Spengler and the State
Spengler and the State
The last element of the foundation of Spengler’s political history to look at is the idea of the State. At all points in the history of higher cultures the primary estates find themselves in relation to the State as the unit of world-politics. Estates, noble or priestly, govern the internal affairs of the State, whilst the State engages with other States in the eternal tug of power. It is the mirror of the family unit, the maternal organises the family within, whilst the paternal faces the fathers of other families as representatives of the unit. The similarity goes as far as to the early State typically allying itself with a noble House to secure its internal affairs so it can maintain strength against other States doing the same. This need for organisation Spengler discusses as being in form.
All elements of actuality, the plant-world, possess direction and movement. This direction can be looked upon differently depending on whether we observe the movement or the thing moved. The former is History, the movement through time, and the latter may be a family, or an estate, or a nation, they both need eachother. But State is different. What is “State” but a condition, a fixed position in time. When history is observed we understand it in the moment and it ceases to be history per se and becomes a State. This is key to understanding its form.
History is the state in movement. It cannot be understood but only felt, this is the nature of being in form. When a political movement makes headway, it only makes headway because of the strength of its form. A political movement with weak form cannot organise and therefore loses to other movements no matter the strength of its truths or righteousness. The caveat here is that form is only felt and cannot be understood, the moment it is understood, the form becomes weaker.
To illustrate this conundrum, imagine you are the best tennis player in the world. You are playing at Wimbledon against your rival, the crowds are silent watching you play, you see the ball, you feel its direction, you hit it and never miss. You appear to be winning and notice this. Suddenly you have doubts, you become aware of the length of your arm, the strength of the ball hitting your bat, the speed it is going, the crowd watching with anticipation, and you begin to doubt your victory, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, you miss and lose the match. Before you became aware of yourself, you felt the form and condition you were in, but becoming aware of it invites doubt.
In politics, this may manifest in hardened forms to regulate the movement. Things that otherwise didn’t need laws or rules and regulations suddenly need it because the form is weakened[1]. For Spengler, the mere existence of a constitution is evidence of doubt in the natural success of the movement[2].
In the primitive period, there is no such form, things assemble and depart naturally and complexity is a task for an intellect otherwise unrefined. On the opposite end, the fellah period marks the end of a form, leaving only its calcified remnants. Between these periods, the State first comes into being with the idea of the nation – a unit of people within history – and therefore the Estates – the distinguished symbols of Time and Space. But while the estates polarize one another, a people can only be polarised by friend and enemy – an other – and so the strength of a people comes not from its symbolic opposition but from its strength of form against other forms, or its own state versus other states, which usually makes itself manifest through warfare[3].
The state as form is the embodiment of care. The mini state of the family is dominated by the care of the mother, who nurtures the next generation and manages the internal affairs, and the father who secures it by managing external affairs. Law is the State’s manifestation of care and it comes in the respective forms of Tradition and Contemplation, the former the trusted laws of the blood, and the latter the law of reason and awareness. In all instances of law there are subjects and objects of its creation, duties of all community member, but it is left to fate to determine who lays this law down and the notion of “right” is an expression of “might”. Opposed to this is the priestly notion of “right” as an expression of “good” or simply truth. This is the origin of the written laws and constitutions. Products of heightened awareness of what is good over one’s own gain. Without it we live purely in the world of day to day, moment to momentary facts, but with the arrival of those who are strong in mind but weak in blood, the capacity to sacrifice for abstract principles, religions and philosophies becomes a possibility in law.
“Internal laws are the result of strict logical-causal thought centring upon truths, but for that very reason their validity is ever dependent upon the material power of their author, be this Estate or State. A revolution that annihilates this power annihilates also these laws — they remain true, but they are no longer actual. External laws on the other hand, such as all peace treaties, are essentially never true and always actual — indeed appallingly so.” (2.11.1)
To round it all up, the state is the highest notion of being “in form”. It is the composition of a nation, weak or strong, written on paper or felt among the people. Though a single celled organism can, in Spengler’s conception, be considered a “state”, in higher cultures, the State begins with the history of culture-peoples (nations) and the estates, be the culture more aristocratic or priestly. Whilst the Estates polarize themselves, peoples polarize the other, and so the State must maintain its strength to content with the states of other peoples. Law is the practise of regulation to maintain and care for the nation as though it were a family. Internal laws often find themselves rooted in Truths, but Truths have no place in the push and pull of State warfare, where law becomes purely an expression of might.
[1] Certainly, there is room to identify the weakened form of many Western nations thanks to multiculturalism. Society was already receding in favour of the individual, then a whole array of foreign cultures with far stronger senses of form moved in with the consent of a weak, overly rules-based government, that now has to create new totalitarian laws and regulations to deal with the chaotic mess it made for itself.
[2] The American Constitution is a good example to consider. The most powerful nation in the world currently is a nation founded on an enlightenment constitution. But was it the values and amendments that made America strong, or was it the feeling possessed in the people that they were of one stock with one common interest that gave them the strength to expand and conquer and subjugate the world. Plenty of nations have constitutions, few have inward strength and motivation.
[3] The State, as national government, is therefore thoroughly political as it contents with other states. It is therefore tied to the nobility in this respect, often the kings of the land are themselves part of a noble house which sits above the rest. In this sense, the State, as composition of the nation, allies itself with an estate to keep internal affairs organised while it contents with foreign states and peoples, if that follows.