Spengler on the Third Humanism: Critique of the "Museum Spirit" and the Search for a New Anthropology In the context of the intellectual crisis of European culture in the 1920-1930s, parallel to Werner Jaeger's concept of the "third humanism," an original and sharp interpretation of this idea emerged, attributed to the German philosopher and educator Eduard Spranger (1882–1963). While Jaeger saw salvation in returning to the ancient ideal of paideia as a formative force, Spranger subjected classical humanism to radical criticism and proposed his own, anthropologically grounded version of the "third humanism," addressing the challenges of modernity. Critique of the Second Humanism and Diagnosis of the Crisis Spranger, one of the leading representatives of the philosophy of life and Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik (pedagogy based on the sciences of the spirit), formulated a harsh diagnosis in his work "The Philosophy of Youth" (1924) and other texts. In his view, the "second," or neohumanist, ideal of the 18th–19th centuries had degenerated into a formal, "museum" attitude towards antiquity by the beginning of the 20th century. Classical culture had become a collection of dead models for imitation, an aesthetized canon devoid of vitality. Teaching ancient languages had become an end in itself, a rhetorical exercise disconnected from the real problems of the emerging individual. This "museum humanism" proved helpless in the face of nihilism, technocratic thinking, and social upheavals following World War I. The Third Humanism as Pedagogy of "Spiritual Forms" and the "Active Person" Spranger's response was the "third humanism," which aimed to overcome the alienation between cultural heritage and life. Its core was not the reconstruction of the ancient canon, but pedagogical anthropology oriented towards the development of internal, inherent "spiritual forms" (seelische Strukturen). Spranger identified six main ideal types of personality (theoretical, economic, aesthe ... Read more