Phillips, Rory;
(2022)
From periodic decline to permanent rebirth: Alexander Raven Thomson on civilization, pathology, and violence.
Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence
, 6
(2)
pp. 37-52.
10.22618/TP.PJCV.20226.2.144.003.
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Abstract
Alexander Raven Thomson was a British fascist philosopher, active from 1932 to 1955. I outline Thomson’s Spenglerian views on civilization and decline. I argue that Thomson in his first book is an orthodox Spenglerian who accepts that decline is inevitable and thinks that it is morally required to destroy civilization in its final stages. I argue that this suffers from conceptual issues which may have caused Thomson’s change to a revised form of Spenglerianism, which is more authentically fascist. This authentically fascist view is then seen to fall prey into the problem inherent in the very idea of permanent rebirth.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | From periodic decline to permanent rebirth: Alexander Raven Thomson on civilization, pathology, and violence |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.22618/TP.PJCV.20226.2.144.003 |
| Publisher version: | https://trivent-publishing.eu/img/cms/3-%20Rory%20... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CCBY-NC-ND 4.0) license, which permits others to copy or share the article, provided original work is properly cited and that this is not done for commercial purposes. Users may not remix, transform, or build upon the material and may not distribute the modified material (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) |
| Keywords: | Fascism, Violence, Alexander Raven Thomson, Oswald Mosley, Civilization, Pathology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161649 |
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