Grand Enterprise and the Unequal Destiny of Mankind
Oswald Spengler's 'Man and Technics' Series - Part 4
The epoch of the man with weapon-in-hand was long, Spengler says. Not as long as modern scientists claim, certainly not in the millions, but long. This is how Spengler begins the fourth chapter of Man and Technics, titled 'The Second Stage: Speech and Enterprise'.
By looking at ancient history, we can identify a shift to a new epoch, another mutation in man's capabilities. Many archeologists take the museum outlook in evaluating ancient man, describing different ages: old and new Stone Ages, Paleolithic, and Neolithic. This is not a good way to look at history, Spengler suggests. These are arbitrary divisions. Many in the 19th century were suspicious of this system of classification as well, which is why some archeologists switched to a system of classifying objects themself. But this gets them no further in the way of gaining a proper understanding, Spengler says, because the important change was not in what tools man used. As we discussed in earlier essays, technics is not a matter of the tools themselves, but rather the process in which the tools are utilized. These archeologists, in focusing on the classification of tools and objects, miss the far more important change. A new epoch of history emerged from the soul of man.
Spengler dates this new mutation as having occurred circa 5000 B.C. The first high Cultures begin circa 3000 B.C. with Egypt and Mesopotamia. He notes that history is accelerating. Whole millennia where nothing important happens, and now each century is filled with drama. "With tearing leaps, the rolling stone is approaching the abyss," he says (page 26).
This mutation includes a new network of techniques, heretofore unseen. It is a set of techniques that all "presuppose one another's existence" (page 26). These include, but are not limited to, the taming and keeping tamed animals, cultivation of forage things, sowing and reaping crops, the use of large animals for carrying food and materials, construction of pens, and breeding animals.
All of these new developments indicate a spiritual transformation. The spiritual transformation is that man has gained the ability to divide social labor and specialize. Grand projects can be taken on collectively. Spengler prefigures the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Mises takes the position that the division of labor and specialization is the prerequisite for the formation of the social body. Now, groups of men can engage in grand efforts together. For coordination, though, there must be language. Spengler states, "Speaking in sentences and words, therefore, cannot have begun either earlier or later, but must have come just then — quickly, like everything decisive, and, moreover, in close connexion with man’s new methods. This can be proved" (page 27).
Men have long wondered about the origin of speaking and language, but according to Spengler, they have only reached dead ends. This is because "the intention of the question has been wrong" (page 27). Romantic researchers assumed that poetry (myth, lyric, prayer) came first, and that prose as speech came later. Their efforts have focused on discovering how the transition from poetry to prose came about. The search is in vain because this is not how speaking and language were born. If this were the case, primitive languages would have a very different grammatical structure than they do in reality. Spengler states that primitive languages "show most emphatically the tendency to mark differences clearly, sharply, and unmistakably" (page 27).
The rationalists brought another equally false assessment of language and speech. Spengler paints the rationalist researcher as one undergoing a solitary academic endeavor, locked away in an office reading papers and books. They believe that thought is the object of speaking, and that the sentence at the core expresses a judgment. This understanding is a result of the bias built into their method of research. "They sit at their writing tables, surrounded by books, and research into the minutiae of their own thoughts and writings," Spengler says (page 28). The speech they are researching is exclusively monologic. They view speech as oration, lecture, and discourse. The rationalists, with this view of speech, then try to assess speech generally to no avail. They forget that speech is a fundamentally relational phenomenon. The one hearing is as important to the process as the one speaking.
The correct way to investigate the origin of speech is to look at it temporally. "When did speaking words come into existence?" Spengler asks (page 28). The source of speaking is not in oratory or monologue, but in conversation between multiple people. The object of speech is not the judgement or thought, as the rationalists believe. Instead, Spengler understands the object of speech to be reciprocal understanding, which comes about through the process of question and answer. The basic forms of speaking are not judgement and declaration. The basic forms of speaking are the command, expression of obedience, the question, and the answer. Judgement, thought, and notion are products of the true object of the sentence, which is fundamentally relational. Spengler states:
Originally, speaking was a difficult activity, and it may be assumed that it was limited to bare essentials. Even today the peasant is slow of speech as compared with the townsman — who is so accustomed to speaking that he cannot hold his tongue and must, from mere boredom, chatter and make conversation as soon as he has nothing else to do, whether he has anything really to say or not. (Page 28)
Speech and action have a very close relationship to one another. The rationalists miss this often, believing that speech exists independently and in its domain. I wrote about this in my post Reckoning with Truth and Myth. "The original object of speech," Spengler says, "is the carrying out of an act" (page 28). Efficacious speech is about conveying one's meaning to and imposing one's will on another individual. This is difficult, so speech requires "clear and unequivocal construction" to meet these ends (page 28). The necessity of such construction produced "technique of grammar, sentences, and constructions, the correct modes of ordering, questioning, and answering, and the building-up of classes of words" (page 28). It was constructed in such a way for practical, not theoretical, purposes. Speech proceeds from the thought of the hand, not the thought of the eye.
Collective doing by plan is enterprise. Speech and enterprise have the same relation to one another as hand and implement. In the last essay, we discussed how Spengler insists that hand and tool emerged in conjunction with one another. The hand is for the tool, and the tool is for the hand. In the same way, speech and collective action done through planning came about together. Spengler states: "Speaking to several persons developed its inner, grammatical form in the practice of carrying out jobs, and vice versa the habit of doing jobs got its schooling from the methods of a thinking that had to work with words" (page 30). They emerge in tandem with one another. Speech is not only relational but also practical. In the fifth millennium BC, however, reason and intellect had emancipated themselves from the domain of action, job, and doing. Speech allowed intellect and reason to set itself up in opposition to life and instead exist as "a power in itself" (page 30). Spengler says "The purely intellectual thinking-over, the “calculation,” which emerges at this point — sudden, decisive, and radical — amounts to this, that collective doing is as effectively a unit as if it were the doing of some single giant" (page 30).
Man engages in collective enterprise because he is determined to rise above nature. This is a conscious process, Spengler says, in which man decides to participate in collective action to become greater than himself. However, this comes at the cost of absolute independence, and man becomes "the slave of his thought" (page 30).
Spengler highlights the monumental achievement of construction in human history. He highlights ancient flint mines that have been discovered by archeologists. 7000 years ago man built mines with shafts, ventilation, and drainage. He mentions other great primitive constructions, marveling at how mankind was able to collectively coordinate to achieve such tasks in the first place. He asks, "Have we any clear notion of how much thought, consultation, superintendence, ordering was required, over months and years on end, for the quarrying and transport of this material, for the assignment of tasks in time and in space, the planning, the undertaking and execution of such work?" (page 31). He points toward structures in Spain made with huge stones weighing over a hundred tons. Transportation alone of such material is impressive, but the widespread coordination necessary to know where to take such stones to contribute to a grander project is even more so. Spengler also highlights how the wagon is a particularly notable development. He states, "how much thinking, ordering, and doing it presupposes, ranging from the determination of the purpose and kind of movement required, the choice and preparation of the road (a point usually ignored), and the provision or breaking-in of draught-animals, to consideration of the bulk, weight, and lashing of the load, the management and housing of the convoy!" (page 31).
Recognizing such achievements as remarkable may seem odd or banal to the modern mind, but it should not. You may be thinking, "wagons, so what? Wagons are simple!" It is not impressive only that mankind achieved such feats thousands of years ago, but it is also impressive because mankind achieved them at all. Leonard Reed wrote the essay I, Pencil, which is read in any good introduction to microeconomics class. It showcases the immense coordination necessary to create something as seemingly simple as a pencil. From graphite mills and logging camps to rubber factories and logistics centers, it takes a lot of people to fill in all the parts of the long and complex process of making only a pencil. This kind of coordination is necessary for any product, and it is no simple task. Spengler is right to be impressed by something as seemingly simple as a wagon because it signifies a monumental leap in man's ability: the ability to coordinate with others in society for large-scale projects.
Man's relation to flora and fauna is also impressive. Selectively breeding plants and animals to produce desired results, such as greater yields from crops or domestication of animals, exemplifies man's conquest over nature. Spengler says that man takes the place of nature. Man imitates, modifies, improves, and overrides nature in his mastering of the breeding process.
Leadership plays a critical role in the process of collective planning and action. In the essay about chapter 3 of Man and Technics, we discussed the logical separation of the techniques of making and using a specific tool. Spengler says this separation is analogous to the separation by a verbally managed enterprise of activities of thought from activities of hand. The activity of thought precedes the activities of the hand. The activity of thought comes from the director, and the activity of hand comes from the executor. This is the distinction between the leader and the follower, and this distinction exists necessarily in all enterprises, including hunting, robbing a bank, and founding a state or firm. Spengler emphasizes that "always the first prerequisite is an enterprising, inventive head to conceive the idea and direct the execution, to command and to allot the roles" (page 32). These are two distinct sorts of technics, practiced by two distinct kinds of men. Such a distinction is a basic form of human life, Spengler argues. Self-evidently there are "men whose nature is to command and men whose nature is to obey, subjects and objects of the political or economic process in question" (page 32). Eliminating this distinction would mean eliminating life itself.
Spengler notes that this kind of distinction is contrary to nature. In the last essay, we discussed the origin of this revolt against nature, and man's tragic disposition that comes about as a result. Nature forever remains a fact, yet man fights anyway. He fights through artifice, using artificial means to overcome or seemingly abolish nature. This is Culture. The overcoming of nature through artifice and technique. It is driven forward by the leader, the creative, who is driven by the divine spark of genius. "Genius is," Spengler says, "creative power, the divine spark in the individual life that in the stream of the generations mysteriously and suddenly appears, is extinguished, and a generation later reappears with equal suddenness" (page 32). Leadership and governing enterprise is hard work. To engage in it the leader must be of a "gifted head" to creatively solve problems as they come up (page 32). Spengler notes that Marxists and literary types do not understand this, and are therefore childlike in their understanding. They assume that everyone is just the same and that we can attain a state of activity in which everyone is both director and executor at the same time. In my essays on The Hour of Decision, we discuss how Spengler later develops the reasons as to why Marxists are in denial. Marxists/Bolsheviks/leftists are filled with resentment toward those more capable, more driven, and more in tune with the Will-to-Power than themselves. In their resentment, they seek to tear down nobility and achievement and replace it instead with vulgarity and ugliness. They seek bitter revenge to the detriment of all. Spengler states that there is a natural distinction between different grades of life. There are the leaders and there are the led. Healthy periods of history admit this fact and live in accordance with it. "In the centuries of decadence," however, "the majority force themselves to deny or to ignore it, but the very insistence on the formula that ‘all men are equal’ shows that there is something here that has to be explained away" (page 33).
Mankind moves from organic to organized existence in his transition to the technique of collective planning and doing. Both the leader and the follower sacrifice the freedom of the beast of prey to achieve something greater. He organizes into artificial groupings, transcending above natural living.
The character of the beast of prey does not disappear. Rather, it is transferred to the whole group. Spengler argues that history is driven by war, and all that we have in times of peace and political discourse is earned only by war. Spengler states that law emerges out of conquest. One tribe, group, or state dominates another, and through their superior strength, they have earned the right to set the law. Might makes right is not a hope or maxim, but rather a description of reality. Law enables the state to function as the collective expression of the people. Spengler states, "The State is the internal order of a people for its external purpose. The State is as form, as possibility, what the history of a people is as actuality" (page 34). Governing, war, and diplomacy, while being separate technics, share a common root in the spirit of the beast of prey. Warlike peoples embrace this beastly character more than others:
There are peoples whose strong breed has kept the character of the beast of prey, seizing, conquering, and lording peoples, lovers of the fight against men, who leave the economic fight against Nature to others, whom in due course they plunder and subject. Piracy is as old as navigation, the raiding of the trade-route as old as nomadism, and wherever there is peasantry there is enslavement to a warlike nobility. (page 34)
Political and economic thinking are two distinct modes, Spengler explains. Political thinking is oriented toward power, and economic thinking is oriented toward wealth. Social bodies have internal articulations, designating who is going to be aimed at which of the two ends. Some people groups, however, go all in on one or another.
Primitive tribes, first embracing the technics of collective doing by plan, did not care much for individual life and wants. People worked for the whole of the group. Spengler points to the example of seafaring people, who risked life and limb to increase the wealth and power of the group. The warriors and explorers knew the risks when they got onto the boat to embark on these expeditions. They recognized that they could meet an extremely bitter end. Nonetheless, they did it anyway, because they recognized that the annihilation of the we, the group identity, would be a greater loss than the death of one or many of the individuals.
Spengler describes this as the revenge of nature over man. Man, supposedly emancipated from nature, is now constrained by Culture. "The Culture, the aggregate of artificial, personal, self-made life-forms, develops into a close-barred cage for these souls that would not be restrained. The beast of prey, who made others his domestic animals to exploit them, has taken himself captive," Spengler says (page 35). The house is a symbol of this fact, Spengler says, and so is the increased size of the population which hides the individual in the vast sea of people. The whole Earth is colonized by man. One nation now rubs up against another, creating a new frontier. The limits on space arouses in man old instincts of hatred and violence. Spengler states that the frontier, "of whatever kind it may be, even the intellectual frontier, is the mortal foe of the Will-to-Power" (page 35).
Spengler argues that the idea of technics saving us from labor is a myth. Every discovery, he argues, demands more. It "contains the possibility and necessity of new discoveries" (page 35). A wish is fulfilled, a goal is met, and a thousand new ones spring up. As a beast of prey, man always hungers for more and is never truly satisfied. This is an aspect of the tragic character of mankind's triumph over nature. It will never be done, the fight will never end. There will always be more to conquer, and greater heights to reach. Every process can be made more efficient. Every microchip can get smaller. Every new skyscraper can be built taller than the last. Mankind's technical achievement has not even come close to scratching the surface of absolute possibility. The limitlessness of possibility is a curse, Spengler says, but it is "also the grandeur inherent in its destiny" (page 36). He says that this is the origin of slavery. Instead of vanquishing another tribe, the leader can instead force a conquered tribe to be the extra hands for the ever greater goals of the leader.
Spengler notes that even as population numbers grow, the quantity of leaders remains small. He argues that tribes multiply downwards and that there is an increase in the number of hands rather than heads. More workers, but not more leaders. Spengler states "It is, in fact, the pack of the true beasts of prey, the pack of the gifted who dispose, in one way or another, of the increasing herd of the others" (page 36). Yet despite retaining some essence of the beast of prey, the leader is still in chains to the new organization of mass society and must undergo efforts to preserve inward freedom. Here begins "the individualism that is a reaction against the psychology of the mass" (page 36). Large population numbers compel the carnivore soul to rail against the captivity of Culture, attempting to shake off the spiritual and intellectual limitations imposed by it. They do not want to be absorbed in the mass. Some examples of this rebellion are the conquerer, the adventurer, the hermit, and some kinds of criminals. I would add that the entrepreneur likely fits the bill as well. "The idea of personality," Spengler says, "in its dark beginnings, is a protest against humanity in the mass, and the tension between these grows and grows to its tragic finale" (page 36).
Spengler turns to the discussion of feelings. Hate, he says, requires respect. A creature can only hate another creature that shares the same spiritual rank. A being despises creatures that are lower than it and envies those above. He uses the example of the eagle, which flies above all. The eagle hates his peers, envies none, and despises all. Spengler states "Contempt looks downwards from the heights, envy peers upwards from below — and these two are the world-historical feelings of mankind organized in state and classes, whose (forcedly) peaceful specimens helplessly rattle the bars of the cage in which they are confined together" (page 36). This is an unshakeable fact and so are its consequences.
Spengler's view of mankind is undeniably grim and tragic, but it also leaves open the possibility for greatness. Greatness is shut out by Marxists and romantics alike. Spengler would say that they are unwilling to recognize the fact that there are different grades of human life. He is extremely anti-egalitarian in his worldview. He does not say that this state of affairs is good or bad, but only that it is, and unalterably so. The difference in rank between men is inescapable and has written within it the destiny of mankind. It cannot be avoided, it must accomplish itself.
Speech started with song.