Hayden White on Frye (on Spengler)

In a 1994 essay (collected in White, The Fiction of Narrative, pub. by John Hopkins in 2010), Hayden White reiterated his previously stated belief that Northrop Frye was "the greatest natural cultural historian of our time." He then mentioned that

Frye remarks somewhere that "the great synthesis of Marx and Spengler has yet to be written..."

and hints that the theory of history which underlies Frye's incomparable Anatomy of Criticism is, in fact, just the sort of synthesis that Frye was looking for.

White goes on to point out that Vico's distinction between human history and natural history is foundational in Frye's thought--a distinction one finds echoed in Frye's review of The Decline of the West.

For Frye, as for Spengler, the way in which human beings can come to know nature and the way in which human beings can come to know culture is qualitatively different.

Once this Vichian distinction is admitted, Spengler's methodological innovations in historical investigation demand serious consideration.