The Skill of Politics as Mission in Life: On Oswald Spengler’s Speech ‘The Political Obligations of German Youth’

The article examines the views of one of the most controversial philosophers and political thinkers of the twentieth century, Oswald Spengler, using his speech “The Political Obligations of German Youth”, which he delivered to a student audience in 1924, as a case study. In this small but thematically rich text, the famous author of the two-volume book “The Decline of the West” touched upon various aspects characterizing the transformation of European culture after the First World War, assessed the prospects for economic, political, military and social changes, and expressed his understanding of Germany's position in the post-war situation. While having to leave aside several issues raised in the speech, the article focuses on Spengler's understanding of the role of youth in politics. The relevance of this issue stems from the fact that contemporary culture is undergoing a new stage of transformation, no less global and more drastic in possible consequences compared to the shifts of a century ago. Therefore, the ‘battle for the youth’ which played a crucial role in the history of the Weimar Republic remains significant today. The purpose of the work is to present in a systematic way Spengler's views on the place and role of youth in politics, expressed in the analyzed speech. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were accomplished: (1) to reconstruct the ideological and political context of Spengler's speech, including description of the main value priorities of the concepts of ‘Prussian socialism’ and the ‘German idea’; (2) to describe the state of the youth movement in Germany during the period under study; (3) to present approaches to understanding science-based politics in world political thought; (4) to characterize the requirements of ‘learning politics’ as a political responsibility. The study employed historical and philosophical text analysis, discourse analysis, and comparative methods. The result was the justification of the conclusion that  O. Spengler's position, as expressed in the speech under analysis, fully corresponded to the global trend of the scientization of political governance and the purposeful formation of the personnel reserve of the political elite, but at the same time it was based on the conceptual foundations of ‘Prussian socialism’, which denied the value of parliamentarism and democratic government in general, focusing on the ideal of political unity based on the ‘spirit of the people’. Accordingly, Spengler argued that acquiring knowledge about politics and developing management skills should be considered a duty rather than a matter of personal choice for a young person.

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