Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "The Decline of the West" in English language version.
[In regards of Max Horkheimer discussing several different representatives of Lebensphilosophie.] As was the case with Husserl and phenomenology, Horkheimer was ultimately more concerned about the popularizations of Bergson and Lebensphilosophie and the fateful social dynamic that they obscured and thereby reinforced, than with the philosophical doctrines themselves, which contained moments of truth.
As an example of the worst sort of popularizations of Lebensphilosophie, Horkheimer discusses Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. Horkheimer dismisses Spengler's study which enjoyed wide popularity in Germany in the 1920s, especially among culturally conservative circles – as superficial synthesis of poorly understood material from a wide variety of fields. He is particularly vehement in his rejection of Spengler's facile comparison of the development of human culture with that of plants. For Horkheimer, there is no comparison between genuine Lebensphilosophie and popularizers like Spengler.
