Cyclical theories of Society don't represent a unified approach, but all of its proponents adhere to some of the same postulates: all civilizations go throw the same long-term patterned phases (cycles) of rise and fall, growth and decay; these cycles influence all or most aspects of civilizations – society, economy, politics, culture; social scientists can identify those cycles and their aspects using historical and comparative methods. As precursors to cyclical theories, we can point theories of English historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Russian philosopher Nikolay Danilevsky (1822–1885). More elaborate cyclical theories are those of Pitirim Sorokin, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Joseph Toynbee, and Hans Freyer.

                                        Oswald Spengler

German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) is best known for the two-volume book The Decline of the West (1918, 1922). In it, Spengler presents a very characteristic philosophy of history and culture. Spengler believed that it was necessary to study the entire history because each period and region deserves equal attention, and that the view that there are key periods or turning points in history is wrong. According to him, therefore, the schematic division of historical periods into the ancient period, middle ages, and modern age is wrong and futile. The entire world history is just a sequence of cultures that are born, grow, and disappear. In this sense, cultures are completely analogous to living organisms, and it is best to view them as artificial superorganisms. The method he applies to the study of history is identical to comparative morphology in biology. Behind concrete historical events stands the prototype of culture, which represents the basis of all cultures in the shape of a formed ideal. The prototype of culture is what enables the emergence of historical phenomena and stands behind all of them.

Spengler denies any immanent purpose to humanity because it is only an emanation of culture. Humanity and its improvement to perfection are the basis of historical continuity. However, since humanity has no purpose of its own, nor can it be perfected, there is no continuity in history. Humanity has no role in the creation of history, the improvement of the social order, or even in the creation of art, science, language, and similar phenomena. The units of the study of history are individual cultures. In his opinion, there were only a few such unique cultures, and the first ones appeared only 3000 years before the new era in Egypt and Babylon. After that, Indian, Chinese, and ancient or „Apollonian“ cultures emerged. In addition to these five, only three other cultures have emerged throughout history: Mexican, Arab (magical), and „Faustian“ (Western/European). These eight cultures make up the entire human history. These cultures represent organisms with their life cycle of birth, growth, maturity, old age, and death. Events within each culture take precedence, while relations between different cultures are secondary.

Cultures go through their stages of development in exactly the same way. All phenomena and processes, both mass and specific phenomena, such as the rise of great leaders, occur in every culture at a specific time. Since this whole process is subject to strict deterministic laws, it is possible to precisely determine and predict when a phenomenon will occur. As cultures go through defined cycles, what already existed in earlier cultures is constantly repeated in younger cultures. What governs these cyclical processes is the "cosmic pulsations" as the spiritus movens of history. In that sense, the actions of individuals, and even the whole of humanity, cannot change the predetermined regularities of cultural development. Although he emphasizes the deterministic nature of the development of cultures, Spengler, at the same time, believes that cultures can only be studied by the method of deep understanding - intuitive immersion in the subject of study.

Spengler believes that the most important and influential dimension of history is politics because world history is seen, above all, as the history of states and their wars. Countries exist to wage war, which is the eternal pattern of higher human existence. War is not only destructive but also the creator of all great things. Victories or defeats in war bring everything that is important for a country and its people. Every culture experiences a "period of giant battles", that is, an era of great wars between different states of one culture. Western civilization entered this period with the Napoleonic Wars, so Spengler believes that the future will be a time of war that will involve the whole world and all continents. The victors of these wars will rule smaller states, the economy, and the people; smaller states will be only provinces and a means of meeting the goals of large states. Struggles within states are struggles of different "classes", and they take place in every culture. The clergy and the nobility make up the first two classes, while the rise of the third, the bourgeois class, led to a regrouping of the classes. The rationalization introduced by the bourgeoisie led to civil revolutions.

Spengler connects the emergence of culture with the emergence of the city, which is the birthplace of peoples, states, politics, languages, religion, and art. All great cultures are urban cultures, and the whole history is just the history of urban people. In contrast to the city, the village is ahistorical and lacks creativity. All nations that existed before the emergence of culture do not influence the development of culture. After the disappearance of their culture, people, who represent the unity of the spirit, and not biology, fade away and become unimportant. At the peak, a culture reaches its apogee, that is, the highest point of development, which is inevitably followed by a decline. At the end of the decline of culture, as the last phase, comes the development of "civilization". Civilization represents the lowest stage of culture in which decadence and loss of creative power dominate. People in culture direct their energy inwards, while in civilization people direct their energy outwards. In civilization, there is a rise of the "fourth class", a formless mass that does not respect the past and has no future. Civilization also marks the end of the internal struggle of the classes. "inner religiousness" is emerging in civilization, because, due to the loss of creativity, people are turning to religion again. After the fall of civilization, the culture dies and so the cycle closes.

                                          Pitirim Sorokin

Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) is best known for his study of social change, which he deals with in the four-volume book Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941). In writing this book, he gathered a large group of collaborators who classified historical data, which refer to the entire Western civilization, for the period from 600 BC to 1925 AD. Sorokin classified these data according to intervals that varied from 25 to 100 years, and he also used methods of statistical correlation to analyze that data. Based on all these empirical data and methods of classification and correlation, he made a theoretical hypothesis about the basic cultural types. In his typology of cultural types, there are three basic cultural types, which are classified based on ideological aspects of cultures, while other cultural elements and physical products of cultures are interpreted as products of these ideological types. The level of integration of cultures is what makes different cultures different because the integration of culture depends on the logical consistency, interconnectedness, and interdependence of different elements of culture. The ideological aspects of culture provide answers to four main questions: the nature of reality; the needs and goals that need to be met; the level to which they need to be met, and the methods by which those needs and goals are met.

There are two opposing cultural types: „ideational“ and „sensate“. All cultures are on a continuum between these two extreme ideal types. In ideational cultures, the nature of reality is viewed in supra-empirical and supra-rational terms, and all knowledge is drawn from religious or similar sources. Needs and goals are also viewed in a spiritual and otherworldly context, meeting these needs should be complete, and the basic method of meeting needs and goals is by adapting oneself to religious or transcendental rules. Sensate cultures experience reality in the context of physical forces and material things. Goals and needs are material and are met to the maximum, and the main method of meeting these needs is through the manipulation of the physical environment. The third ideal cultural type is located in the middle between the two previous extremes. Sorokin calls it an „idealistic“ or integral type, and it represents a harmonious synthesis of the previous two extremes, although, in this type, ethical rules are also derived from transcendental (religious) sources. Differences between the ideational and sensate types of cultures are visible in different aspects of culture, such as philosophy, law, art, etc.

By combining three main mentalities Sorokin comes to the assumption that there are six basic epistemological currents in European civilization. These epistemological systems are as follows. 1) Empiricism - sensory perception is the only source of knowledge and truth. 2) Rationalism - reason, logic, and mathematics as methods of cognition are more important than sensory data, and supra-empirical concepts and categories are also important; there is an ideational rationalism that places greater emphasis on the truth of faith, and an idealistic rationalism that places equal emphasis on all three forms of truth — the truth of the senses, truth of reason, and truth of faith. 3) Mysticism (religious irrationalism) - truth can be known only through ecstatic and esoteric experience, while the truths of the senses and reason are irrelevant or false knowledge. 4) Skepticism - systematic and methodical suspicion that it is possible to obtain correct knowledge. 5) Fideism - this system is between skepticism and mysticism because the truth about the most important phenomena can be learned only through the will to believe or through instinct. 6) Agnosticism and criticism - this epistemological system denies the possibility to know and/or deny the existence of supra-empirical reality; only reason and empirical knowledge can reveal the truth to us.

Sorokin also studies the fluctuation of ethical systems. He believes that all organized groups have ethical values, but that only some cultures develop highly integrated ethical and philosophical systems. Although he notes that concrete practice may differ from prescribed moral values, Sorokin pays the greatest attention to the idealized form of moral values, and not to concrete practice. The three basic types of mentality produce corresponding ethical systems. The ideational ethical system bases its principles on sacred religious sources and commandments; it is absolute and rigid and does not allow the relativization of values, and the purpose is not to increase sensual happiness but to ensure observance of sacred rules. A specific variant of ideational ethics is the ethics of love, which imposes infinite and unlimited love and sacrifice towards God, and the best examples are the ethics of Jesus and the ethics of St. Francis of Assisi.

The sensate ethical system strives to achieve the greatest possible sensual happiness, comfort, and satisfaction; the rules are relativistic and prone to change following the change in sensory conditions. Variants of this ethical system are: 1) eudemonistic ethics - values ​​are nobler and more lasting; 2) hedonistic ethics - the greatest value is the maximization of sensory and sensual pleasures at all times; 3) utilitarian ethics - the emphasis is on the means to which happiness is achieved, so priority is given to the efficiency of methods of achieving happiness. Sensate ethical systems can be individualistic, striving only for individual happiness, or they can strive for collective happiness; while the collective itself can be a narrow group, the whole society, or the whole of humanity. The idealistic ethical system takes the main principles from religious and absolute authorities, while other, variable, rules are derived from reason and life experience.

Sorokin singles out three pure types of social relations: familistic, contractual, and compulsory. There is great solidarity in the familistic type and there are commonly shared values, and relationships last a long time. In a contractual type of relationship, the intensity and longevity depend on the individual objectives of each party. The compulsory type of relationship is characterized by conflict because one side has imposed on the other side the rules that that side must adhere to. The ideational type of culture is characterized by familistic relations, while the sensate type is dominated by contractual and compulsory relations.

From the eighth to the twelfth century, the familistic type of relationship dominated in Western Europe, while compulsory relationships were less widespread. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, familistic relations were more dominant, while contractual and compulsory relations were equal in representation. From the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, compulsory relations increased, to the detriment of familistic relations. From the middle of the eighteenth century until the end of the First World War, contractual relations increased, while after the war, compulsory relations increased again. Sorokin believes that capitalist relations between capitalists and workers have less and less the characteristics of a contractual relationship and more and more features of a compulsory relationship. A similar process is taking place in the field of politics because political parties monopolize many public and private institutions.

Sorokin researched social conflicts very extensively, on the example of 967 wars and 1,622 internal conflicts throughout two and a half thousand years. Fluctuations between these two types of conflicts over time are significant. Wars between different societies are rarest when there are similarities between the basic values ​​of neighboring societies, while civil wars are most common in periods when basic cultural values ​​are undergoing a period of transformation. Internal conflicts are stronger when there is no agreement on the basic cultural values ​​of different factions in society, while civil wars and revolutions most often occur when there is a rapid and general change in the value system of one segment of society.

Social revolutions are characterized by a destructive phase, when, in addition to the use of physical force, the basic values ​​and institutions of society are destroyed. The destructive phase is characterized by an increase in mental illness and the spread of mass psychology. After the destructive phase, there is a partial re-establishment of previously existing values ​​and institutions. In addition to similarities in basic cultural values ​​between different segments of society, increased solidarity and reduced hostility is influenced by the prevalence of values ​​that emphasize compassion and mutual assistance, while values ​​that emphasize selfishness and competitive spirit lead to reduced solidarity and increased hostility and conflict. In his later books, Sorokin expressed fear of the outbreak of a global conflict between world superpowers and nuclear war.

Sorokin also developed a theory of change, that is, the dynamics of cultures. Sorokin believes that there is no social progress and that there are only cyclical movements in societies, which he calls „fluctuations“. Every society goes through fluctuations in many areas, of which most important is between different cultural types, but also in all of the sub-systems – epistemological systems, types of social relations, ethics, art,  periods of wars and peace, etc.  Every socio-cultural system is subject to external influences, but much more often the source of change is internal because every activity in a system causes small and large changes, both in the environment and in the system itself. Since changes are constantly happening in every system, no matter how small, every socio-cultural system is constantly changing, just as its reactions to the environment are constantly changing. Changing the reactions of the system to the environment changes the environment of the system so that the changed environment affects further changes in the system. It is precisely the complicated dynamics of the relationship of parts in the system itself, as well as the relationship with its environment, that forms the basis of Sorokin's view that the constant change of any system is an immanent property of those systems. This is exactly what he calls the " principle of immanent change."

Another important theoretical assumption is that every socio-cultural system has the „principle of immanent self-determinism“.  Self-determinism of a system states that every system in itself contains, from the very start of the system, all the elements that determine its future development. This means that the system's environment can only positively or negatively affect the development of the system, and speed up or slow down some processes, but can not lead to the manifestation of some features that the system does not contain in potentiality, and can not affect the order of its developmental stages, nor affect their character or quality. The system is most susceptible to external influences in the phases of emergence of the system, or the phases of its crisis or decline.

The essence of the principle of self-determination is that, as soon as the system is sufficiently formed in all its peculiarities, it already contains in itself the basic plan for further own development. Sorokin notes that these two principles, the principle of self-determination and the principle of immanent change, represent the middle ground between deterministic and indeterministic views of the development of society. Although there are some natural ways of system development, there is a lot of room for "freedom" in a period of the development of a system, just as the environment can affect the way a system develops. In addition, some systems are more susceptible to external influences than others, which are more immune and resistant to environmental influences. The impact of the environment will be greater or lesser, depending on the type of social or cultural system that interacts with that environment. The degree of self-determination of the system also depends on the type of environment that affects it.

Sorokin distinguishes between the specific immunity of the system when the system is immune to some specific types of influences and total immunity when the system is equally resistant to all types of influences. Total immunity increases with the increase of the internal integration of the system, and this integration has three components: the degree of causal interdependence of the parts, the degree of solidarity between the members of the system, and the consistency between the parts of the system. The so-called "eclectic pseudosystems" are especially susceptible to external influences because they do not have a sufficient degree of integration of parts. Both integrated and non-integrated systems can be both elastic and rigid in their ability to change and adapt to external influences.

The size of the system itself affects the resistance to environmental influences, so systems with more members, higher quality of members, greater knowledge and wisdom, better organization of rights, duties, and functions, and greater ability to achieve goals and needs, are more resistant to external influences. Cultures vary between two extremes, ideational and sensate because bringing a culture closer to either of these two extremes leads to a misconception and a reduction in the ability to meet the basic needs and goals of society and individuals. Such a situation creates fertile ground for the emergence of a completely opposite view of the world. Although the idealistic type of culture represents a fruitful harmony of two extreme types, this type is short-lived due to the difficulty of maintaining a balance between the elements of culture belonging to the two extreme cultural types.

                                       Arnold J. Toynbee

British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) wrote his monumental work, The Study of History, which was published in 12 volumes, between 1934 and 1961. In this book, Toynbee presented universal history - a theoretical but also a theological-philosophical idea of ​​the process of origin, development, and decay that every civilization must go through. He believes that the wrong approach to the study of history is to focus attention on individual nation-states. Analysis at the level of the nation-state, cannot adequately investigate external influences that had a key deterministic force in shaping society and historical changes, and therefore, long-term processes cannot be adequately understood. Instead, individual civilizations should be taken as units of analysis, because civilization represents the lowest level at which human behavior can be fully understood, as well as historical changes. In his research, Toynbee determined that during the history of the whole world, a total of twenty-one separate civilizations were created, of which only seven still exist.

All civilizations must go through periods of growth, decline, dissolution, and collapse. For the whole logic of the process of life of civilization, the most important thing is to understand the mechanism of "challenge and response". Before a civilization is born, the most important challenge is the physical environment. When the challenge of the physical environment is too strong, human energy and creativity will not be enough to create a civilization in response. If the challenge is too weak, it will not require the engagement of energy and creativity necessary for the creation of civilization. This means that special challenges of the environment are needed for a civilization to emerge in response to it. "Creative minorities" are those who create the type of response necessary for the emergence of civilization. The creative minority consists of exceptional individuals who have great creative power in various spheres - economy, religion, politics, technology, science, and art. Due to the huge contribution of the creative minority to the emergence and development of civilization, the masses are beginning to follow it voluntarily and express admiration and awe for it. In the periods of growth of civilization, there is a "process of etherealization". Etherealization represents the progressive improvement of creative potential by eliminating unnecessary elements, which leads to increased control over society and culture.

When the creative minority begins to lose its creative and spiritual energy, this minority is transformed into a "dominant minority", which bases its power only on pure force. The dominant minority creates a "universal state" that serves only as a means of domination. These changes lead to periods of trouble - class struggles, local conflicts, wars between different states within one civilization or wars between civilizations, demoralization, and mental problems in the general population. In these periods the destructive action of the "internal" and "external proletariat" took place. The internal proletariat consists of economically and politically deprived parts of the population within civilization, while the external proletariat consists of people who are in contact with civilization but are in a subordinate relationship to civilization. The internal proletariat creates a "universal" religion and church to oppose the dominant minority, while the external proletariat strives to introduce its own cultural patterns into civilization. If the internal or external proletariat succeeds in overthrowing the dominant minority, ecumenical religion and external influences will be accepted.

All this inevitably leads to the collapse of the state through a series of fractures, which were followed by short periods of recovery, but the final epilogue is certainly the collapse of civilization. The decline of civilization can be temporarily prevented when an exceptional individual carries out a retreat - isolation from the external environment, and in that isolation, he experiences spiritual, moral, and creative regeneration. The regenerated leader then returns to civilization and inspires the great masses to follow him and experience moral rebirth themselves. However, even this process does not enable the prevention of the final collapse of civilization.

                                             Hans Freyer

German philosopher, sociologist, and historian Hans Freyer (1887-1969) believed that the historical perspective should be the basis of sociology. The difference between history and sociology is that the latter, from historical data, creates descriptions of social structure. Freyer believed that sociology could not formulate general sociological laws, except in two types of cases. The first type refers to phenomena that occur in different societies but within a single course of history. An example is when the characteristics of one industrial company are generalized so that it also applies to other industrial companies. The second type concerns the cyclical repetition of cultural periods, where it is possible to determine the chronological order of cultural periods within one cycle.

He divided historical periods into those that are positive and negative. The positive ones are orderly and harmonious and do not need sociology, while the negative periods, such as civil society in the early 20th century, need sociology for it to exert a positive and constructive influence. The feudal estates system is an example of a positive period, where there is a functional hierarchy of estates, the highest level of social and moral integration, and the most creative organization of people. A feudal society is a source of high culture. The survival of the feudal society depends on the ability of the ruling caste to use force and prevent rebellions. Since it is built on inequality and domination, the feudal order constantly carries the germ of conflict and revolution. Democratic revolutions created civil society, but also class rule. In civil societies, the possibility of class struggle is constantly present.

Authors: Freyer, Hans; Sorokin, Pitirim; Spengler, Oswald; Toynbee Joseph Arnold.

Books:

Danilevsky, N. Russia and Europe (1995);

Freyer. Theory of Objective Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture (1991, in German 1923);  

Sorokin. Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941);

Spengler. The Decline of the West (2021, in German 1918, 1922);

Toynbee. A Study of History, 12 vols. (1934-1961).