Western Civilization

[pjohns]

I recently saw a rather interesting take on the meaning of Western Civilization. It went something like this:

Although we often speak of "Western Civilization" as if it were a single concept, there are really two different meanings to the term. They are as follows: (1) "Western Civilization" may mean the Judeo-Christian tradition that has been handed down to us.

(2) "Western Civilization" may also refer to the post-Enlightenment era.  (The Enlightenment, of course, featured such philosophers as Descartes; Voltaire; Rousseau; Hagel; Hobbes; Kant; and Mill--just to name a few.)

Comments?

[Maj. Bill Martin]

I think the term generally refers to what makes us different from the rest of the world, and I think it's at the Enlightenment where the gap really started growing.  But I'm not sure it's possible to really separate the Enlightenment from what came before.  For example, you probably don't get the Enlightenment without the Reformation and Protestantism.

[Joe Wooten]

The Enlightenment started before the Protestant Reformation when scholars from the Byzantine Empire started bringing in the Greco-Roman learning into Western Europe along with what the Crusaders brought back from the Middle East. In fact, you might say the Enlightenment started the Protestant reformation or at least was one of the causes of it. New technologies, like gunpowder caused a lot of the skilled mechanics developed during Medieval times to experiment and this empiricism fused with the scholarship of Classical Greco-Roman civilization to get a lot of folks to thinking independently.

[LateForLunch]

Culture is so intimately intertwined with racial heritage that it's impossible to speak of one without the other.

Western culture is the basis for Western Civilization. What we are talking about then when speaking of Western Civilization is (as pointed out in the previous post) the legacy of Caucasian civilization for the most part. The defining characteristics of Caucasian culture are:

1) Meritocracy (sadly lacking in Marxist culture)
2) Judeo-Christian, Classical Liberal ethos (light-years removed from 99% of self-described "liberalism" of today).
3) Greco-Roman governance
4) Free-Market Capitalism

[Maj. Bill Martin]

The Enlightenment started before the Protestant Reformation when scholars from the Byzantine Empire started bringing in the Greco-Roman learning into Western Europe along with what the Crusaders brought back from the Middle East. In fact, you might say the Enlightenment started the Protestant reformation or at least was one of the causes of it. New technologies, like gunpowder caused a lot of the skilled mechanics developed during Medieval times to experiment and this empiricism fused with the scholarship of Classical Greco-Roman civilization to get a lot of folks to thinking independently.

You're confusing the Renaissance with the Reformation, and in saying that the "Enlightenment started the Protestant Reformation", you're starting the Enlightenment almost 200 years before it actually happened.  The Reformation started when Luther put his 95 Theses on the door of the University of Wittenberg in 1517.  The Enlightenment, as it is generally understood, didn't begin until the 1700's.

As your post notes, the Islamic/Orthodox Middle East were technologically ahead of Europe for a time.  Yet, the Renaissance did not skip them, but the subsequent Enlightenment did.  And the  major historical/philosophical happening that separated Europe from the Orthodox/Islamic east was the Reformation.