Technics' Series - Part 5 (Conclusion)
Throughout the work so far Oswald Spengler has highlighted two extremely consequential avenues for technique. First, the tool and the hand are bound. The connection between the tool and the hand is a ubiquitous phenomenon for mankind. Second, as discussed in the last essay, is speech and enterprise. Grand enterprise opens the door to inequality, because some are natural leaders, and others are natural followers. Thus begins the enmity between the masses and the individual personality. Speech and enterprise, taken together, were not ubiquitous. Rather, "these Cultures embraced even at their full only a part of mankind, and they are today, after a few millennia, all extinguished and replaced" (page 38). The technical reign of speech and enterprise ended circa 3000 B.C. when the age of high Cultures began.
High Cultures are the organisms of history. Spengler describes them at length in his magnum opus, Decline of the West. The high Culture has an identifiable and predictable life cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death. They are the four seasons of Culture. The history of the high Cultures is "world-history in the most genuine and most exacting sense" (page 38). In the age of high Cultures, the city becomes the nexus of organization, rather than the village. The city is a step further removed from nature when compared to the village. Artificial living dominates as mankind's organization divorces itself from Mother Nature. Spengler emphasizes that it is "completely anti-natural" and rootless, drawing the streams of life out of the land and using them up within itself (page 38). Out of the city comes society.
The natural hierarchy of the strong against the weak, the clever against the stupid, is replaced by artificial hierarchies birthed through intellectualized cultural evolution. Class becomes a deciding factor of human social organization, with burghers, nobles, and priests becoming definitive markers of identity. Luxury and wealth reign in the city. A byproduct of luxury and wealth is the development of art and thought, as well as a theoretical and intellectual understanding of the world. Spengler emphasizes that the possession of a world outlook is itself a luxury only afforded by the luxury of the city. High Cultural artifacts are a byproduct of growing wealth. Poverty and decline bring "spiritual and artistic impoverishment in its train" (page 39). The technical processes mankind develops in the comfort of high Culture is also a spiritual luxury, Spengler says, only afforded by the fragile system of artificiality and intellectuality:
They begin with the building of the tomb pyramids of Egypt and the Sumerian temple-towers of Babylonia, which come into being in the third millennium B.C., deep in the South, but signify no more than the victory over big masses. Then come the enterprises of Chinese, Indian, Classical, Arabian, and Mexican Cultures. And now, in the second millennium of our era, in the full North, there is our own Faustian Culture, which represents the victory of pure technical thought over big problems. (page 39)
Each high Culture grows independently of the others, but there is often influence from one to another. Spengler also notes that there is a tendency of the high Cultures to move from south to north. He states: "The Faustian, west-European Culture is probably not the last, but certainly it is the most powerful, the most passionate, and — owing to the inward conflict between its comprehensive intellectuality and its profound spiritual disharmony — the most tragic of them all" (page 39). The conflict of man against mother nature is the harshest in Faustian Culture because it is the northernmost culture. Unlike the cultural centers of Classical Culture, the Faustian man did not comfort himself by hugging the Mediterranean. The cold and inhospitable conditions of the north forged hardened peoples with sharpened intellects demanded by the dangers of the cold. These conditions also bred an "unrestrained passion for fighting, risking, thrusting forward," the Faustian spirit (page 39). It is the spirit of the beast of prey that breaks through here, determined to break the domination of intellectualism and artificial living conditions. The free personality of the Faustian spirit elevates itself to "being the very meaning of the world" (page 39).
A will-to-power which laughs at all bounds of time and space, which indeed regards the boundless and endless as its specific target, subjects whole continents to itself, eventually embraces the world in the network of its forms of communication and intercourse, and transforms it by the force of its practical energy and the gigantic power of its technical processes. (page 39)
Western/Faustian Culture universalizes. It colonized the entire world. It created the car, the atomic bomb, the internet, the economy of scale, and even put man on the moon. The entire world hungers for and embraces inventions of Faustian Culture.
Spengler points out that the beginning of every high Culture spawns two consequential and primary orders: the order of nobility and the order of priesthood. Society grows in these orders, away from the peasantry. The priesthood and the nobility both embody certain ideas, and these ideas are mutually exclusive. The nobility/warrior order lives in the world of facts, thinking in terms of destiny, and subjects the intellect to strength. The priestly order, which includes the scholar and the philosopher, lives in the world of truths. This order understands the world in terms of causality and subjects vitality to the intellect.
These two orders are primordially opposed to one another. High Culture always has both, and they always are in tension. Spengler states that "nowhere has this opposition taken more irreconcilable forms than in the Faustian Culture, in which the proud blood of the beast of prey revolts for the last time against the tyranny of pure thought" (page 40).
Spengler describes the difference between the Vikings of the blood and the Vikings of the mind in the rise of Faustian culture as an example of this division. The Vikings of the blood relentlessly journeyed across the seas, conquering every land they could, even as far as parts of North America in 1000 A.D. The Vikings of the blood, the Northern monks, had a similar ferociousness in their plunge into complex technical problems. These researchers birthed Faustian science, distinguishing themselves from the "idle and impractical curiosity of the Chinese, Indian, Classical, and Arabian savants" (page 41).
Spengler argues that every scientific theory is a mythic understanding of the forces of Nature, entirely dependent on the religious structure. But Faustian research is unique. Every theory of the Faustian researcher "is also from the outset a working hypothesis. A working hypothesis need not be “correct,” it is only required to be practical. It aims, not at embracing and unveiling the secrets of the world, but at making them serviceable to definite ends" (page 41). Research has a goal, a use, and a practical problem to overcome. "It is the stratagem of intellectual beasts of prey," Spengler states (page 41). In seeking to know God, they uncovered the inorganic and invisible forces of nature. They sought to discover and harness "the invisible energy manifested in all that happens" (page 42). The Faustian scientific effort is Dynamics, distinct from Greek Statics and Arabian Alchemy. The subject is forces, not things. Mass as a function of energy, space as a function of light, and the theory of magnetism are all examples. Copernicus's assertion that the earth revolved around the sun is another prime example. Spengler states that these new scientific myths transformed the religious understanding of these intellectual beasts of prey. They birthed the disinterested watchmaker conception of God.
God was looked upon no longer as the Lord who rules the world from His throne, but as an infinite force (already imagined as almost impersonal) that is omnipresent in the world. It was a singular form of divine worship, this experimental investigation of secret forces by pious monks. (page 42)
It was no longer enough for Faustian man to just enslave the plants and animals and manipulate physical objects. No longer was he only interested in mother nature's material bounty, but now sought "to enslave and harness her very forces so as to multiply his own strength. This monstrous and unparalleled idea is as old as the Faustian Culture itself" (page 42). Thus was born the dream of perpetual motion, something that we to this day have not created. The Faustian dream of perpetual motion stems from the desire to completely overcome nature, to become nature itself, to build one's world and lord over it. Faustian science seeks to take the world itself as booty, "complete with its secret of force... dragged away as spoil to be built into our Culture" (page 43). This extreme will to power to dominate force itself came to be seen as devilish. The machine became an object of skepticism, and the scientist occupied the role of the magician or heretic.
By 1500 A.D., the Faustian hunger for exploration led the Spaniards to America once again. Faustian man colonized the new world and turned it into what we have today. The researchers continued their quest for discovery. Printing was developed by Gutenberg, and Spengler even credits the discovery of gunpowder to Faustian research. Spengler states, "From Copernicus and from Galileo on, technical processes followed one another thick and fast, all with the same object of extracting the inorganic forces from the world-around and making them, instead of men and animals, do the work" (page 43).
I will digress here because we are often told that gunpowder is one of the 4 great inventions of China, but this robs Faustian man of his critical role in the development of effective gunpowder by mastering the formula. The Brown University Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World states:
Perfecting the formula can be noted as the first major landmark in technological development. The most effective ratio (very approximate) was believed to be 1 part sulfur: 3 parts charcoal: 9 parts saltpeter, according to 13th century Arabian documents. Sir Roger Bacon had been experimenting with something 29.5% sulfur, 29.5% charcoal, and 41% saltpeter, however it was eventually found that the best ratio was 10:15:75 (the modern formula). The next big improvement came when 14th century Europeans began adding liquid to the mixture, forming a paste that would dry and could be ground into balls––this came to be known as “corned powder.” This greatly increased the practicality of the primitive bombs and guns, as corned powder was more durable, reliable, and safe (the dried paste would insure that almost all of the ingredients would ignite at the same time and explode as one).
Technics became a bourgeois affair as people concentrated in towns and cities. The birth of rationalism turned technics into a materialist religion. The monks were succeeded by the inventors. Technics is worshipped by "the progress-philistine of the modem age which runs from Lamettrie to Lenin" (page 43).
The Faustian inventor does not engage in technics for the sake of wealth or power. He engages in technics for its own sake. Spengler states:
In reality the passion of the inventor has nothing whatever to do with its consequences. It is his personal life-motive, his personal joy and sorrow. He wants to enjoy his triumph over difficult problems, and the wealth and fame that it brings him, for their own sake. Whether his discovery is useful or menacing, creative or distributive, he cares not a jot. Nor indeed is anyone in a position to know this in advance. (Page 43)
The inventor does not care for "mankind". He cares about the thrill and joy of victory, of conquest over the forces of nature. He invents as an extension of his personality. Technical achievement is not pursued for the "utilitarian thinking of the masses" (page 44). But the masses pay the consequences nonetheless, both good and bad. Ease of transportation and communication now dominate, but so does haphazard environmental destruction. Technical achievements have grown ever larger. Units are measured in the millions, and the power of the naked individual man pales in comparison. Spengler states that labor is not saved by technics, because each discovery demands ever more discoveries, new great projects that require all the more hands. "The number of necessary hands grows with the number of machines," Spengler states, "since technical luxury surpasses every other sort of luxury, and our artificial life becomes more and more artificial" (page 44).
The growth of technical achievement increased the spiritual tension between the leaders and the led. The masses work, but they do not understand what they are working on. Spengler notes that ancient enterprise required "intelligent cooperation of all concerned," but today there is nothing of the sort. This is a necessary consequence of grand enterprise and calls to mind Hayek's problem of knowledge in society. Each man can't hold the whole enterprise process in his head. It would be too complicated, and such education would come at steep opportunity costs. Imagine if every person who was involved in the construction of a smartphone was educated on all of the technical intricacies of the device. It would be a disaster. Division of labor is a necessary byproduct, and as technical enterprise increases in scale and complexity, so must the division. But Spengler does not say this to make us pity the workers, the ones completing the composite tasks. Rather, he warns that the workers will grow resentful of their cog-like position and begin to hate the leaders. As we noted in the series on The Hour of Decision, Spengler notes that the mental work of the entrepreneur is far more strenuous than even the most tedious work of the factory line worker.
A spiritual barrenness sets in and spreads, a chilling uniformity without height or depth. And bitterness awakes against the life vouchsafed to the gifted ones, the born creators. Men will no longer see, nor understand, that leaders’ work is the harder work, and that their own life depends on its success; they merely sense that this work is making its doers happy, tuning and enriching the soul, and that is why they hate them.
Machine-technics cannot be stopped. Neither the work of the head nor the work of the hands can hold back the forward march. Spengler states, "for this has developed out of inward spiritual necessities and is now correspondingly maturing towards its fulfillment and end" (page 46). We are at the summit, "the tragedy is closing" (page 46).
High Culture is tragedy. It is the tragic revolt against nature, desperation in liberation from natural constraints. No high Culture has fought harder against the constraints of nature than Faustian Culture. This has created a new tragic conflict. Faustian man's fight against nature has reached such heights that now the machine revolts against man. "The lord of the World is becoming the slave of the Machine, which is forcing him — forcing us all, whether we are aware of it or not — to follow its course. The victor, crashed, is dragged to death by the team" (page 46).
European industrialization dominated the entire globe by the beginning of the 20th century. Politics, economics, and war all coalesced around increasing industrial production. Spengler points out that the recognition of the importance of the natural leader is fading away, but it is highest in America. The strong personalities, the natural leaders, are driven forward by the beast of prey impulse, the desire to have total victory. "But it is of the tragedy of the time that this unfettered human thought can no longer grasp its own consequences" (page 47). Technics becomes increasingly esoteric. Higher mathematics, refined physical theories, and ever-new scientific developments for technical application are all examples of the esoteric nature of technics. Science is simply the mysticism of our civilization. Like all mysticism, it can go incredibly deep and become increasingly hard to understand. Meanwhile, the entire world is mechanized. Spengler prefigures Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, describing the transformation in the ontological status of the natural world as a consequence of technical domination:
The picture of the earth, with its plants, animals, and men, has altered. In a few decades most of the great forests have gone, to be turned into news-print, and climatic changes have been thereby set afoot which imperil the land-economy of whole populations. Innumerable animal species have been extinguished, or nearly so, like the bison; whole races of humanity have been brought almost to vanishing-point, like the North American Indian and the Australian.
All things organic are dying in the grip of organization. An artificial world is permeating and poisoning the natural. (Page 47)
Civilization has become a machine in itself, optimizing everything and consuming everything.
We think only in horse-power now; we cannot look at a waterfall without mentally turning it into electric power; we cannot survey a countryside full of pasturing cattle without thinking of its exploitation as a source of meat-supply; we cannot look at the beautiful old handwork of an unspoilt primitive people without wishing to replace it by a modern technical process. Our technical thinking must have its actualization, sensible or senseless. (Page 48)
Heidegger states: “Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve” (Heidegger).1 Instead of nature being revealed to man as something prior and natural that pre-exists him and has a life of its own, technology stems from the squeezing of nature to force it to reveal itself as resource. The world becomes an oyster for use and progress. Nature is no longer accepted, observed, and enjoyed for the sake of its intrinsic beauty. Insofar as one observes nature for its beauty, one observes beauty as a commodity for consumption. But nature’s primary purpose is to be used. Heidegger continues: “Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology” (Heidegger). An important distinction, however, is that enframing “is itself nothing technological”:
On the other hand, all those things that are so familiar to us and are standard parts of an assembly, such as rods, pistons, and chassis, belong to the technological. The assembly itself, however, together with the aforementioned stockparts, falls within the sphere of technological activity; and this activity always merely responds to the challenge of Enframing, but it never comprises Enframing itself or brings it about. (Heidgger)
The world is enframed as a standing reserve, seen only as raw resources to intake into the technical process. Spengler says that the machine becomes a symbol of spiritual power. It changes the entire world.
Spengler argues that the development of the machine conflicts with economic development. He uses the example of the car. In the city, so many cars clog up the streets, and foot traffic becomes faster. He also argues that horse plows in Argentina are more efficient than machines that do the same job. His general point here is certainly incorrect. The economy necessarily selects the most efficient tools in a long enough timeframe.
Spengler also points out that coal power will eventually dry up, and industry will have to rely on other energy sources like petroleum or water power. Economics works magic here because as a resource runs low, the price will skyrocket and enterprises will look for alternative power sources. The machine network will not give up because of a lack of resources, it will always find alternatives. What could stop it, though?
Spengler states that maintenance of the technical system requires a tremendous amount of brainpower and continuous training for the young to replace the old when they retire. This could be a sticking point because there seems to be a crisis of competence brewing in the 21st century. How bad this competence crisis is, and how long it will take to play out, only time will tell. Spengler warns of a different kind of competence crisis, though. He states that Faustian men are becoming tired of the machine world, and are retreating from the cities to engage in spiritual speculation instead of technical discovery. "Out of satiety of life, men take refuge from civilization in the more primitive parts of the earth, in vagabondage, in suicide," Spengler says (page 49). "The flight of the born leader from the Machine is beginning" (page 49). Technical progress needs a constant influx of more and smarter people. If the greatest minds retreat, this could hamper the process. Ironically, in our age, competence seems to be forced out of grand enterprise. DEI initiatives that hire based on race or gender are to blame. Technics need competence. If people are selected on any basis other than pure meritocracy, technics will suffer.
There is also the crisis of the workers. The thought of the hand revolts against the machine. For the worker, individual personality is without significance. He is erased and alienated by the machines. Spengler states, "There is beginning, in numberless forms — from sabotage, by way of strike, to suicide — the mutiny of the Hands against their destiny, against the machine, against the organized life, against anything and everything" (page 49). Collective doing by plan is fading away because the doers are getting tired of it. The planners are retreating. These both point to an incoming collapse of the machine-technics system.
The third sign of an incoming collapse is revenge from the non-Western world. Spengler warns of uprisings from the rest of the globe, particularly from the Soviet Union. Non-Western countries started to imitate Faustian technical processes, and are thus able to start catching up. "The immense superiority that Western Europe and North America enjoyed in the second half of the nineteenth century, in power of every kind — economic and political, military and financial — was based on an uncontested monopoly of industry," Spengler says (page 50). Industry is no longer monopolized. The Soviet Union made a serious effort to rival the West. They failed, but now we must face China, which seems to be a far more formidable rival, especially in terms of grand enterprise. Faustian culture did this to itself but willfully exporting technics. "The famous ‘dissemination of industry’ set in, motivated by the idea of getting bigger profits by bringing production into the marketing area. And so, in place of the export of finished products exclusively, they began an export of secrets, processes, methods, engineers, and organizers" (page 51). He notes that Japan was also able to develop rapidly, and the same has occurred across Asia since Spengler wrote. In the final chapter of The Hour of Decision, Spengler warns of the oncoming invasion by the non-Western world. Motivated by resentment after a century of domination and exploitation, they seek to overcome the West from within and without. He warns of the same, here, stating that each technical process exported outside the West becomes a weapon to use against the West. Spengler predicts that the West will not be able to compete with foreign industry. He was completely right. European man had become too accustomed to the luxuries of his civilization. He was not willing to work harder at his factory job for lower pay. And now, even Western-based corporations outsource their industry to foreign lands.
For Faustian man, technics is born from inward necessity. It is a spiritual calling, the beast of prey within which demands continual achievement and discovery. For the outsider, technics 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.
This machine-technics will end with the Faustian civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten — our railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon. The history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close.. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture. When, and in what fashion, we know not. (Page 51-52)
There is no way out. There is no solution. "Optimism is cowardice" (page 52). The only option is dutiful resignation to destiny.
We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honourable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man. (Page 52)
Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology. In Philosophical and Political Writings. Edited by Manfred Stassen. New York: Continuum, 2003. Page 291.