“Western Civilization:” 1500 to the Present

Statement of Course Goals

By J.B. Shank

There is no such thing as “Western Civilization” and this is a course about it. Consider the two terms that define the topic of this course, “Western” and “Civilization.” What do each mean and what does their pairing signify? The term “Western” suggests geography so we may start by asking where “the West” referred to in the phrase “Western Civilization” is located? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. First of all, “the West” is not a specific place like Minnesota or Europe that one can point to on a map. It is instead a relative designation which locates a place only in relation to some other location. In other words, to be in “the West” means to be west of some other point that is not “the West.” Typically that contrasting point of reference is called “the East,” but noting this still doesn’t solve the problem. What is the point which separates “the West” from “the East,” and how do you know when you have moved from one to the other? Or, to state the problem another way, when you say that you are in “the West,” what are you saying you are west from?

Try the following exercise. Take a map or a globe and try to draw the boundaries of “the West.” Its not easy to do, is it? Recognizing the difficulty in drawing the borders of “the West” helps us to see more clearly what the term itself refers to. It does not signify a place or even a spatially defined historical phenomenon like “Europe” or “America” despite what its geographical language might suggest. These latter entities do speak to a precise geography because the labels “Europe” and “America” acquired their meaning through a set of historical developments that were tied to a particular, bounded piece of the earth’s territory. But “the West” did not emerge in the same way. It developed historically through a relationship to the planet as a whole, and it is therefore not a term that refers to a specific bounded territory. So what does the term refer to? This class is built around the claim that “the West” is best understood as an idea, or a state of mind, or a set of assumptions, beliefs, and claims about oneself and the world which have no precise geographical boundaries. To study the history of “the West,” therefore, is to study the history of a mental map more than a geographical map. And since the mental map we call “the West” was generated historically in conjunction with its twin term “civilization,” let us consider how the two terms came together.

Around three hundred years ago European intellectuals, inspired by the astonishing cultural changes they had witnessed over the previous century, began to develop the concept of “civilization” as a way of describing the differences they perceived between their manner of understanding the world and that of other peoples. These intellectuals were convinced that their fellow Europeans had recently discovered the one true way of understanding nature, including human nature, and that they had done so by liberating themselves from the prejudices, superstitions and dogmatic ignorance of those that had preceded them. Thus, they spoke in terms of a “Re-Birth of Learning” and of a “Scientific Revolution” which had ended a “dark age” of ignorance and error. They also talked about an age of “Enlightenment” and truth which, they believed, had been inaugurated by these changes.

The label “civilization” was born in this context as a term of collective description connoting the “advanced” beliefs, practices, and cultural habits which the Europeans had acquired. For Europeans “civilization” was the benefit they had received from the intellectual upheavals which had overturned medieval barbarism and ignorance. Similarly, when Europeans began to travel around the globe on their many voyages of discovery and conquest, they carried their notion of “civilization” with them, using it to describe the differences they saw between their manner of viewing things and those of the people they encountered. The idea of “Western Civilization” was thus born when Europeans began to employ the new concept of “civilization” to contrast the European approach to life and nature (which they believed to be the one, true, “modern” way of viewing things) with that of non-Europeans. In this respect, the concept of “Western Civilization” emerged in tandem with the idea of the “barbarian,” the “savage,” and the “primitive” since the former only acquired its distinctive meaning through an implied comparison with the latter. It became specifically “Western” civilization largely because its European inventors associated ignorance and barabarism with those to their east. Hence for the Europeans to call their particular manner of viewing the world “Western Civilization” was to mark its superiority over the views of the “savage East.”

The “History of Western Civilization” was also born in this same way as these increasingly self-conscious “Westerners,” located everywhere from Boston to Bombay and Paris to Pago Pago, began to narrate stories about how their “civilization” had developed historically. Yet since the writers of these stories routinely assumed that “Western Civilization” was not just one “civilization” among many, but the only “civilization”—the one, true way of being which all human beings would embrace once they saw the light of truth-- these stories inevitably carried a triumphal agenda as well. They narrated the birth and growth of “Western Civilization” as if it were a natural result of human evolution, framing the complexities and diversity of human history in terms of a singular, natural, and necessary progress of “civilization” (meaning European beliefs and practices) throughout the world.

Few today would accept this story in the stark terms of its original formulation. Many would question, for example, whether “Western Civilization” was a natural feature of human evolution. They would emphasize instead the historical accidents and contingencies that gave rise to it. Still others would challenge the happy progressivism implicit in many of these genealogical narrations. These critics might accept the claim that a thing called “Western Civilization” had risen historically to a position of global dominance, but they would view this development negatively, emphasizing the destructive consequences of this outcome. For this reason, these critics might also argue for replacing the category “civilization” with another, more neutral term. They might prefer that we speak of the birth of “Western Culture,” for example, or that we narrate the history of the “Western People” or of the “Western Experience” since these terms do not carry the same evaluative judgment as the term “civilization.” By changing the terminology, we would avoid the implicit triumphalism of framing “Western Civilization” in terms of a natural, evolutionary escape from barabarism. But we would not avoid the claim that some coherent thing called “the West”—be it a “civilization,” a “culture,” a “people,” or an “experience”-- did emerge historically and did come to exert a dominance in the world. Furthermore, since some still accept the original narratives, insisting in particular that the history of “Western Civilization” is indeed the history of humanity’s progressive development toward a true and modern understanding of the world, changing the terminology would not liberate us from the old problems. For this reason, the question “What is Western Civilization?” is vigorously debated in our society and the answers offered generate more disagreement than consensus.

Which brings us to this course, an inquiry into the history of “Western Civilization.” What is this class all about? At root, its an invitation for you to join in this debate, an argument raging all around the world about the character and influence of “Western Civilization.” It seeks to do so, moreover, by introducing you to the texts, arguments, and history that define “the West” as a modern phenomenon. It further seeks to empower your participation in these important discussions by offering you training in critical reading, writing, and thinking, skills that are necessary if you are to become an informed and sophisticated participant.

So why say at the outset that there is no such thing as “Western Civilization?” And why offer a course about something that doesn’t exist? One answer can be found by viewing the opening statement as deliberately ironic. As I just explained, “Western Civilization” does of course exist. It exists as an historically produced category of analysis which people today use when dissecting the complexities of human history and experience. Think about how often we hear terms like “the West,” “Western values,” or “Western attitudes” used in the contemporary media. The terms “values” and “attitudes” are just pop-media synonyms for the more academic term “civilization,” and indeed, in more learned circles, people today are debating whether the phrase “clash of civilizations” describes the dominant historical dynamic of our time. The omnipresence of this terminology in contemporary discourse empirically attests to the existence of “Western Civilization” every day.

But its one thing to say that “Western Civilization” exists as a label connoting a particular orientation toward the world and quite another to say that Western Civilization exists as a real thing, an actual entity whose birth and developmental history can be narrated. The term “reification” describes the process whereby physical existence is attributed to a creation of the human mind, such as when we consider people who do not (or did not) possess modern technology as necessarily boorish or stupid because imaginative human history has taught us that our cars and washing machines and televisions are signs of our advanced intellectual abilities. “Western Civilization,” I would contend, is a reification of this sort, and I chose irony as the vehicle for introducing the topic precisely in order to displace your comfortable assumption that the reification “Western Civilization” does in fact refer to a real human historical entity. It doesn’t.

Real human beings exist (and have existed) and they possess an infinite variety of beliefs, attitudes and cultural practices; the analytical creation of the human mind called “Western Civilization” also exists and it was (and is) employed to classify one subset of these diverse beliefs and attitudes as distinctive. But despite the existence of both, the latter should not be reified into an actual attribute of the former. When we invoke the term “Western Civilization” we do not refer to a real thing extant in the world; instead we effect a classification whereby one subset of the diverse beliefs, practices, and cultural habits of humankind is collected together and isolated in a manner suitable for making a general inquiry into the nature of human historical development. Similarly, when we invoke the term “Westerners,” we do not refer to a coherent group of people which history has produced to in a certain way; instead, we refer to those people throughout the world who have chosen to attach themselves to the claims, beliefs and assumptions that define “Western Civilization” as a state of mind.

Certainly this is no innocent academic exercise, for every day people are invoking the category “Western civilization” either as a label of self-identification or as a target for opposition. In this respect too, “Western Civilization” exists and is extremely powerful since its reification has become so pervasive and powerful that many are willing to put their lives on the line in order to guarantee its defense or to insure its destruction. In the contemporary United States, for example, the investment in the term “Western Civilization” is very great. The values and principles upon which the United States stand are products of “Western Civilization,” and consequently many see America as its greatest embodiment and defender. Studying “Western Civilization,” therefore, should take one to the very center of life in contemporary America. Furthermore, since others with a different attitude toward “Western Civilization” view America as an enemy precisely because of its connection to this complex of claims, beliefs, and assumptions, studying “Western Civilization” should also force you to confront America’s complex relationship to world history as a whole. For this reason, I can think of no more important undertaking in 21^st century America than studying the history of “Western Civilization.”

Yet, as I hope you now are starting to see, studying “Western Civilization” is no simple matter. If one simply accepts the reification “Western Civilization” as the object of study and then narrates its history, one inevitably reproduces the triumphalist story of natural, evolutionary development that gave birth to the term in the first place. One also reinforces the pernicious dichotomies between civilized and savage, modern and backward, fully-human and not-quite-yet-fully-human that are inscribed in the founding categories themselves. One must instead begin by displacing these misleading reifications so as to create room to construct alternative categories in their place. One must then develop an approach to the topic capable of accounting for the creation of “Western Civilization” within actual historical time while nevertheless avoiding the reification of this development into a natural story about the civilizational development of humankind.

This syllabus is constructed to facilitate this kind of engagement with the history of “Western Civilization.” Its peculiarities derive, therefore, from deep reflection about how this project is best accomplished. The course does not have a textbook because all Western Civ textbooks, no matter what their point of view, simply narrate the reified story of “Western Civilization” which this course explicitly seeks to challenge. Instead, the course is built around the critical reading of actual historical texts, works which helped to produce the particular complex of beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices which we today call “Western Civilization.” We will read these texts in order to understand what “Western Civilization” is. Yet these works will not be anchored in any story about collective human development. Rather, each will be introduced in terms of its distinctive arguments while students will be invited in discussion sections to critically engage with the issues that the books raise. The ultimate goal of this interrogation is a critical understanding of the complex set of claims, beliefs, and assumptions, some at odds with one another, that sit at the heart of the label “Westerner.”

The texts themselves will be arranged in chronological order and lectures will also introduce students to the historical events that informed the history of “the West” more generally. Students will further be asked to connect the texts with the historical events that shaped their production. In this respect, the syllabus adheres to a fairly traditional notion of history as a chronological march through time. But students will also be asked to think critically about how these texts and this history shape their lives in the present. In other words, the course is also built around a complex understanding of historical time that seeks to balance a historicist understanding of the past as past with a presentist use of the past to understand the present. In this respect, we will be dealing with the period “1500 to the Present” in every class even if we will also move sequentially through these years over the course of the semester.

Written assignments also derive from the same pedagogical mission. There will be no “objective exams” in this course with term identifications, multiple-choice questions, or fill-in-the-blank answers. Instead students will write a number of critical essays, some long and some short, which will ask that they engage analytically with the works they are reading. How does Marx build upon Rousseau and the French Revolution? Is Equiano’s autobiography a story of human emancipation? Compare Luther’s and Descartes’s understanding of the free individual? These are representative questions students will be expected to answer. The goal of these assignments is not to test your knowledge of the facts presented in this course; rather they are designed to offer you the opportunity to engage critically with the claims that define the West as a modern phenomenon. In short, they are designed to be exercises in critical reading and thinking. If, at the end of the semester, you can talk knowledgeably and critically about the place of “the West” in the contemporary world, and situate the predicaments it produces within the historical developments that produced them, then you will have acquired the knowledge that this class seeks to impart.