Western Civilization: The Results Are In

By Jeffrey Hart | Wednesday, April 22, 1998

In our Nichols College seminar devoted to exploring the distinctive foundations of western civilization as well as reading some momentous books we have now made a good start. Western civilization emerged through a combination of two powerful impulses: 1) The philosophic / scientific aspiration to understand the universe through intellect, (Athens, Socrates) and, 2) The aspiration to spiritual perfection (Jerusalem, Moses, prophets, Jesus)

Neither Athens nor Jerusalem alone would have created the west. Indeed either aspiration alone might have been dangerous. The City governed entirely by intellect would have a totalitarian potential, as in Plato's 'Republic.'

The City governed solely for spiritual perfection would be a theocracy or maybe a vast monastery.

But in their western combination the two aspirations interact and 'correct' one another.

Intellect draws us toward the world in an effort to understand it. Spiritual aspiration, as in the Sermon on the Mount, looks fiercely within to purify the soul.

The claims of the Rational City cannot be absolute because of the competing claims of the individual soul. And the Spiritual City cannot turn into a monastery because of the real claims of the world.

Religious persecution has always been a component of the State that makes absolute claims.

This is why the important philosopher Leo Strauss said that western civilization must remain 'open' both to Athens and Jerusalem. The claims of neither can become absolute. Freedom lives in the space created by the refusal of the west to make a final choice.

The Athens-Jerusalem synthesis, implicit in the First Century works of John, Paul, and Acts received its permanent formulation when the position of Clement of Alexandria prevailed over that Tertullian in the Third Century. Tertullian asked sternly, 'What is Athens to Jerusalem?' Clement answered, 'A valuable ally,' and the two aspirations went forward together.

These two powerful aspirations in combination are dynamic, even combustible, and uniquely central to western civilization, appearing together nowhere else.

Athens leads to modern science and philosophy, both increasingly universal. There is no other science, and no other serious philosophy comparable to Socrates through Kant and James or Wittgenstein.

Jerusalem leads to an insistence on the importance of the individual soul. The students in the seminar have now read the 'Iliad,' Plato on Socrates, Exodus, Matthew, John, Acts, and I Corinthians.

The entire history and dynamic development of the west unfurls before them — but this course must end somewhere. We could go to examine, for example, Columbus, who embodied Athens and Jerusalem. His motivation was scientific (navigation, geography), religious (sailing on his Santa Maria he wanted to spread Christianity) and economic (Islam was blocking the land routes to Asia).

We could go on to study the history of literature, art, architecture, science, political theory, medicine, even manners. We could ponder such Western symbols as the Eiffel Tower, Chartres, the Golden gate Bridge, and nuclear power — so astonishingly different from the symbols of other civilizations and cultures, and resembling not at all, for example, the Great Wall and Forbidden City of immemorial, static China.

But we are going to conclude the seminar with Dante's 'Inferno,' an exploration of mistaken decisions about the direction of the soul, an epic of the inner life, and with Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and 'The Tempest.'

Dante holds together a vast synthesis of the classical and the Christian. He also adds a powerful third aspiration to Athens and Jerusalem, the idealization of women. This emerged suddenly and mysteriously in southern France in the Eleventh Century, spread throughout Europe, and continues to affect manners in the west. As regards women, western manners differ — may still differ — from those of the ancient world and also contemporary Africa and Asia. Romantic love, in other words, was invented in the Eleventh Century in southern France. One reason for the great popularity of the movie 'Titanic' may be that it celebrates romantic love in the Age of 'Playboy,' 'Screw,' and Clinton.

Prince Hamlet is torn in many directions and cannot put his world back together, though he remains a hero of immortal language. Shakespeare does put the world back together in 'The Tempest' when he calms the tragic storms through symbolic baptism, repentance, confession, communion, marriage, and the pervasive harmonies of music in the play. Though Hamlet could not close the circle, Shakespeare did — and then retired to live on his estate.

With all the discussion of the assumptions, uniqueness, and achievements of the west in this course, the subject of 'multiculturalism' naturally comes up in the discussions.

My view of this is that there is one entirely valid use of multiculturalism — as an attitude in anthropology pioneered by Franz Boaz of Columbia University in the 1920s and 1930s. Boaz taught that an anthropologist should seek to understand any culture under study in its own terms — its kinship system, its laws, its religion and mythology, its customs, its science and medicine if any, its traditions.

The anthropologist was to understand, not judge. This is a useful way to study cultures. And by the way, it is a western perspective. No other civilization generated a perspective of such disinterestedness. But Boaz was not asserting the equal value of Aztec, Samoan, and western culture.

There is also much to be said for the aesthetic appreciation of the artifacts of various cultures past and present. Usually, of course, as when Picasso makes use of African art, the object means something quite different to him than it did to its maker. The same for a totem pole, etc.

But no one seriously believes in the equality of cultures. When a multi-culturalist is ill he does not go to a witch-doctor and he does not travel to academic conferences on multiculturalism in an ox cart. If he goes abroad for a vacation it is to London, Paris, Rome, not Zimbabwe, Cambodia, or Greenland.

The intellectually sloppy claim of multiculturalism doubtless makes the claimer feel good, more tolerant and so on, but it cannot really be sustained.

The astute social philosopher Thomas Sowell argues that multiculturalism also plays a role in our current American racial relations. Both intelligent blacks and intelligent whites are aware of the black male crime rate, of illegitimacy, of educational shortfall, and so on. But whites don't want to be called bigots, and blacks don't want to be called inferior. Multiculturalism suits both their needs.

The seminar began with a definition of the Citizen as someone who could re-create his civilization if need be. The students in the seminar have made a large step toward such citizenship.

So 'Gaudeamus igitur,' the traditional Commencement hymn (which once was a bawdy medieval drinking song).

Western Civilization: The Results Are In

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