TIME, DECLINE, AND THE NEUROAESTHETICS OF THE SUBLIME: EMIL CIORAN, OSWALD SPENGLER, AND THE CULTURAL MORPHOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Acta Marisiensis Philologia September 15, 2026 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Jan de Maere
This article examines the intersection of Emil Cioran’s phenomenology of temporal decay, Oswald Spengler’s morphological theory of cultural decline, and contemporary neuroaesthetic research grounded in predictive processing and embodied cognition. While both Cioran and Spengler share an intuition of civilisational exhaustion, they articulate decline through distinct epistemological frameworks:...