What makes the west western...?

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WHAT MAKES THE WEST WESTERN? 

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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.