The Philosopher & The News: Are We Witnessing the End of the West?

Europe isn’t doing very well. Its economies are stagnating, its population is aging, and its politics is increasingly being pulled by forces that in the 20th century nearly tore the continent apart. Nationalism, authoritarianism, populism, anti-liberalism, these are the undercurrents that are animating European politics currently. People’s trust in their democratically elected representatives is at an all-time low, and the appetite for a “strongman leader” has increased.

Is this just a rough patch in Europe’s history, triggered by contingent events, or are we witnessing the beginning of what Oswald Spengler, an early 20th century prophet of western cultural decline, coined “The Decline of the West”? If Kant’s hope that Europe’s history represented the march towards a universal rational form of life is hard to inspire these days, is European civilisation fated to fade just as the Ancient Egyptian, Aztec, and Greco-Roman ones did? Is this the beginning of the end, and if so, what comes next?

About the Speaker:

Simon Glendinning is Professor in European Philosophy and Head of the European Institute at LSE. His work transcends the analytic-continental philosophy distinction, a distinction which he has criticises in his The Idea of Continental Philosophy (2006). He is the author of a two volume philosophical history of Europe, Europe: A Philosophical History, Part 1. The Promise of Modernity and Part 2. Beyond Modernity (Routledge 2021). In his recent article, Trump, Europe and Spengler’s Revenge, he wonders whether it is time to revisit the work of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West to better understand Europe’s current moment in history.

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

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About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.