also see http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/West-TOQ.htm
WHAT MAKES THE WEST
WESTERN?
(Courtesy the net)
WHAT
are the distinguishing characteristics of Western civilization during the
hundreds of years before it modernized? The various scholars who have answered
this question differ on some specifics but agree on a number of institutions,
practices, and beliefs that may be legitimately identified as the core of
Western civilization. They include:
The Classical legacy.
As a third-generation civilization, the West
inherited much from earlier civilizations, including most notably Classical
civilization. Classical legacies in Western civilization are many, and include
Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law, Latin, and Christianity. Islamic
and Orthodox civilizations also inherited from Classical civilization, but to
nowhere near the same degree as the West.
Western Christianity.
Western
Christianity, first Catholicism and then Protestantism, is the single most
important historical characteristic of Western civilization. Indeed, during
most of its first millennium, what is now known as Western civilization was called
Western Christendom. There was a well developed sense of community among
Western Christian peoples, one that made them feel distinct from Turks, Moors,
Byzantines, and others. When Westerners went out to conquer the world in the
sixteenth century, they did so for God as well as gold. The Reformation and
Counter Reformation and the division of Western Christendom into Protestantism
and Catholicism and the political and intellectual consequences of that
rift-are also distinctive features of Western history, totally absent from
Eastern Orthodoxy and removed from the Latin American experience.
European languages.
Language
is second only to religion as a factor distinguishing people of one culture
from those of another. The West differs from most other civilizations in its
multiplicity of languages. Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, and even Arabic
are recognized as the core languages of other civilizations. The West inherited
Latin, but a variety of nations emerged in the West, and with them developed national
languages grouped loosely into the broad categories of Romance and Germanic. By
the sixteenth century these languages had generally assumed their contemporary
forms. Latin gave way to French as a common international language for the
West, and in the twentieth century French succumbed to English.
Separation of spiritual and temporal authority.
Throughout
Western history, first the Church and then many churches existed separate from
the state. God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal
authority had been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu
civilization were religion and politics as clearly separated. In Islam, God is
caesar; in China and Japan, caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is caesar's junior
partner. The separation and recur between church and state that typifyWestern
civilization have occurred in no other civilization. This division of authority
contributed immeasurably to the development of freedom in the West.
Rule of law as distinct from rule of Man
The
concept of the centrality of law to civilized existence was inherited from the
Romans. Medieval thinkers elaborated the idea of natural law, according to
which monarchs were supposed to exercise their power, and a common law
tradition developed in England. During the phase of absolutismin the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, the rule of law was observed more in the breach than
in practice, but the idea of subordinating human power to some external
restraint persisted: ‘Non sub homine sed sub Deo et lege’. The tradition of the
rule of law laid the basis for constitutionalism and the protection of human
rights, including property rights, against the arbitrary exercise of power. In
other civilizations law has been a much less important factor in shaping
thought and behavior. Social pluralism and civil society. Western society
historically has been highly pluralistic. What is distinctive about the West,
as Karl Deutsch noted, "is the rise and persistence of diverse autonomous
groups not based on blood relationship or marriage." Beginning in the
sixth and seventh centuries these groups initially included
monasteries, monastic orders, and guilds, but afterwards expanded in many areas
of Europe to include a variety of other associations and societies. For more
than a millennium, the West has had a civil society that distinguished it from
other civilizations. Associational pluralism was supplemented by class
pluralism. Most Western European societies included a relatively strong and
autonomous
aristocracy,
a substantial peasantry, and a small but significant class of merchants and
traders. The strength of the feudal aristocracy was particularly important in
limiting absolutism's ability to take firm root in most European nations. This
European pluralism contrasts sharply with the poverty of civil society, the
weakness of the aristocracy, and the strength of the centralized bureaucratic
empires that existed during the same time periods in Russia, China, the Ottoman
lands, and other non-Western societies.
Representative bodies.
Social
pluralism gave rise at an early date to estates, parliaments, and other
institutions that represented the interests of the aristocracy, clergy,
merchants, and other groups. These bodies provided forms of representation that
in the course of modernization evolved into the institutions of modern
democracy. In some instances during the era of absolutism they were abolished
or their powers greatly limited. But even when that happened, they could, as in
France, be resurrected as a vehicle for expanded political participation. No
other civilization today has a comparable heritage of representative bodies
stretching back a millennium. Movements for self-government also developed at
the local level, beginning in the ninth century in the cities of Italy and then
spreading northward, wresting power from bishops and nobles and finally, in the
thirteenth century, leading to such confederations of "strong and
independent cities" as the Hanseatic League. Representation at the
national level was thus supplemented by a measure of autonomy at the local
level not seen in other regions of the world.
Individualism.
Many
of the above features of Western civilization contributed to the emergence of a
sense of individualism and a tradition of individual rights and liberties
unique among civilized societies. Individualism developed in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and acceptance of the right of individual choice, which
Deutsch terms "the Romeo and Juliet revolution," prevailed in the
West by the seventeenth century. Even claims for equal rights for all-"the
poorest he in England has a life to live as much as the richest he"-were
articulated if not universally accepted. Individualism remains a distinguishing
feature of the West in twentieth-century civilizations. In one analysis
involving similar population groups from 50 countries, the 20 countries scoring
highest on the individualism index included 19 of the 20 Western countries in
the sample. Another cross-cultural survey of individualism and collectivism
similarly highlighted the dominance of individualism in the West compared with
the prevalence of collectivism elsewhere, concluding that "the values that
are most important in the West are least important worldwide." Again and
again both Westerners and non-Westerners point to
individualism
as the central distinguishing mark of the West.
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