For this session I want you to familiarize yourselves with the argument of Oswald Spengler in The Decline of The West. The best way to do this might be to study the three charts at the end of Volume One; Contemporary Spiritual Epochs, Contemporary Culture Epochs and Contemporary Political Epochs. Unfortunately they are too large for my our scanner so I have to ask you to forage for them on the internet.
Secondly and by way of contrast, I want you to read almost any article by John Lanchester, a regular and readable contributor to many journals, especially (my favourite) the London Review of Books.
Spengler postulates an argument that even if it were to be true, is most unhelpful, but it does ask you to confront a fatalistic nihilism that pervaded an area of thought between the wars, and might readily be brought to an understanding of the work of Mies van de Rohe.
Lets see what you might make of both characters and their opposite viewpoints.
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