Frederik Adama van Scheltema and the West between Systole and Diastole

VARGIU, LUCA

2013-01-01

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Abstract

In Die geistige Mitte, Frederik Adama van Scheltema accomplishes his project of a “periodic system of Western artistic and cultural development”. Being based on a close comparison between the dynamics of historical processes and those of physical and natural processes, the system presents a methodological proposal suggesting an organic – and not linear – history of Western civilization. Such an approach results in a historiographic view that, as Spengler already did, rejects the usual subdivision into Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modern Age, supporting instead a quite Germanocentric periodization that substitutes Antiquity with a long Protohistory (Vorzeit), dating from Neolithic period until the year 1000.