Review On Oswald Spengler's Philosophy Of Technology

Oswald Spengler is a famous historian, culture scientist and philosophy anthropologist in modern German. He has explored essential problem and rule of development of technology from the multi-disciplinary visual angle. Through the comparison of people and animal, he points out that technology is a tactic of life and a kind of power will. The Decline of the West, his representative work, has the profound influence. However, people have often neglected the technological philosophy thoughts in his other works.To the evolution of technology, Spengler has divided three stages: formulation of technology, development of technology and climaxes and declining of technology. He points out the technology which the mankind maintains one's own life is because of a kind of instinct; the development of the human society is because of chasing of the right to technology. Technology is the culture's outer shape through its intrinsic essence. Spengler sums up the declining of technology as the declining of cultural history. He thinks this is an inevitable cyclical process in cycle of life. Human, technology and culture are important aspects through his entire technical philosophy thoughts. Especially, He explains that the development of technology has affected the whole culture system, it is enough to cause people's deep thinking. The theory has the important value and realistic meaning.Certainly, Spengler still is the person whose spirit belongs to the 19th century. This will makes his 'world' vision have a certain limitation. This limitation makes Spengler do not understand the thoughts of culture and technology completely about other regions. His research about technology is not comprehensive; even some views are still biased. However, his research results have increased the new contents for the research on philosophy of technology and offered the new visual angle to the development of the philosophy of technology. It is also inspiring and helpful to the philosophy of technology research for development of technology in China.