End of the West?

Andrew J. Bacevich

In Commonweal recently (March 5, 2019), Andrew J. Bacevich asks if we now live in "A World without the West," beginning as follows:

Does the West still exist? Most American politicians, journalists, and policy intellectuals seem to think so, or at least they pretend to . . . . In its heyday, the West -- used more or less interchangeably with the phrase "free world" -- was much more than a conglomeration of countries. The term itself conjured up a multiplicity of images: peoples sharing a devotion to freedom and democracy; nations mustering the political and cultural cohesion to stand firm in a common cause; sacrifice and steadfastness in the face of evil . . . . For several decades after 1945, the West imparted legitimacy to U.S. claims of global leadership. Nations said to make up the West endorsed, or played along with, the notion that the United States was exceptional and indispensable. Endlessly reiterated in stump speeches and newspaper editorials, this proposition came to seem self-evidently true -- or at least expedient. Today, it is neither. Seven decades after World War II and three decades after the end of the Cold War, to pretend that something called the West, taking its cues from Washington, continues to play an organizing role in international politics is to indulge in a vast self-deception. It's time to see the world as it is, not as we might wish to remember it. The collapse of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s robbed the West of its principal geopolitical rationale. Nominally, Western unity derived from common values; in reality, it derived from a common threat. Once the threat vanished, centrifugal forces were certain to make their appearance.

These "centrifugal forces" are probably of no surprise to readers of this blog, so I'll stop here. You can read more at the link, though you might have to pay for a subscription.

Much is said these days by many people of a new civil war in the US. I'm skeptical of that. More likely, to my mind, is a civil war in Europe. When the Islamists in Europe reach a tipping point in the spread of Islamism -- namely, radicalization at the root of Islam (not extremism at the margins) -- open killing will begin. One might think it already has.

Baby, you ain't seen nuthin' yet!

Carter Kaplan to Give a Talk on July 2 at the WAH

WAH Private Library

WAH Center

My friend Carter Kaplan has been invited by another friend of mine, Terrence Lindall, to present the following talk at the WAH Center:

"Illustrating the Visions: Alloys of Art, Poetry, Politics, and Philosophy"

The talk will take place on Sunday, July 2, 2017 from 2:00 till 3:00 for no admission fee (directions), but the luncheon from 12:30 to 1:30 will cost $25. Kaplan is a professor of literature and philosophy, an author of fiction and nonfiction, and a publisher of international writing through International Authors (IA), and one might therefore expect him to be an overly serious man, but consider the fact that he has suggested that a number of mannikans be invited to attend his talk.

But let's get serious!

On display before, during, and after the talk will be IA books and original illustrations by renowned artists. Kaplan has informed me that he will be discussing my books Radiant Snow and the Bottomless Bottle of Beer (BBB), among other things, and Lindall will have his copy of the initial BBB text (a hard copy that I didn't edit carefully enough) and his BBB illustrations as part of the items on display. Other publications and illustrations are in Emanations and in Tasso's Creation of the World. Bienvenido "Bones" Banez, Jr. will show illustrations for E6 and other illustrations he's done for Emanations, along with a Michael Moorcock drawing. Troy Frantz will provide an illustration that he made for E5.

As for International Authors, it is a consortium of writers, artists, architects, filmmakers, and critics, and it publishes works of outstanding literary merit. Dedicated to the advancement of an international culture in literature, primarily in English, the group seeks new members with an enthusiasm for creating unique artistic expressions. For instance, there is Emanations. This is an anthology series - and I'm borrowing most of Kaplan's terminology - featuring fiction, poetry, essays, manifestos, and reviews. The emphasis is on alternative narrative structures, new epistemologies, peculiar settings, esoteric themes, sharp breaks from reality, ecstatic revelations, and vivid and abundant hallucinations - preferably, those achieved through authentic, intensive meditation rather than the less authentic, drug-induced sort, but to echo Publius Terentius Afer, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."

The IA editors are interested in recognizable genres - science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, local color, romance, realism, surrealism, postmodernism - but the idea is to make something new, and along these lines the illusion of something new can be just as intriguing. If a story or poem makes someone say, "Yes, but what is it?" then it's right for Emanations. Essays should be exuberant, daring, and free of pedantry. Length is a consideration in making publication decisions, but in keeping with the spirit of the project, length is "open." Emanations is a continually shifting and evolving project, and contributors should see themselves as actively shaping our editorial vision and compass

The Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters is the program that has invited Kaplan to give this talk. This Circle - and I think I'm borrowing Lindall's words here, though perhaps as filtered through Kaplan - is a program of the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (WAH Center). The Circle serves as a hub for discussion of new ideas about diverse subject matters. It is especially keen to point up intersections in areas of study that on first glance appear to be contradictory, especially in the areas of art and literature. Observations on the human experience in a receptive individual can sometimes evoke intuitive leaps of creativity, bringing forth new ideas in science, philosophy, literature, and the arts. We hope to encourage this.

The Williamsburg Circle believes that a strong education in the classical humanities is a fundamental prerequisite for good citizenship, not only in Western countries, but in every country in the world today. What is "Classical Humanities"? It is nothing less than the spiritual, ethical, and intellectual foundation for Western culture. The classics form the vibrant, interdisciplinary field lying at the heart of the liberal arts. It is the lack of a common heritage and common values that gives rise to basic conflicts among peoples. A broad education in the classical humanities can bring about a common understanding and a common set of values. Engagement with non-Western classics is also necessary, of course, and is therefore to be encouraged.

Our outstanding members serve as inspiration to young scholars whose concepts are forming and who are or will be developing projects important to our 21st century civilization.

Or so is such said . . .

UPDATE: The talk is on July 2 (not July 4).

Dylan in Reflection on Literature and Song

Bob Dylan

Photo: William Claxton
Nobel Prize Organization

Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize speech to the Nobel Committee, a speech that began with these words:

When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I'm going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.

You can read the speech or listen to the audio - I did both - and you'll be surprised to hear (if you chose audio) that Dylan's voice is not the raspy instrument of song we've been listening to for the past 40-odd years. The voice Dylan chose to speak with was soft and deliberative. I was surprised. But I was even more astonished when he revealed three works of literature that had influenced his songwriting:

Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school - I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.

And he summarizes the three brilliantly - those books are now in my memory far more clearly than even after I had just read them myself. I still don't think Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he has done well with this interesting talk on the relation of his songs to literature.

But grammar school? Is he putting us on?

Martin Kramer: The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East

Transaction Publications

My entry into the scholarship of Martin Kramer was a consequence of my reaction to 9/11. As a political centrist, I was torn in two directions - both leftwards and rightwards - by terrorism on such a massive scale.

On the one hand, I found myself nodding at Noam Chomsky's remark about chickens coming home to roost because I assumed that the United States had funded Bin Laden in the Afghan uprising against the Soviet Union, though I soon discovered that Bin Laden strongly refuted this, claiming never to have received any American money.

On the other hand, I found myself agreeing with Samuel Huntington on religious, even civilizational motives behind 9/11, and I said so in a presentation given a year after the attack, only to discover that I was guilty of "Orientalism."

I knew of Edward Said, naturally, and had even read passages from his famous book, but I couldn't see how Western Orientalism drove Muslims to such a cultural atrocity as, for example, the Islamist destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

I was somehow led to Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, which showed the extent to which Said had misunderstood the field of Orientalism and had thereby contributed to politicizing Middle Eastern studies.

In the years since my discovery of Kramer, I have followed his writing as a guide to fact and error on the Middle East, and I am pleased to see that he has collected and expanded much of that writing in this new book, The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East. Here's the official description:

In The War on Error, historian and political analyst Martin Kramer presents a series of case studies, some based on pathfinding research and others on provocative analysis, that correct misinformation clouding the public's understanding of the Middle East. He also offers a forensic exploration of how misinformation arises and becomes "fact."

The book is divided into five themes: Orientalism and Middle Eastern studies, a prime casualty of the culture wars; Islamism, massively misrepresented by apologists; Arab politics, a generator of disappointing surprises; Israeli history, manipulated by reckless revisionists; and American Jews and Israel, the subject of irrational fantasies. Kramer shows how error permeates the debate over each of these themes, creating distorted images that cause policy failures.

Kramer approaches questions in the spirit of a relentless fact-checker. Did Israeli troops massacre Palestinian Arabs in Lydda in July 1948? Was the bestseller Exodus hatched by an advertising executive? Did Martin Luther King, Jr., describe anti-Zionism as antisemitism? Did a major post-9/11 documentary film deliberately distort the history of Islam? Did Israel push the United States into the Iraq War? Kramer also questions paradigms - the "Arab Spring," the map of the Middle East, and linkage. Along the way, he amasses new evidence, exposes carelessness, and provides definitive answers.

That looks like a pretty accurate summary to me. I fully recommend the book for anyone with an interest in its themes, and that includes about everyone - you just haven't realized it yet.

Also for reading the atmosphere of a too quiet classroom in Korea . . .

Have some nunchi?

Illustration by Rose Wong

NYT

In "Looking Another Culture in the Eye" (NYT, September 13, 2014), Erin Meyer tells of a recent educational experience she had in Tokyo:

While traveling in Tokyo recently with a Japanese colleague, I gave a short talk to a group of 20 managers. At the end, I asked whether there were any questions or comments. No hands went up, so I went to sit down. My colleague whispered to me: "I think there actually were some comments, Erin. Do you mind if I try?" He asked the group again: "Any comments or questions?"

Still, no one raised a hand, but this time he looked very carefully at each person in the silent audience. Gesturing to one of them, he said, "Do you have something to add?" To my amazement, she responded, "Yes, thank you," and asked me a very interesting question. My colleague repeated this several times, looking directly at the audience members and asking for more questions or comments.

After the session, I asked my colleague: "How did you know that those people had questions?" He hesitated, not sure how to explain it, and then said, "It has to do with how bright their eyes are."

He continued: "In Japan, we don't make as much direct eye contact as you do in the West. So when you asked if there were any comments, most people were not looking directly at you. But a few people in the group were looking right at you, and their eyes were bright. That indicates that they would be happy to have you call on them."

Ms. Meyer goes on to note that an absence of this ability to spot what people want has a name:

In Japan, there is an expression popular with young people: "kuuki yomenai." Often shortened to "K.Y.," it refers to someone who is unable to read the atmosphere.

This inability is the opposite of what the Koreans call nunchi (눈치, pronounced "noonchi"), an ability to read the atmosphere of a situation. But Koreans also have an expression for the inability to read atmosphere: nunchi eoptta (눈치 없다), meaning "nunchi is lacking."

The next time I inquire whether my Korean students have any questions, I'll remember to look for the shining eyes . . .

Stephen Vincent Benét: On the End of a World

Valeria Victrix
Badge and Standard of Legion XX
Moulded Antefix Roof Tile
Holt, Clwyd, Wales

In Stephen Vincent Benét's short story "The Last of the Legions," the first-person narrator, a centurion of high intelligence, speaks with his Greek friend Agathocles, who keeps accounts for the legion, about the growing darkness as Rome begins to pull back from its borders, in the legion's case, from the northwest of Britain, and he asks why order ends:

"But tell me," I said, "why does it end?"

He shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "Men build and they go on building. And then the dream is shaken - it is shaken to bits by the storm. Afterwards, there follow darkness and the howling peoples. I think that will be for a long time. I meant to be a historian, when I first joined the eagles. I meant to write of the later wars of Rome as Thucydides wrote of the Greek wars. But now my ink is dry and I have nothing to say."

"But," I said, "it is there - it is solid - it will last," for I thought of the country we had marched through, and the boy, unafraid, on his pony.

"Oh," said Agathocles, "it takes time for the night to fall - that is what people forget. Yes, even the master of your villa may die in peace. But there are still the two spirits in man - the spirit of building and the spirit of destruction. And when the second drives the faster horse, then the night comes on."

"You said you had a state and a law," I said. "Could you not have kept them?"

"Why, we could," said Agathocles, "but we did not. We had Pericles, but we shamed him. And now you and I - both Romans" - and he laughed and coughed - "we follow a hairy general to an unknown battle. And, beyond that, there is nothing."

And I wonder, as I look on the state of our world today, how dark is the future we face in the face of our storm.

Read the story.

War is a Boon?

Ancient Celts Battle Rome

Stanford historian Ian Morris has book on war, and British historian David Crane reviews it for The Spectator, informing us that Morris means "War is good for us" (April 5, 2014), and explaining that in War: What is it Good For? The Role of Conflict in Civilisation, from Primates to Robots, Morris offers the possibly counter-intuitive claim that "in the long run, the very, very long run, 'productive war' has always made the world a safer and richer place for the losers as well as the winners" by creating larger, more peaceful societies.

The problem lies in what is meant by that expression "productive war," for this turn of a phrase suggests there are also "unproductive wars," leaving us to wonder if we should win or lose the long 'war on terror' and other conflicts, except that Morris hopes we win:

In Morris's opinion these next three or four decades are going to be the most dangerous in human history. But if we do happen to survive not just all the known and unknown threats that Islamism, resources, climate change, China or a resurgent Russia might throw up, but also all the 'unknowable unknowns' as well -- if, as he says, we get lucky with our timing and do survive all this, then that very biological predisposition to violence that has made us so good at cooperating, organising, innovating and evolving in the pursuit of better ways of waging war and wielding power will finally put war out of business.

Then human beings (or at least the 'trans-humans' and 'post-human' hybrids that will succeed us in about 2050) will find themselves at the end of the 10,000-year-long trek that has taken our species from Stone Age violence to that mythical Happy Valley of tolerant, inclusive, multi-cultural, crime-free civilisation.

Let's see . . . in 2050, I will be 93. Except I won't be, probably, since I don't expect to live that long, not being one of those "trans" or "post" sorts expected to inherit the earth.

Without reading the book, I can't comment directly, so go and read for yourself Crane's entire review to get a sense of what you may think . . .

David Brooks on Vladimir Putin

David Brooks
New York Times

David Brooks, in "Putin Can't Stop" (New York Times, March 3, 2014), proposes some incalculable factors in Russian nationalism, as shaped by Russian messianism:

To enter into the world of Putin's favorite philosophers [i.e., Nikolai Berdyaev's The Philosophy of Inequality, Vladimir Solovyov's Justification of the Good, and Ivan Ilyin's Our Tasks] is to enter a world full of melodrama, mysticism and grandiose eschatological visions. [For example:] "We trust and are confident that the hour will come when Russia will rise from disintegration and humiliation and begin an epoch of new development and greatness," Ilyin wrote.

Three great ideas run through this work. The first is Russian exceptionalism: the idea that Russia has its own unique spiritual status and purpose. The second is devotion to the Orthodox faith. The third is belief in autocracy. Mashed together, these philosophers point to a Russia that is a quasi-theocratic nationalist autocracy destined to play a culminating role on the world stage.

These philosophers often argued that the rationalistic, materialistic West was corrupting the organic spiritual purity of Russia. "The West exported this anti-Christian virus to Russia," Ilyin wrote, "Having lost our bond with God and the Christian tradition, mankind has been morally blinded, gripped by materialism, irrationalism and nihilism."

Brooks declines to think that Putin takes these views so seriously, but worries that Putin might be unable to contain the nationalist forces he's using against the West for its support of Ukraine's rebellion. Keep in mind that quasi-religious urgings of this sort are "incalculable."

But . . . although Brooks is reminding us of some actual ideas with a long history among Russians, I wonder if he's being fair to the complexity of Berdyaev and Solovyov (Ilyin is perhaps a different matter). Or does Brooks mean that Putin has deformed the thought of these thinkers to support Russian nationalism's messianic bent?

Any experts out there among my readers who can better inform us?

Douglas Murray Reviews Larry Siedentop on the Story of Western Individualism

Amazon Books

The British writer, journalist and commentator Douglas Murray, in his article "Christianity is the foundation of our freedoms" (The Spectator, February 22, 2014), reviews what sounds like an interesting book by the political philosopher Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism:

If there is one underlying source from which all our other societal problems stem, it is surely this: we no longer know who we are or how we got here. Worse, we mistakenly believe our situation to be inevitable, presuming that we have arrived in this modern liberal state through something like gravity . . . . Larry Siedentop lays this problem out: "We no longer have a persuasive story to tell ourselves about our origins and development" . . . . The problems this leads to are exacerbated by the fact that "we are in a competition of beliefs, whether we like it or not" . . . . Beginning with a panorama of the Greek and Roman world, Siedentop goes on to excavate in terrain which may have been taken for granted only a generation ago, but which has currently become controversial. He points out that a major source of the modern conception of liberalism comes from . . . . the melding of the traditions -- the Greek and Roman with the teachings of Christ and St Paul -- and then leads the reader through a tour of the succeeding millennia with a learning which is itself almost miraculous. Taking us through the changing sense of time, he then guides us through Tertullian on freedom . . . , Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Charlemagne and . . . . [a]long the way he gently demonstrates the manner in which charity -- a virtue which can hardly be divorced from the Christian tradition -- found its way from a theological idea into a common state of mind and expected action. Elsewhere the way in which Christianity helped shift the concept of the governed -- or even "owned" -- people into "souls" is filled with insight . . . . This kind of intellectual history is exceedingly hard to write . . . . But it seems to me that in this work, and in his highly practised hands, Siedentop has achieved something quite extraordinary. In this learned,subtle, enjoyable and digestible work he has offered back to us a proper version of ourselves . . . . In his closing pages he notes that the forgetfulness, ignorance and sometimes even hatred of our past with which the West is now afflicted is already having severe effects. In America he sees a growing evangelical tradition which is ignorant of the vital hand-in-hand tradition of western secular liberalism. Meanwhile, in Europe there exists a strain of thought which will give no credit whatsoever to the religious tradition from which we come. It is, he rightly says, "a strange and disturbing moment in western history" . . . . Siedentop asks, "If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?" Indeed. All that need be said is that there can be few better ways to understand that depth of tradition, or feel appropriate gratitude for it, than to read this magisterial, timeless yet timely work.

The competition among beliefs mentioned early in this passage is not specified, but I can imagine that Islam is on Siedentop's mind, as it surely is on Murray's. One paradox to books of this sort is that even though they often aim at motivating us to prevail in the competition among beliefs by telling us who we are through the story of where we've been, they manage only to convey knowledge without eliciting the belief essential for the will to win in that competition.

We just can't quite go back after a bite from the apple that turned us from belief to knowledge, from faith to reason, from medieval to modern, so the most we can perhaps do is get every other civilization to have a bite, too . . .

Post-Masculine America?

Pajama Boy
Google Images

I became aware of Pajama Boy late in the day, I suppose, because every other blogger in the world has already blogged about him and undoubtedly come up with more interesting things to say than I will today, but since the image above so unselfconsciously depicts precisely what Camille Paglia thinks is wrong with America and the West -- an emasculation of males that produces boys instead of men -- I'd like to add a few (very few) words.

The individual who took on this PJ-role is a certain Ethan Krupp, about whom I know nothing, so he may be a decent fellow and all that, and anything that I say about Pajama Boy should not be taken as a reflection upon the actual individual Krupp.

Anyway, when I first did see this ad for Obamacare, I thought it was another conservative dig at President Obama that had used Photoshopping to make the President look foolish, for no serious politician would use such an infantile image and expect to gain anything other than laughs. But since the image was made in all seriousness, the message we're getting is that the people who made this image expect their target audience to be the sort of little boys who should be in bed but who have persuaded their mamas to fix them a final cup of hot chocolate before they go, and the mamas allow them that. Now, the little boy is supposed to be us, but who's the mama here? The Nanny-State who made the hot chocolate and promises to always take care of us? And our role? To e-mail everyone we've ever 'friended' and spread the word?

Call it the "New E-masculinity"! And get talking . . .

Camille Paglia on Vanishing Manliness

Camille Paglia
Neil Davies
The Wall Street Journal

In seeking potential articles for next year's Academic English students to read, I happened upon a link over at my friend Bill Vallicella's site promising something interesting and controversial written by Bari Weiss about "Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues" (September 28, 2013, The Wall Street Journal):

What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide . . .

That's Paglia's indictment -- quoted by Weiss -- of how feminists in the West are emasculating men and leaving the West defenseless against its still masculine enemies . . . apparently. How is this supposedly happening? Weiss summarizes Paglia's view:

The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead.

Consider the military's status, in Paglia's view:

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. "The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service -- hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster," she says. "These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too . . . [The elites] literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality."

No sense of evil. That clearly is the problem of the therapeutic left, the leftism that sees no malice, just oppressed victims in need of counseling and rehabilitation, unless the 'evil-doers' happen to belong to some oppressor group, of course, in which case they're beyond the pale, e.g., ghost-white masculine evil-doers. Or soon to be ghost white, unless manliness is rescued from its near-extinction, implies Paglia. What cure can prevent its ultimate death? Here's a beginning:

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a "revalorization" of traditional male trades -- the ones that allow women's studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing).

Paglia has been making this sort of argument rather a lot recently, or maybe I'm simply noticing it more. Anyway, the article is worth reading if you like Paglia -- and worth even more if you don't . . .

Who says Islam is intolerant?

Hajj Abd Al-Nabi
MEMRI

I think this report on Hajj Abd Al-Nabi from Memri puts the lie to the line that Islam is intolerant:

"I am the executioner of the Arab Republic of Egypt. I hold the rank of chief warrant officer in the police and the prison authority. I am Egypt's executioner, responsible for carrying out the death penalty . . . . When I was young -- about 13 or 14 years old -- the dry Ismailiya Canal in Shubra Al-Kheima still had water in it. My hobby was to catch a cat, to place a rope around its neck, to strangle it, and throw it into the water. I would get hold of any animal -- even dogs. I would strangle these animals and throw them into the water -- even dogs . . . . when I was 13 or 14 years old. Strangulation was my hobby . . . . The truth is that my heart is dead, because executing comes from the heart . . . . Only if you have a heart of stone can you be content in this line of work . . . . It's a gift . . . . A great gift. I love my job very much, and I can't give it up. Even when I retire, I will report for duty in emergencies. I will leave this job only when I am dead." ("Egypt's Executioner: Strangling Has Been My Hobby Since Childhood, I Just Love My Job," Memri, Special Dispatch No. 5496, October 25, 2013)

In an intolerant Western country, this man would be labeled a sociopath and locked up as a menace to society -- either in prison or a mental institution! An Islamic country, by contrast, offers him a respectable line of work as Allah's willing executioner.

Now, tell me which civilization is not truly tolerant . . .

Camille Paglia: Ever Bracing to Read!

Camille Paglia

Salon

In Tracy Clark-Flory's recent Salon interview of Camille Paglia, the ever-bracing Paglia -- who seems to be channeling Samuel Huntington, at least in part -- had this to say about global threats faced now and in the future:

The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve -- and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win . . . . The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.

These two statements come in response to different questions, but they deserve to be tied together, for Islamism -- though Paglia wasn't focusing solely on specifically this -- poses the greatest threat to the successful secularism of the West and to the rights of women around the world.

And to be frank, Islam itself hasn't done much in the world recently for either secularism or women's rights . . .

Ricardo Duchesne's Review of Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest?

Prof. Ricardo Duchesne's Review

Ricardo Duchesne has an intriguing review of Niall Ferguson's book on the success of the West, i.e., Civilization: The West and the Rest, except that there appears to be some confusion as to this book's title. Duchesne's review calls it Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest. I've not found that title at Amazon, but I did find this: Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power. These three titles seem to indicate the same book. Perhaps it has three differently titled editions? There are at least two editions, the US (West and Rest) and the UK (Six Killer Apps).

However that is to be resolved, Duchesne's review is titled "Dr Ricardo Duchesne, review of Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest, (review no. 1225)," Reviews in History, and after some positive remarks, Duchesne finds the book wanting:

Ferguson reduces the uniqueness of the West to the question: 'how it came to dominate the Rest?' According to him, the West rose above the Rest through the development of six 'killer apps': i) a more fragmented political setting that worked to encourage competition and innovation both between and within states; ii) a predilection for open inquiry and a scientific attitude towards nature; iii) property rights and the representation of property-owners in elected assemblies; iv) modern medicine, v) an industrial revolution based on both a supply of sustained innovations and a demand for mass consumer goods; and vi) a work ethic that included more productive labor with higher savings and capital accumulation. Ferguson does not claim originality here, but credit is due for his command of the subject and his ability to engage a wide audience of lay readers and students alike with ease, intelligence, good judgment, and a keen command of comparative history.

Regrettably, Ferguson's idea of the West is devoid of any pre-modern past. Less historically literate readers will wrongly think that the West came into existence sometime in the 1600s with the arrival of these apps. He writes early on that the West is merely 'a set of norms, behaviors, and institutions with borders that are blurred in the extreme' (p. 15). This idea is consistent with his neoconservative universalism. Westerners are no more than individuals who have managed to download successfully the killer apps -- regardless of location, religion, ethnicity, and historical background. The world, after all, has been converging with the West, or so he argues, with only a few bothersome radical Muslims standing in the way.

Duchesne, by contrast, argues that the West has a longer tradition, one stretching back even earlier than the ancient Greeks, all the way back to the Indo-Europeans, as we have seen before. And it has a cultural identity, Duchesne argues, an identity that other groups will not necessarily feel akin to even if they do emigrate to the West and adopt some of what Ferguson calls "killer apps," as Duchesne points out:

[Ferguson] is clearly worried by the lack of assimilation of Muslims in Europe, and the key role being played at universities and elsewhere by Islamic centres. He tabulates that if the current Muslim population of the UK continues to grow at the current rate, its share of the total population would pass 50 per cent in 2050 (p. 290). So, it looks like the West needs to show resolve on Muslim immigration and assimilation . . . by teaching kids Western liberal arts? I doubt a population built on mass migration from non-Western lands would be enthusiastic about Elizabethan England, Homer, Chaucer, Aquinas, or even Shakespeare.

Duchesne has a point. Will immigrants from other civilizations, especially Islamic Civilization, identify with a deeper tradition of the West? Given the recent beheading of British soldier by two radical Islamists on a busy London street, the throat-stabbing of a French soldier by an apparent Islamist in Paris, and the week-long nightly riots by Muslim youth burning cars and destroying property in Stockholm, a positive answer would seem to be in grave doubt.

Some of us will live long enough to learn the answer . . .

Q. Edward Wang on Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization

H-Soz-u-Kult
Institute of History
Humboldt University of Berlin

A little over one year ago, Q. Edward Wang, of Rowan University, wrote a "Rezension zu: Duchesne, Ricardo: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. Leiden 2011" -- which means Professor Wang reviewed Duchesne's book -- for H-Soz-u-Kult (April 27, 2012), and he asked, "[W]hat was the uniqueness of Western/European civilization?":

Duchesne devotes five chapters to discussing it in the . . . book. These chapters, as one now can well expect, cover such topics as the "creativity" among the Europeans, the advances of "reason and freedom" in Europe, the "restlessness" of the Western spirit, the entrenched tradition of "egalitarianism" and the strong notion of "self" in European culture. In discussing these subjects, he relies on and rehearses the points made by major European thinkers in the past, ranging from Malthus and Hegel to Max Weber and, more recently, Jürgen Habermas and Francis Fukuyama. He then draws on his own conclusion, often in a sweeping manner and a highly subjective language. In extolling Europeans' "creativity," for instance, Duchesne hypothesizes that "The West, I believe, has always embodied a reflective sense of self-doubt about what it knows and what remains to be known, a kind of restlessness that has been both destructive and productive of new literary style, musical trends, visual motifs, and novel ideas. By contrast, the intellectual and artistic order of China has remained relatively stable throughout its history" (p. 194). In other words, though he agrees that China and India had achieved economic successes in their past, the Chinese and Indians remained no match for the Europeans in terms of cultural and intellectual creativity. To his credit, he does cite some of the works by scholars of Asia in making comparison. With regard to artistic creativity in China, for instance, Duchesne quotes Jacques Gernet, a renowned French China scholar, that Chinese cultural life between 1650 and 1800 was not characterized by "conformism" but by "an openness of mind and intellectual curiosity." He then quickly dismisses Gernet's observation and states that the Chinese cultural accomplishment in the period was eclipsed by what the Europeans did, for the latter's achievement showed, citing Thomas Kuhn, "fundamental novelties" (pp. 194-195). Needless to say, this kind of remarks piqued one's interest, wanting to see more elaboration from him. But Duchesne simply stops here. Perhaps to him, this has been a foregone conclusion, rather a point of departure for further research.

I think that Wang intended to say "rather than a point of departure for further research." He clearly thinks that Duchesne fails to follow through on the main point, never providing a demonstration that Europeans were more fundamentally creative than Chinese.

Wang does not comment on the Indo-European hypothesis, but the review is a short one, and he is understandably more interested in Duchesne's remarks on China.

Martin Hewson's Review of Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization

Martin Hewson
University of Regina

In my continuing search for reviews on Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization, I have now come across one of the most informative, Martin Hewson's "Multicultural vs. Post-Multicultural World History: A Review Essay" (Cliodynamics (2012), Vol 3, Iss 2), which very clearly summarizes Duchesne's Indo-European thesis:

Chapter seven inquires into the origins of the West. Duchesne argues that Western culture should be traced back beyond the usual starting point of classical antiquity deep into prehistory to the Indo-Europeans. The Indo-Europeans, a Bronze Age people living about 5000 years ago, must have been unique in some way. Their tongue, the vernacular of a small pastoral tribe probably from the Pontic steppe, spawned offspring spoken from Ireland to Bengal. What lay behind this amazing linguistic expansion? The proximate cause was a combination of conquests and migrations. But why were they so successful for so long in conquest and migration? Duchesne attributes it to horse riding, cattle rearing, a healthy diet of meat and dairy, and a more aggressive, individualistic, aristocratic temperament.

In particular, it was the aristocratic culture of the Indo-Europeans that was the original dynamic of the West, argues Duchesne. By 'aristocratic' he means (1) a state in which the ruler is not an autocrat but first among equals in the elite; (2) a culture that is vigorous, free, and joyful; (3) a culture that is individualistic; and (4) an expansive, martial society made up of fraternal war bands. All these were features of the Indo-Europeans, and all subsequently were transmitted to European culture. The Indo-Europeans who expanded eastwards into Anatolia or India lost these characteristics. They were absorbed into an older social order.

It is noteworthy that Duchesne thinks individualism is not a modern invention. The modernist view has it that individualism arose from the breakup of premodern communal society. But, for Duchesne, individualism is a primordial characteristic of the West. One question mark hanging over this Indo-European thesis is that it is not clear how unusual the Indo-Europeans were. Were they one of the many nomadic arid-zone peoples who, like Turks, or Arabs, or Mongols, managed to conquer adjacent sedentary peoples? Or were they different? In his history of central Eurasia, Beckwith (2009), like Duchesne, maintains that the key institution of the steppe was the war band or comitatus bound together by oaths of loyalty and fraternity. But unlike Duchesne, Beckwith holds that there was a common central Eurasian culture, encompassing all the steppe peoples. In effect, Duchesne has given a unique twist to the established and convincing idea that the encounter between steppe and sown, nomad and sedentary, strongly shaped Eurasian history.

One significant piece of evidence for early aristocratic individualism in the West is that Duchesne finds a significant contrast between the heroic narratives of Greece and Northern Europe (the Iliad, Beowulf) and the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Personal heroism is the main theme of the former but not the latter. "Unlike the Iliad, which consists of battle scenes constructed largely out of individual encounters designed to enhance the specific deeds of singular heroes, there are no individuals with identifiable biographies in Gilgamesh" (413). Gilgamesh himself is an autocrat.

The final chapter (the eighth) attributes the accomplishments of Greece, Rome, and medieval Christendom to what might be called the spirit of agon, that is the restless, competitive, aristocratic ethos. Inspired by Nietzsche, Duchesne seeks to rehabilitate the idea of an aristocratic culture from the condescension of modernity. Beginning with interpretations of Hegel, Fukuyama, and Nietzsche, Duchesne proceeds to tackle the issue of how the violent culture of the Indo-Europeans was transformed into first the Greek then later stages of Western culture. In Greece, the aristocratic ethos was behind the free-for-all competition of philosophers and artists with their driving desire for fame and originality. Likewise the agonistic spirit was ingrained in the Olympic games, the wars, and the competitive politics of the city-states. The aristocratic ethos in Rome found expression in republicanism with its emblem of liberty (libertas). European feudalism was an aristocratic form of rule. The principle of sovereignty by consent, a hallmark of feudalism, was an aristocratic principle. Aristocratic privileges were the original inspiration for the idea of bourgeois rights and liberties. The main message is that "the creativity of the West was rooted in a culture of free aristocrats" (484). (pages 314-315)

One might infer that only this thesis interests me in Duchesne's book, but that's not the case. Rather, because this Indo-European hypothesis is the most controversial of his ideas, I'm focusing on it for my better understanding.

Read Hewson's entire review -- it's greatly informative.

Eric Jones: Review of Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization

Indo-European Expansion
Wikipedia

In the Australian-based journal Policy Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 4, Summer 2011-12) is a review by economic historian Eric Jones of "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, By Ricardo Duchesne." Let us again focus upon the Indo-European thesis:

Historians and philosophers tend to trace Europe's political singularity from Christianity to ancient Greece. As Duchesne fruitfully observes, they tend to park the matter there, as if Greece were sui generis. He probes into this, displaying prodigious learning in historical anthropology (informed throughout by Hegelianism). To collapse many, many pages of debate, his argument is that Europe’s essence lay in aristocratic competitiveness, contrasting with a 'serene and deferential East' -- an aspect, however, that Duchesne explores sparingly. Europe's individualism, aggressiveness and so on reached the continent, he insists, as the baggage of invading, prestige hungry Indo-European steppe nomads. These qualities, let alone their transmission to society as a whole, are rather imprecise and I was on the brink of dismissing them as too speculative when I found myself rather extensively cited. There must be something in the topic after all! But these hoary, contentious themes are really several orders of magnitude more speculative than the tracts of early modern history where Duchesne fences with the most fashionable of the revisionists.

It is a problem to exhume the history of thought and social structure in ancient Greece, but at least reams of scholarship exist on the subject. For centuries, higher learning in Europe dwelt on little else, except the slightly less faded history of Rome. Duchesne shows himself a master of the subject, especially in its anthropological guise. He shows himself, too, as a master of the archaeologically based sagas of the Indo-Europeans. He faces down anyone who would frighten us off the subject because of the Nazi's Aryan perversions, after which everything Indo-European was amputated and sanitised into mere linguistic studies. The task of taking the Indo-European legacy forward and connecting it with the priceless individualism and liberty of modern European peoples is of an even taller order. This section of the book -- or books -- is relatively diffuse. (pages 62c-63a)

Jones is good-humored about this thesis, but skeptical due to its speculative character and perhaps even wary of the the topic because of its earlier misappropriation by the National Socialists of Germany in their genocidal actions during the 1930s and early 1940s. In my own Google searches I have noticed a few racialist sites popping up among the many websites with reviews by the book's admirers, but so far as I can judge from reviews, Duchesne is making a cultural argument, not a racial one. And an argument explaining the West's success over East Asia in modernizing first has to be based on cultural reasons and not, for instance, on such things as intelligence quotient scores since East Asians outscore Caucasians.

Such are issues to be aware of in reading the book's argument . . .

Professor Andrei Znamenski Reviews Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization

Andrei Znamenski
Department of History
University of Memphis

Professor Andrei Znamenski, historian at the University of Memphis, is yet another scholar who has reviewed Ricardo Duchesne's book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization: "The 'European Miracle': Warrior Aristocrats, Spirit of Liberty, and Competition as a Discovery Process" (The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy, v. 16, n. 4, Spring 2012, pp. 599-610). Here follows Znamenski's summary of Duchesne's argument on the ethos of the ancient Indo-Europeans and its contribution to European uniqueness:

Duchesne takes the discussion of the European Miracle to a new historical and philosophical level by viewing such issues as Europe's modern economic advancement and its political decentralization as fractions of a bigger question: What are the general sources of the rise of European creativity? Digging deep into ancient history, he comes up with a provocative argument: the cultural roots of what later evolved into the European Miracle should be traced back to the social ethos of the Indo-European warrior aristocracy, which he considers an "unusual class with a strong libertarian spirit" (p. 406). He does not dismiss the geographical, social, and economic factors, but at the same time he stresses that the spark that ignited the whole process was this particular cultural group and its ethical code.

The bands of Indo-Europeans who laid a foundation for modern German, Slavic, Roman, and Greek languages had originally resided north of the Black Sea at the Ukrainian steppes, whence they moved to central and western Europe, the Near East, and India. They migrated in several waves separated by long time periods between 4,000 BCE and 1,000 BCE. One of the last migrations was that of the notorious Germanic "barbarians" who dislodged the crumbling western Roman Empire. Duchesne informs us that a peculiar democratic ethos of the Indo-European warrior aristocrats became a sort of "big bang" that initiated the whole chain of historical events that together molded "Western spirit" with its individualism and autonomous institutions: "The primordial roots of Western uniqueness must be traced back to the aristocratic warlike culture of the Indo-European speakers who spread throughout Europe during the 4th and 3rd millennium" (p. 344).

Daredevil free spirits always ready to fight and prove themselves, intolerant of any imposition on their personal status, and well nourished by their meat diet, these "Indo-European speakers" were physically strong warriors, who, on top of everything, became extremely mobile by being the first in history to domesticate horses . . . . [T]hese Indo-European nomads and their descendants were not exactly nice people. From Scandinavian sagas, we learn that they were essentially a bunch of self-centered brutes obsessed with a megalomaniacal quest for prestige and status, constantly seeking to prove themselves in the eyes of their peers either by fighting each other or by throwing feasts.

Duchesne's point here is that out of this unattractive, individualized "military democracy" a strong sense of personal autonomy gradually grew, which these noble aristocrats later sought to codify and safeguard in such documents as the famous Magna Carta. Later, new groups of "aristocrats" (towns, universities, members of guilds, farmers, and, eventually in modern times, workers' unions) began to claim their personal autonomy, extracting from lords and governments their own "charters of liberty". To secure their liberties, all of these people eventually connected themselves with each other by a web of contractual relations. Thus, in the course of time what had originally emerged as the selfish ethos of Indo-European warrior aristocrats opened doors to the full expression of individual potential, which was channeled into various economic, scientific, creative, and political pursuits. Duchesne describes this process by using the Kantian expression "unsocial sociability." Of course, many writers and philosophers had already noted a long time ago the beneficial presence of this "unsocial sociability" in the Western tradition. The most well-known examples are Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbs and Adam Smith's famous economic dictum in 1776 about the invisible hand of the free market, when people working for themselves indirectly benefit the entire society.

This European libertarian ethos contrasted drastically with what existed in many contemporary non-Western societies, where individual initiative was suffocated and people were ruled, to borrow Ludwig von Mises's expression, by "virtue of command and subordination or hegemony" (1949, 196). At the same time, we know that the Indo-European bands migrated not only to western Europe, but also to the Near East and India. Why, though, did their allegedly libertarian ethos never materialize in these areas? Duchesne explains that in India and the Near East the Indo-Europeans represented a minority that was assimilated into local indigenous cultures that were heavily imbued with group-oriented ethics and in this way lost their individualized tradition of military democracy.

There is much overlap with previous reviews, but the usefulness of this summary lies partly in its accounting for why the Indo-Europeans had little influence on the development of individualism in India and the Near East.

I'll have to look into the expression "unsocial sociability," yet another paradoxical concept in this unfamiliar intellectual terrain . . .

Ricardo Duchesne Reply to Professor Mark Elvin's Review

Canadian Journal of Sociology

Ricardo Duchesne was not especially happy with Professor Mark Elvin's review of his book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, and he writes a "Reply To Mark Elvin" (Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol 36, No 4 (2011), 378-387), though he opens by saying that he "was quite pleased to learn that a respected scholar of Chinese history, Mark Elvin, had written a review essay of . . . The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (2011)." Within a few lines, however, he adds, "Having read and cited some of Elvin's work, I would say that his intellectual frame is socialistic, materialistic, secular, and multiculturalist," but he then graciously adds, "All of us have cultural biases, so let me concede that I prefer the West to any other civilization." I don't think that there was any doubt about that, so I wasn't surprised to discover that this was a take-no-prisoners counter-review. I won't quote the entire review, of course, just Duchesne's reply to Elvin's critical remarks about his Indo-European thesis:

Elvin calls "original" my thesis on the aristocratic Indo-European roots of Western creativity but "suspects many readers will find it outrageous." This thesis is detailed in Chapter 7 and most of Chapter 8, covering about 150 pages and backed by hundreds of sources. Elvin cites . . . a line from the Preface, and then dismisses the argument with a few lines of his own. I am confident that well-educated readers will find the thesis rather persuasive, or this is the sense I am getting from what I know, thus far, about five upcoming review essays. Elvin wonders about India's Indo-European background. If he had read the respective chapters he might have noted that I tackled this question in two sections, "The Distinctive Indo-Europeanization of the West," and "Impact of Indo-Europeans of the Civilizations of the East." Elvin wonders as well about other warlike peoples from the steppes such as the Mongols and Turks. I mentioned non-Indo-European groups from the steppes but indicated this would be a matter of future research. Recently, I read Christopher Beckwith's book, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, which came out in 2009 as I was writing my book. It brings up some pertinent issues, including an emphasis on the crucial institution called comitatus, a war band of aristocratic warriors driven by heroic ideals. Beckwith sees these war bands throughout the steppes, rather than exclusively among Indo-European speakers. Yet, all in all, what he says solidifies my thesis. He agrees that the comitatus "goes all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European times"; and shows that the Ural-Altaic steppe peoples evolved, as I suggested, in a direction much more influenced by the Asian peripheral civilizations. This has been further corroborated by my readings of Carter Findley's The Turks (2005), and David Morgan's The Mongols (1984). It should not be forgotten, moreover, that it was the Proto-Indo-Europeans who originated and developed the steppe toolkit, horse riding, wheel vehicles, chariots, and the "secondary-products revolution." My book avoids a teleological reading of the aristocratic culture of Indo-Europeans by showing that their contributions were only "the beginning" of multiple cultural developments in varying geographical and cultural settings. (pages 384-385)

Duchesne writes with a tone of annoyance, probably because he believes that Elvin hasn't read all of Uniqueness, or not very carefully. I won't weigh in on this issue, for I've not read Duchesne either . . . not yet, anyway.

But I will. All of this is just prep work . . .

Professor Mark Elvin's Critical Review of Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of the West

Mark Elvin
ANU

Continuing my posting of block quotes from reviews of Ricardo Duchesne's Uniqueness of the West, I today quote from a review by Mark Elvin, Professor Emeritus of Chinese History at the Australian National University, "Confused Alarms: Duchesne on the Uniqueness of the West," Canadian Journal of Sociology, 36 (4), 2011:

Uniqueness is, to use old-fashioned examiner's terminology, an alpha-delta book -- with some very good and some unnervingly bad components. It is also all but impossible to review fairly, at least in a brief compass. I will therefore proceed mostly by responding to the five main points that he helpfully lays out in his preface. These are as follows: (1) a great deal of often shoddy recent historiography and social science have devalued the intrinsic quality of Western civilization; (2) recent "revisionist" historical writing has seriously underestimated Western achievements between approximately 1500 and the present day; (3) for at least during the two-and-a-half millennia since classical antiquity, and probably far longer, the culture of the "West" has always been "in a state of variance from the world"; (4) a virtually unique "liberal-democratic culture" was crucial to the rise of the modern West; (5) the West's restless creativity ultimately derives from the war-like "aristocratic egalitarianism" of the early Indo-Europeans. Space being limited, I will express myself in response to these ideas as bluntly as he summarizes them. Needless to say, both our full positions are more nuanced. (pages 363-364)

By "alpha-delta," I presume Elvin is grading Duchesne with an A for some parts and and a D for other parts and is thus more critical than previously cited reviews. The five points above are simply sketchy summaries, so readers interested in Elvin's deeper analysis will need to go to the review itself, but he here is a sample of his remarks on "aristocratic egalitarianism" of the early Indo-Europeans:

The fifth thesis is original and Nietzschean in flavour; and I suspect many readers will find it outrageous. But it can provoke one into thinking hard, which is no bad thing. It is that the West's "creativity and libertarian spirit" originated in "the aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers," who were "governed by a spirit of aristocratic egalitarianism." The "primordial basis for Western uniqueness," Duchesne tells us, "lay in the ethos of individualism and strife" (p. x). The highest ideal in life was "the attainment of honorable prestige through the performance of heroic deeds." One's first reaction to this is to ask why, if this was so, were the invigorating effects not equally in evidence in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, where speakers of one of the oldest great Indo-European tongues, namely Sanskrit, arrived and settled? Arjuna's troubled heart and sense of duty as he faces battle in the Bhagavad-Gîtâ are hardly those of Beowulf! (371-372)

Elvin is therefore a critic worth Duchesne's attention, for not only is he skeptical of the most original of Duchesne's five theses, as well as of the other four -- and thus of the West's uniqueness in some respects -- he is also a critical thinker who is both highly intelligent and well educated in the fields where Duchesne has trod.

Again, interested readers should go to Elvin's review.