What is Western Civilization?

"Western Civilization" is a term used often in Objectivist writings as well as elsewhere, both by professional historians and laymen. What is Western Civilization? What idea does the term symbolize; and to what facts of reality does the idea refer?

TERMS AND IDEAS. Anyone is free to employ any term for a given idea, and anyone is free to form and then define an idea in any way he wants. For efficiency and effectiveness in thinking and communicating, the policy I follow is to try to use conventional terms to name ideas as they are already used if those ideas have been logically formed. Sometimes one needs to reconstruct an idea to make it valid--while keeping the term, rather than creating a neologism.

MY USAGE. As I use the term, Western Civilization does not refer to a culture defined by geography, ethnicity, language, or other non-essential characteristics. Instead, "Western Civilization" refers to a set of principles, values, and their products. The elements of the set are related cognitively and historically. In hierarchical order, the elements are:
- A view of the world as operating by natural law (in metaphysics).
- A method of reason (in epistemology).
- A morality of long-term rational self-interest (in ethics).
- A system of rights (in politics).
- An art of inspiration for life on earth (in esthetics).

These ideas and values are all elements of rational culture, but Western Civilization is not synonymous with an ideal Rational Culture independent of time and place. Instead, Western Civilization is a particular stream of culture, sometimes advancing rapidly and sometimes regressing, but only existing at particular times, in particular places, and in particular degrees of achievement. Likewise, other cultures--in other times and places--have had rational elements too. But no other culture has had so many rational elements, in such an influential degree, over such a long time. Likewise, none have had a philosophy of reason at its base. That philosophy was implicit before Aristotle, and explicit with and after him.

BENEFITS. Two examples of con games I have heard are: (1) "The Bible is the most important book in the history of Western Civilization," says the religionist; and (2) "Racism, poverty, and oppression are the products of Western Civilization," says the multiculturalist. The authors of these statements implicitly define Western Civilization by non-essentials and ignore its essential distinguishing characteristic, an underlying, though often implicit, philosophy of reason. Having an essentialized idea of Western Civilization simplifies the study of history and exposes intellectual con games.

SUMMARY. Western Civilization is a complex of cultural elements based on a philosophy of reason, a cultural complex that has flowed brightly or dimly through time and space from the era of the Greeks to West Europeans to America and now, diffusely, throughout the world.

Burgess Laughlin
Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith

Notes: [1] For the hierarchical list of elements of W. Civilization: Thomas A. Bowden, The Enemies of Christopher Columbus: Answers to Critical Questions About the European Discovery of America, Second Renaissance Books (now The Ayn Rand Bookstore), 1995, pp. 7-8. [2] For the meaning of "essential" and the method of essentializing: Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., pp. 45-46. [3] The term "Western Civilization" is not the name of a concept, but the proper name of an entity. (I have also heard it called an "abstract particular.") It is a secondary entity, which is a set of primary entities (in this case, individual men and women) who interact, produce things (such as books and buildings), and are interrelated in various ways. This interconnected set of real things is properly considered an entity for the purpose of study. See Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., pp. 264-276 (especially pp. 270-271) for discussion of secondary entities and for a society as an example. I am grateful to Stuart Johns for explaining this to me when I asked about The Roman Empire Problem--that is, what kind of thing is the Roman Empire? [4] In "Philosophical Detection," Ayn Rand analyzes five catch phrases, and then she describes the first step of her method: "You must attach clear, specific meanings to words, i. e., be able to identify their referents in reality. This is a precondition, without which neither critical judgment nor thinking of any kind is possible. All philosophical con games count on your using words as vague approximations." ("Philosophical Detection," Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 18.) This approach has been my guide in trying to understand and explain key terms/ideas used vaguely by professionals in my field of interest, history.