Joachim Fest and Ian Kershaw make similar claims; that the leadership cadre of the Third Reich were physical inferiors. Nobody really believed that Himmler was a
superman
, and to suggest his position within the government was incongruous with NS doctrine indicates a lack of understanding of the NS state and its ideas. Himmler may or may not have been a crank, but he never claimed he was a ''superior'' man to his fellows or the German people. He derived his mandate from his ability to organize and his fealty to Hitler, which had been solidified by his standing with Hitler, Schuebner-Richter, Rohm, and other 'Old Fighters' in the 1923 putsch.
America has killed millions of Muslims. Most Arabs are not supportive of Islamic radicalism, but its absurd to claim that Arabs think liberal democracy 'looks good' by comparison when their fellows have been cut to bits by American guns.
Most Arabs would prefer the life of a liberal democracy, with its standard of living and freedoms to shove cucumbers up your ass. They have a momentary infatuation with these ideologies for the reasons you mention, but once they get it out of their system they'll fall into line especially if they get to experience Islamic rule for a while.
And this is why the answer your original question is simply....
no
. The managerial state is not going away, and neither is science or technology. Neither is the utilitarian, irreligious outlook the modern Westerner has, in contrast to the reverence and innocence of the Archaic Greeks.
It is to Rome, not Greece, that we must look for the answer to the problems of our epoch.
Places like America, England, France, have a high standard of living because they're extraordinarily rich countries that wield grossly disproportionate power in the world. They don't enjoy a high standard of living because they hold elections regularly.
If Iran or Egypt were to start holding constant election cycles and welcoming US backed cronies into high office, they wouldn't suddenly become rich. They'd remain poor and overpopulated, with the added insult of their cultural institutions being dismantled and replaced by government bureaucracies tailored to eliminate the presumed authority of natural social relationships, customary practices, religious institutions, etc.
This is probably why people in places like Iran tolerate their government; they appreciate that the alternative is worse, not better.
You're just parrotting ''end of history'' propaganda.
This from Spengler is very interesting but it's not something I can accept. I can't accept it on two levels. First, because there is still basically no comparison between the ancient Romans, "the noblest people who ever lived," and the moderns. So I would have no complaints if the life of even some of the lesser Romans was possible today, but this is not the case. Our life is completely debased and pathetic on every level, so while understanding Rome is important in understanding politics as such, I don't think there's any real equivalence between our way of life and theirs. Machiavelli blamed men in Italy
in his day
of falling short of the glorious political existence of the Romans; think of how much like ants we appear compared to the men of Machiavelli's day, and how much more cramped the possibilities for action and thought are today.
But I also can't agree with him as such, because he's essentially saying that all possibilities in way of life and even in thought are determined by one's historical (political) situation. But the fact that philosophers have managed to find ways to propagate their teaching and way of life in various historical circumstances disproves the strictest application of this kind of historicism. There was nothing as such in Muslim Spain that necessarily had to lead to the rebirth of philosophy there, however briefly. But Alfarabi and others managed to revive this ancient way of life--indeed he has a book on how to propagate philosophy and how to revive it when it has died in one's own time. This led to a reaction and philosophy was successfully snuffed out in the Muslim world after Averroes, but somehow it managed to flower there for a while. Similarly, despite Spengler's remarks about philosophy during the Roman age, the different schools continued and at times enjoyed a brilliant existence. Spengler's own complaints that mediocrities practiced philosophy are common in ancient literature as well, such complaints exist even in Plato, to the effect that such men brought a bad name to philosophy. Plato himself was writing at the time of Greek decline, of which he was surely aware, but he didn't let this bother him from his task, which he knew to be beyond history.
There is also another problem with Spengler's argument, forget everything I just wrote; if you're given shit and shit on a plate and asked to choose and then told that "this is all that's available," it doesn't mean you have to choose. You can also choose to starve. Someone like Don Quixote is to be seen as a great man, not as a simpleton, charlatan, or pedant. Somehow Schopenhauer lived as a classical philosopher would, in a completely uncompromising fashion, he didn't let any of the trends of his age determine his way of life; and I would say the same for Napoleon, a great man taken out of antiquity and thrown into the modern world, that he conquered by his greater will and power.
I have been meaning to read Schopenauer beyond a few excerpts, but it's interesting that you cite him as a paragon of Classical sentiment stranded in modern decadance. In fact, Spengler cites Schopenhauer's philosophy as a harbinger of modernity; the first in the tradition of "civilized [ethical] philosophy" that appears in the West after the exhaustion of systematic, metaphysical philosophy. I would be interested on your opinion of these excerpts from Spengler's
Decline
pertaining to Schopenauer:
I concur with Nietzsches' approval of Roman virtue, but we must understand that Rome acheived greatness under vastly different conditions than those of say, Sparta.
A genuine self-contained Roman aristocracy, grown from the soil and in firm control of political life-- we cannot speak of this after the third or even the fourth century BC. In Republican Rome we have a litany of significant figures from outside not only the aristocracy but outside the city of Rome itself playing pivotal roles. Cato the Elder came from a plebeian family in Tusculum, Plautus was an Umbrian from Sarsina, Varro was a Sabine from Rieti, Livy was of Venetic stock from Padua, etc. And many of the "noble" families were in fact plebeians who became wealthy. Such influence by "foreigners" and plebeians in political and cultural life would have been unthinkable in Archaic Greece, but was inevitable given the lateness with which Rome flowered and in no way detracted from its greatness.
Rome had a vanguard of Statesmen who adapted to the times in spite of Rome's republicanism and the corruption and hysteria associated with it. This de facto elite did not exist on paper, but it was the reason Rome emerged victorious over Carthage, and then the whole Classical world. By the Imperial period the dedication to the State and conception of Roman virtue remained essentially unchanged, even though perhaps a majority of great "Romans" began to come from outside even Italy, many of relatively humble birth.
For the same reason I believe there is no possibility America can be be revived by some belated Anglo-Scots Virginia aristocracy, but by a concerted effort by Americans traditionally identifying with European Christendom who can somehow rediscover and maintain fundamental aspects of the founding Anglo-Saxon culture. There is no other choice; it is foolish to speak of noble lineages in our time, and the only conception of a eugenic "elite" that can exist today is a biological elite-- hence whether we agree with the program or not the SS's attempt was, at least, not farce. A postmodern aristocracy that is regenerated to engage in lesiure and practice philosophy
is
farcical.
One of the main misreadings of Spengler is that his philosophy leads one to nihilistic despair, but this is not true. It is simply a recognition that there can be greatness, also, in Imperial civilization, and our choice is between willing this or (as the neoliberals and New Left would have) willing nothing.
No one would deny the contrast between Roman universalism and Greek particularism, but the case that foreigners were not included in Archaic Greek life is overstated. The first philosopher, Thales, is said to have been from a Phoenician noble family, for example. And there were many such families settled in the Greek states. The virtue of Greek culture was by no means its purity, but the way it assimilated and cultivated ideas inherited from others. It is a "feminine" culture according to N, that likes to nurture and develop things from others, whereas the Roman (and also, the German and Jewish) cultures are "masculine" in that they hunger after other peoples and seek to "fertilize" them. Anyway this is somewhat of an aside, and I don't disagree with you on the general point that Rome was far more inclusive than "chauvinistic" Greek culture, and indeed that the Edict of Caracalla granting Roman citizenship universally to all free men in the Empire was a significant point in history. Universalism and cosmpolitanism had even earlier forms. Spengler's point is as usual prefigured by N, who makes a similar case in the Birth of Tragedy, regarding the death of genuine Greek tragic culture after Socrates and the relatively desiccated character of Hellenistic cosmopolitan civilization, which ended the great period of Greek culture and didn't have similar creative powers (he calls this scientific-humanist Alexandrian civilization, much like our own).
But Hellenistic empires and Rome are nevertheless inferior to Greece in its period of glory, so in this I would disagree. Second, where I absolutely disagree is that there is any parallel between even the "cosmopolitan and universalist" Rome or Hellenistic world on one hand and the modern era on the other. There is simply no comparison in terms of the possibilities for human action, thought, and greatness. Even to ask the question if a Scipio, Caesar, etc., are possible today is to show that there is no comparison. The life of the modern "elite" American has and can have nothing in common with the life of the elite Roman who worked in imperial administration, with, say, a Tacitus.
Regarding this same Tacitus, another important disagreement is revealed. I don't think that philosophy during the Roman era was necessarily farcical or ridiculous. The Roman urban patriciate supported philosophy and philosophers. This was true even in the days of the Empire. This is why Machiavelli, in a sense following Tacitus, says at one point that "let a prince put before himself the times from Nerva to Marcus…he will see a secure prince in the midst of his secure citizens, and the world full of peace and justice; he will see the Senate with its authority, the magistrates with their honors, the rich citizens enjoying their riches, nobility and virtue exalted; he will see all quiet and all good, and, on the other side, all rancor, all license, corruption, and ambition eliminated.
He will see golden times when each can hold and defend the opinion he wishes. He will see in sum the world in triumph,
the prince full of reverence and glory, the peoples full of love and security. " From the point of view that I was speaking in the original post, this is a good situation for philosophy. Philosophers consider this a golden age for themselves. There was even a symbiotic relationship between Greek orators, sophists, philosophers, and Roman statesmen, that your post and Spengler obscures. Philosophy enjoyed a high level of prestige. Within the Western world it is only starting in our time, during the 19th century, that the status of philosophy starts to decline.
An elite or aristocracy devoted to leisure, supporting the creation of beautiful and useless things (Aristotle's mark for the taste of the noble), with philosophy as the crown of such things, is never farcical, it is always simply good. It existed during the Roman times you claim didn't have it, maybe not in the same form it had in its beginnings, but in some ways it was even more prestigious during this time. If such an aristocracy can't exist, and therefore if such philosophy can't exist, it is the time and era itself that is farcical, and even worse than farcical, barbaric, which is what we have today. It's just that we have a mediocre and tame barbarism instead of a violent one, but it's all the same, fucked if you do fucked if you don't. There's no point pretending that we live in a modern-day Rome, that's just a means to obscure or prettify the essentially meaningless and limited nature of modern life.
Now regarding the rest of what you say. Noble lineages are there for a reason in all societies, because they're natural. If you have a barbaric period where ruthless and violent men come to power, they will favor their own offspring, not some abstract biological concept of "race." Thus if we relapse into true barbarism you will eventually see new noble lineages spring up from the progeny of the conquerors, who will not "take one for the race," and let their own children be pushed aside because of genetic testing or because of some other contrived device.
I don't know what is or isn't possible in America and it may well be (as I hinted) that the Straussian dream of cultivating American "gentlemen" is crazy. The alternative you're talking about has next to nothing in it that's redeeming. As I said in my first post, it just takes everything back to square one. I don't support the multicultural agenda or the "propositional nation" agenda, but a WN assertion (which is what you're talking about because there's nothing "Anglo" left, and even if there were...) will still lead to another worthless rump of mediocrity in which bleak moderns waste time. There is no greatness in what would be essentially the same thing that we have today, but without ethnic tensions. It is a deep insult to Rome to compare any modern state to Rome...
I have heard this a lot, but I'm not sure I can support Nietzsche's sexual distinctions between cultures. Just off the top of my head the colonies of Magna Graecia seemed to exert the utmost influence on the development of Italian political life pre-Roman domination, and even in the Archaic Period we find Attic and Corinthian pottery being imported and emulated all over the Italian peninsula (especially Etruria) and beyond.
One could make a (contentious) case that the likes of Croton and Sybaris exercised more influence on Rome's political development than its immediate "Italic" neighbors, and after all even Rome never spread Classical ideas as far and wide as Alexander did hundreds of years before.
I do think that Classical Culture reached its highest expression in the 5th century BC, that Athens and Sparta represented the best of the best... Rome was simply resigned to another duty, that of spreading Civilization. Greece nurtured the inward development, Rome was tasked with the outward manifestation of conquest. You could make a similar analogy between Bourbon France, and 19th/20th century England and America, all 3 of which are representative of the West.
I think the following passage by Spengler is relevant:
Pythagoras initiated a revolutionary social movement whose relevance is probably still underestimated today; Plato's ideas were powerful enough that they were put into action at Syracuse, and Archimedes acted essentially as philosopher-king there 150 years later. While in late Republican/Imperial Rome we see philosophers kept around by wealthy Romans as a sort amusement, or philosophy was dabbled in by the wealthy as a pasttime.... but of what significance was philosophy to the fortunes of Rome?
Spengler says:
I would like to say that I don't "oppose" philosophy in a modern setting per se-- for a wealthy/powerful man I agree that a contemplative existence, with hunting, leisure, and political aims etc is a noble lifestyle, even in megalopolitan society. Marcus Aurelius is a great figure, while Bill Gates-- devoted to "social justice"-- is a clownish fool.
But, I also feel that philosophy can only have significance today as a sort of personal ethical system; pure philosophy no longer has the power to move and shape politics (and indeed I think you would agree, it ONLY has the power to do so under a true aristocracy). In the hands of a great man, a sound philosophy can be a good tool of governance...
I certainly don't think our life or our politics are equal to Rome.... but they can be. And I'm not just talking about some what pare breeding program.
The entire State, the entire spiritual and cultural disposition of the west, needs to be put back on track, from education to ethics to politics, etc. What has happened in the West in the past 50-60 years is essentially what would have happened in Rome if Spartacus and his slaves, instead of being ruthlessly suppressed, were handed over the reigns of the State and lavished with titles.
A little encouragement from Spengler of what must come: