Cultural-philosophical comprehension of O. Spengler's "Decline of Europe" in Chinese thought of the early XX century

Abstract

The object of this research is the tradition of comprehension of cultural identity in China of the early XX century. The subject is impact Oswald Spengler's "Decline of Europe" upon this tradition. There are multiple mentions of Spengler in the articles and essays of Chinese students who studied in Germany in the early 1920s; by the 1930s, his views underlay the cultural concepts developing in China. In the Chinese historical studies of later period, the publication of "Decline of Europe" appears near equal in importance to the World War I. This article aims to determine why the experience of Spengler's Eurocentric concept turned out to be so profound in the alien Chinese culture, and which means can be used for analyzing such experience within the framework of the philosophy of culture. The conclusion is made that the influence of the "Decline of Europe" upon Chinese thought dedicated to the questions of culture was multidimensional. On the one hand, the very fact of the emergence of "Decline of Europe" within the Western philosophical tradition was significant for Chinese intellectuals. Against the background of crisis of the strategy of all-round Westernization of Chinese society, the "Decline of Europe" became the so-called legitimation of the reasoning on "Chinese culture " as a unique phenomenon. On the other hand, Chinese thought comprehended the conceptual part of Spengler’s ideas taking roots in the specificity of Chinese philosophical tradition. This problem was the main focus of research. Substantiation is given to the thesis, according to which the morphology of Spengler's culture, fragmented to separate concepts and then integrated on the virtually intuitive level, can still be allotted a cultural-philosophical status in the "Chinese version". The novelty consists in reconsideration of the scientific work of Oswald Spengler through the prism of non-Western philosophical traditions, which draws particular interest in the light of development of postcolonial research.