Abstract
This essay illustrates how Spengler, in his work The Decline of the Occident, aims to understand the Weltanschauungen and the sense of life of a particular epoque by systematically investigating its artistic ‘world of forms’. According to Spengler, historians and philosophers who intend to deal with universal history have the task of transforming themselves into ‘visionaries’ and at the same time familiarising themselves in depth with the methods of investigation used in art history. The contribution shows how Spengler carefully investigated the results of an history of art that is more and more connected to the history of ideas (thanks to Alois Riegl, Josef Strzygowski and Wilhelm Worringer), and how he drew important suggestions from Marie Luise Gothein’s Monographie zur Geschichte der Gartenkunst (1914).
