The west has claimed that it has found the final answer to the problems of man and civilization.
Where did “Western” Civilization come from? The term does not refer to any simple geographical location and did not exist until relatively recently. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Chesterton was the first to use the expression “Western man” only ninety years ago, in 1907. How the notion came into existence explains a good deal about what the West represents. For many people, the West simply means Western Europe and countries of European origin such as the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. But the non-European parts of the West, particularly America, have added to and altered the original cultural base. Much of what is characteristically American was forged against European influences, long before there was such a thing as opposition to “Euro centrism.” Yet we also undeniably remain an offshoot of Europe. In addition, Western ways are spreading to other parts of the globe. Paradoxes of this kind make it necessary to inquire more carefully into exactly what we mean by the West.
Whatever else it may mean, Western Civilization is the primary culture here and in Europe. Yet this simple statement has begun to raise all sorts of protests. Many individuals and groups dominant in our society identify Western Civilization with racism, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, sexism, environmental destruction, and other equally repulsive traits. Even more troubling, they do so without much acquaintance with the rich, varied, open, and questing nature of what is best about the West—or a realistic appraisal of the likely alternatives. Most of these attacks depend upon moral or intellectual intuitions that, elsewhere, have little, if any, importance. So anyone who thinks Western institutions to be of value finds himself at an odd, embattled crossroads. He may agree with the quite Western principles used to criticize some Western failing, but senses danger in the way such principles are blindly turned against their very source.
A civilization is not something we simply inherit or ever finally possess. Each generation, individually and collectively, needs to make a continual effort to appropriate it anew because a civilization is not passed along to us at birth. A civilization is an elaborate structure of ideas and institutions, slowly built up over time by the intelligence and effort of countless individuals working alone and together. If we fail to understand and live out that complexity, which tries to answer to the complexity of human life itself, we can easily fall back to a less human existence. It has happened often in history.
At present, we need a profound cultural recovery, yet most college students are not introduced to the basic historical knowledge necessary for that recovery to begin. And although modern America continues to embody many principles of the West, it would be a grave mistake to identify our deeply confused country with Western Civilization. America’s manifest troubles cause many to question the virtues of Western Civilization even before they learn what it is or to what degree contemporary America reflects it.
At a minimum, any comprehensive account of the West would have to look at ancient Greece and Rome, the contributions of Judaism and Christianity, the Middle Ages (including the Age of Discovery), the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the current anti-Enlightenment mood in its several post-modernist forms. And this does not even begin to weigh the various ethnic and national contributions to the larger civilization. This essay cannot conduct such a survey. But just to list these complementary and conflicting currents should warn us that the West cannot be reduced to a few simple slogans. Only the decline in the serious study of the past has allowed critics to make public claims that this complex history may be reduced to an organized conspiracy of white men engaged in protecting their own interests.