On Thursday, April 6, 2023 at 12:00 pm (CET), we are hosting the CAS SEE Seminar with Gregory Morgan Swer on Technology and The Decline of the West. Critical Perspectives on Oswald Spengler’s Apology for Violence in conversation with the RECAS Fellow Andreas Wilmes.

About the seminar

Violence plays an integral role in Oswald Spengler’s historico-philosophical project. In his best known work, The Decline of the West, Spengler argues that expansionist violence is the only way left for an enervated Western Civilisation to prolong its existence.

I suggest that the theme of violence remains central to Spengler’s less known later works, particularly Man and Technics. In Spengler’s later philosophy violence is no longer presented as a last resort for Western cultural preservation but rather operates as a result of a tragic technological addiction.

This addiction, Spengler claims, can never be abandoned even though it guarantees the death of the culture that wields it.

Gregory Morgan Swer is an associate professor in philosophy at the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

He is the editor-in-chief of the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology. His research focuses on technological politics. He has published several papers on Oswald Spengler’s philosophy.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88989643663?pwd=VnZTOWRmdnl0WEZIdTczc1paZWtkdz09

Meeting ID: 889 8964 3663

Passcode: 328897