Research On Oswald Spengler's Morphological Philosophy Of Technology

Oswald Spengler is a well-known culture scientist,historian and philosopher in German.His representative work,The Decline of the West,has profound influence.The thoughts in the book such as the historical viewpoint of cultural morphology,fatalism and the prejudgment of the decline of the West,triggered a heated discussion in academic circles.However,their main focus was the philosophy of history and culture but ignored the technical thoughts in his book.Spengler's technical thoughts are closely related to his morphological thoughts.Therefore,this paper mainly illustrate Spengler's technical thoughts from the perspective of morphology based on the works The Decline of the West and Man and Technics,aiming to explores the theoretical value and practical value of Spengler's theories.In the introduction part,the paper firstly discusses the research purposes and meaning of Spengler's technical thoughts and reviews the current situation of domestic and foreign research status of his thoughts.Int the second part,the paper traces back the appearing background and theoretical roots of Spengler's technical thoughts,which could help us better understand his thoughts from historic context.The third part is the body of this paper,which makes a detailed discussion and demonstration of the concept of morphology,technical philosophy in morphological perspective,morphological essence of technology,morphological relation of technology as well as morphological research methods of technology.Spengler defined morphology in a philosophical aspect,thus philosophical morphology contains the organic necessity as well as the inevitable fate.Besides Spengler introduced “Morphology” into the research of technology,which endowed technology with the essence life.In that way,technology becomes an organism that the development of it will undergo the rising and declining in the sense of morphology just like the evolution of living organisms.Based on this,Spengler thinks technology is not isolated but has a close relationship with culture.Therefore,research of technology should use the research method of morphology,namely physiognomy,which includes two methods,physiognomic intuition and physiognomic analogy.The fourth chapter is mainly about the evaluation of Spengler's technological philosophy: Firstly,it summarizes the peculiarity of Spengler's technical thoughts in view of philosophy of life and technological determinism including the positive significance it produced such as helping broaden research perspective of technology and criticizing rationally on technological instruments;certainly there are also limitations.By comparing the different perspectives in Marx's critique theory with Spengler's,the paper critically points out the limitations of Spengler's thought of technology,that is the pessimistic technological determinism and the meaningless development of technology.Finally,the paper states the enlightenment of Spengler's technical thoughts on the development of Chinese culture and technology.