Document Type

Article

Abstract

This essay explores the perceived weakening and even possible collapse of Western Civilization as seen through the eyes of three prominent historians: Oswald Spengler, Jacques Barzun, and John Lukacs. Each of them has provoked controversy due to their pathologies of the West and their conclusion that its vital signs (identified as religion, science, and education), suggest a sick and possibly dying patient. All three developed metahistories that led, in Dermot Quinn’s words, to “that architecture of greater meaning by which historical facts make themselves intelligible.” That is to say, beyond their specific historical narratives, each made use of a wider lens to explain the past. This lens reveals that metahistory defies a single characterization, and, therefore, a comparative review can offer fresh perspectives on its analytical power and interpretive value. Individual analyses of its most notable representatives such as Oswald Spengler, Arnold J. Toynbee, and Hayden White are fine—indeed important—as far as they go, but Spengler, Barzun, and Lukacs demonstrate that metahistory can offer many approaches, even when their conclusions may be similar or even the same. The three historians and their works analyzed here suggest that history writ large in this fashion, studied and analyzed by those who know it best, can propose intriguing answers to the state of a civilization, age, or era worth considering.

Publication Date

2023

College or School

UAB Libraries

Comments

Working paper

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Included in

History Commons

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