What is the West?

[Donny Crane]

I'm afraid my answer is too simple for the sophists. The West is the Church, to the extent Western Christianity (so the Catholic Church) permeates a culture. Nations, individuals, states only belong to the West through the Church that Jesus built, so when they sever that bond they are no longer the West but their own little experiments.

You don't appear to know what sophist means, ironic considering in using the term you ignore the history of hellenic philosophy from which the term derives.

Honestly at this point after a reply like that just nuke us from space.

[conon394]

I'm afraid my answer is too simple for the sophists. The West is the Church, to the extent Western Christianity (so the Catholic Church) permeates a culture. Nations, individuals, states only belong to the West through the Church that Jesus built, so when they sever that bond they are no longer the West but their own little experiments.

Perhaps. That is an answer but in and of itself it answers the OP in that you have opted to select one criteria only. But quite rightly Donny Crane as noted you have problem the 'church' itself is a product of the Classical world so has more strands already weaved into the west than just the narrow church.

Also a clarification of how narrow you are in fact mean Catholic Church to be are excluding protestants and also orthodox members and others from the church? Does your permeate culture require primacy of the Church so that a secular state that is not run as Theocracy by the Church does not qualify?

[Donny Crane]

Perhaps. That is an answer but in and of itself it answers the OP in that you have opted to select one criteria only. But quite rightly Donny Crane as noted you have problem the 'church' itself is a product of the Classical world so has more strands already weaved into the west than just the narrow church.

Also a clarification of how narrow you are in fact mean Catholic Church to be are excluding protestants and also orthodox members and others from the church? Does your permeate culture require primacy of the Church so that a secular state that is not run as Theocracy by the Church does not qualify?

Thanks as you say the church is a narrow projection at times, a broad one at others of the influences, often fundamental but not only.

[pacifism]

A pertinent question. Why not?


Precisely. How many times have I cited Appiah? There is no such thing as western civilisation | Philosophy ...

It seems as if I had been stumbling around the edges of that article for ages. Some of the stuff I had read before I decided to make this thread seem to have at least partly influenced by it. Dramatic flairs aside, I think it raises some interesting points and useful pieces of evidence.

That's because we typically think of them as impoverished countries still inhabited by people who have a lot of Native American ancestry. Which is partially true and in some cases how they think of themselves. As I recall, Mexico went through a postcolonial stage of emphasizing their indigenous identity. Which made some sense for them, but it would have seemed absurd had colonial Americans started emphasizing their indigenous identity post-independence.

A copy/paste of my somewhat recent comment on the topic in another thread:

Regarding the debate on whether or not Western culture exists, I think it’s an issue of framing rather than facts. Fuzzy boundaries and disputed definitions come with any attempt to apply a framework to social phenomena, but the same is actually true to a lesser extent even with seemingly more concrete phenomena, such as the concept of species in biology. I’d say the various formulations deemed Western culture being relatively recent has to do with people historically being primarily concerned with rivalries between local identity groups. So the question is whether or not the concept of Western culture is a useful analytical or political tool in any given context. Sometimes it’s more useful to think of cultural traits as a complex Venn diagram mapped upon populations and/or regions.

Perhaps that is true about Native American ancestry in Latin America to a certain degree, but the unfortunate implication in there that “the West” actually means “the white” is a pill that I find a little hard to swallow. People usually point to ancient Greece or Rome as the origins of western civilization, which was around long before our concept of race existed.

You make a good point about historic versus contemporary rivalries often operate. In that case, I think it makes the idea of the linear continuity of the West to be much less distinct. I can’t help but wonder if there is a point where there is more use in simply not invoking a vague “West” so often.

Hmm, by that logic, should we not abolish the concept of "yellow" as a colour as well?

The difference is that there aren’t very many bad faith political actors out there claiming to be defending a color. On the other hand, that’s the exact rhetoric that many right-wing movements in Europe and the U.S. attach themselves to with western civilization.

You specifically want to muddy the waters and conflate about 10 different concepts to aid in your confusion. You want to talk about history and the historical actions of christendom but then say the "west' is cold war actions, you don't want to discuss western philosophical tradition which has a compelling progressive narrative often at odds with itself but cohesive in its bubble. You don't really settle in on the political tradition which definitely sets it apart from the rest of the world if in its influence alone and would also help us understand why Japan transitioned into the west while South america is case dependent and sits half in half out.

I'm not so sure you really want a sophisticated discussion of western culture, philosophy, military, politics and geo-political progression so much as a generalist mess of conflation. I don't know where to go with much of it truthfully.

First of all, whoever said that Japan is a part of the West? That doesn’t make much sense … based on the different things I usually associate with the West.

Second of all, it’s four concepts, not ten. I thought of four different things I associate with the West: the Christian religion, the enlightenment, colonial empires, and the anti-fascist, anti-communist free world. I think it’s fairly obvious how each of those are all aspects of this idea of the West that we have in our heads, but my point is that there is little actually linking each of them together. That isn’t muddying the waters. That’s pointing out that the waters are already muddy.

What I’m looking to get out of this thread is a clearer idea of what exactly Western civilization is and to what extent it even exists as a unique entity. I’m not arguing that the West is bad. I don’t even have a clear idea of what the West is, much less its morality.

I'm afraid my answer is too simple for the sophists. The West is the Church, to the extent Western Christianity (so the Catholic Church) permeates a culture. Nations, individuals, states only belong to the West through the Church that Jesus built, so when they sever that bond they are no longer the West but their own little experiments.

Most of the world lives in secular states, and most of the religious states are officially Muslim. Has the West been basically nonexistent for the last century or so? Kenya has more Roman Catholics than the United Kingdom in both total numbers and as a percent of the population. Does this make Kenya more Western than the U.K.? If the West and Christianity are actually the same thing, why not just call it ... “Christianity”?

[Donny Crane]

It seems as if I had been stumbling around the edges of that article for ages. Some of the stuff I had read before I decided to make this thread seem to have at least partly influenced by it. Dramatic flairs aside, I think it raises some interesting points and useful pieces of evidence.



Perhaps that is true about Native American ancestry in Latin America to a certain degree, but the unfortunate implication in there that “the West” actually means “the white” is a pill that I find a little hard to swallow. People usually point to ancient Greece or Rome as the origins of western civilization, which was around long before our concept of race existed.

You make a good point about historic versus contemporary rivalries often operate. In that case, I think it makes the idea of the linear continuity of the West to be much less distinct. I can’t help but wonder if there is a point where there is more use in simply not invoking a vague “West” so often.


The difference is that there aren’t very many bad faith political actors out there claiming to be defending a color. On the other hand, that’s the exact rhetoric that many right-wing movements in Europe and the U.S. attach themselves to with western civilization.



First of all, whoever said that Japan is a part of the West? That doesn’t make much sense … based on the different things I usually associate with the West.

Second of all, it’s four concepts, not ten. I thought of four different things I associate with the West: the Christian religion, the enlightenment, colonial empires, and the anti-fascist, anti-communist free world. I think it’s fairly obvious how each of those are all aspects of this idea of the West that we have in our heads, but my point is that there is little actually linking each of them together. That isn’t muddying the waters. That’s pointing out that the waters are already muddy.

What I’m looking to get out of this thread is a clearer idea of what exactly Western civilization is and to what extent it even exists as a unique entity. I’m not arguing that the West is bad. I don’t even have a clear idea of what the West is, much less its morality.



Most of the world lives in secular states, and most of the religious states are officially Muslim. Has the West been basically nonexistent for the last century or so? Kenya has more Roman Catholics than the United Kingdom in both total numbers and as a percent of the population. Does this make Kenya more Western than the U.K.? If the West and Christianity are actually the same thing, why not just call it ... “Christianity”?

Oh christ this is exceptionally dumb. Yes japan doesn't make sense to you in the "west" which is a concept rooted in a fictional piece of geography but much more rooted in conceptual notions of people who engage in democracy which japan did post ww2 but I'm sure you can ridicule that its almost like you did not get the west as an idea as opposed to a geographical location such a person could ridicule anything so go on act superior while having the basic understanding of a 10 year old.

[Donny Crane]

And after that you need to raise your game to get a reply from me. I only engage where it means something, here it does not.

[Gaidin]

Hmm, by that logic, should we not abolish the concept of "yellow" as a colour as well?

Doesn’t matter what you call it, “yellow “ still reflects the same visual frequencies for you to see. A slightly different physics concept than the philosophical history put forth here.

[Muizer]

Doesn’t matter what you call it, “yellow “ still reflects the same visual frequencies for you to see. A slightly different physics concept than the philosophical history put forth here.

The point is "yellow" is part of a spectrum. Consensus as to what is yellow will fade as it grades into green or orange. But just because there are no clear boundaries, only arbitrarily chosen ones, does not mean the concept 'yellow' serves no purpose, carries no meaning and should be discarded.

[sumskilz]

Perhaps that is true about Native American ancestry in Latin America to a certain degree, but the unfortunate implication in there that “the West” actually means “the white” is a pill that I find a little hard to swallow.

Not necessarily. The near complete demographic displacement of Native Americans in the United States meant that Anglo-American culture became the substrate into which all other ethnic groups had to integrate. While Native Americans, the descendants of African slaves, and all major immigrant groups have contributed to some degree to American culture, those aspects which became part of the mainstream were largely mediated by the tastes and values of the dominant culture. For example, there were attempts to repress most aspects of West African culture, but their musical traditions became a part of mainstream American culture because they appealed to segments of the dominant Anglo-American population, whereas their religious traditions were almost completely erased.

In contrast, Latin Americans are largely the decedents of European fathers and Native American mothers which resulted in a culture that is much more syncretic in almost every aspect, even in its religion. Although this latter fact is not apparent without some foreknowledge. For example, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was built on a site where Mary the mother of Jesus was said to have appeared speaking Nahuatl, which just so happened to have been the ruins of a temple of the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin.

Of course I was initially referring to the general perception of Latin American as non-Western. The more well-thought out points I've made here are just to demonstrate that such a perception isn't necessarily based on ignorance and/or racialist ideology. Though for some people, it may very well be. If Catholic Iberian culture is considered Western then logically Latin American countries are at least partially Western, or significantly influenced by Western culture, or whatever depending upon the particular country.

[Ludicus]

Here, our culture is of a complex flow of different civilizations, and all have made a print on country's culture and history.From pre-roman civilizations, to Germanic tribes, Romans,Jews and Moors.
The West as a geographical area is undefined. In fact, its not an easy task to identify which cultures and peoples are included within the distinction of "western civilization".
In a very simplistic way (not the classic way which defines the birth of Western civilization in Greece, Rome, and Europe to c.1000 CE) I would say that the" West" is more individualistic, with cultural thought, practices and tendencies which favor the individual rather than the collective. The "East" is more communal, with tendencies that favor the collective, focus on collective good.
For example, what does it mean to be happy? depends to an important degree on where you live.For us, Westerners, hapiness is a self centered emotion. For Easterners, hapiness emphasizes harmony and connectedness to others.
Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries ...

Appiah reminds us that the very idea of the "west" to name a heritage and object of study, doesn't really emerge until the 1890s, during a heated era of imperialism, and gains broader currency only in the 20th century.

[Gaidin]

The point is "yellow" is part of a spectrum. Consensus as to what is yellow will fade as it grades into green or orange. But just because there are no clear boundaries, only arbitrarily chosen ones, does not mean the concept 'yellow' serves no purpose, carries no meaning and should be discarded.

Every color has a frequency. I don't care what you call it. You calling the 5 dozen shades of "yellow" merely "yellow" as if you have a point here is you just being deceptive. The frequency is what makes them physically unique even if you're colorblind and cannot physically see it and means your inane point has literally no place in this conversation.

[Cyclops]

...
Appiah reminds us that the very idea of the "west" to name a heritage and object of study, doesn't really emerge until the 1890s, during a heated era of imperialism, and gains broader currency only in the 20th century.

In my head the idea of "the West" germinates in Herodotus with his "Europe/Asia" split. An excursis: the East, at that time the invincible Persian realm, seemed to eternal and massive to a Hellene it delineated their identity by outlining its shadow. I think Hellas begins as a semi-co0herent bit of not-Persia.

Hellas (already a mess of Poleis, monarchies, Linear B memories and Attic sophistication) developed a healthy self regard but was subdued by non Hellenes; this requires explanation both by Hellenes and the non-Hellenes attracted to their culture, hence the duality central to the idea of the West. There's always a load of talk about true heirs, pure bloodlines and returned kings.

I think many non-Hellenic philhellenes want to be Hellenes so badly but know they are not that the West becomes a wider bowl in which to catch the spilt wine of Dionysios' cup.

[Ludicus]

In my head the idea of "the West" germinates in Herodotus with his "Europe/Asia" split. .

In fact, my friend,Appiah adresses this issue,
Some excerpts,

For the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, the world was divided into three parts. To the east was Asia, to the south was a continent he called Libya, and the rest was Europe. He knew that people and goods and ideas could travel easily between the continents: he himself travelled up the Nile as far as Aswan, and on both sides of the Hellespont, the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia.

Herodotus admitted to being puzzled, in fact, as to “why the earth, which is one, has three names, all women’s”. Still, despite his puzzlement, these continents were for the Greeks and their Roman heirs the largest significant geographical divisions of the world.
But here’s the important point: it would not have occurred to Herodotus to think that these three names corresponded to three kinds of people: Europeans, Asians, and Africans. He was born at Halicarnasus – Bodrum in modern Turkey. Yet being born in Asia Minor didn’t make him an Asian; it left him a Greek. And the Celts, in the far west of Europe, were much stranger to him than the Persians or the Egyptians, about whom he knew rather a lot. Herodotus only uses the word “European” as an adjective, never as a noun. For a millennium after his day, no one else spoke of Europeans as a people, either.

(...)What matters for our purposes is that the first recorded use of a word for Europeans as a kind of person, so far as I know, comes out of this history of conflict. In a Latin chronicle, written in 754 in Spain, the author refers to the victors of the Battle of Tours as “Europenses”, Europeans. So, simply put, the very idea of a “European” was first used to contrast Christians and Muslims.(Even this, however, is a bit of a simplification. In the middle of the eighth century much of Europe was not yet Christian.)

(...) And yet the move from “Christendom” to “western culture” isn’t straightforward.

(...)If the notion of Christendom was an artefact of a prolonged military struggle against Muslim forces, our modern concept of western culture largely took its present shape during the cold war. In the chill of battle, we forged a grand narrative about Athenian democracy, the Magna Carta, Copernican revolution, and so on. Plato to Nato. Western culture was, at its core, individualistic and democratic and liberty-minded and tolerant and progressive and rational and scientific. Never mind that pre-modern Europe was none of these things, and that until the past century democracy was the exception in Europe – something that few stalwarts of western thought had anything good to say about. The idea that tolerance was constitutive of something called western culture would have surprised Edward Burnett Tylor, who, as a Quaker, had been barred from attending England’s great universities. To be blunt: if western culture were real, we wouldn’t spend so much time talking it up.

[antaeus]

Every color has a frequency. I don't care what you call it. You calling the 5 dozen shades of "yellow" merely "yellow" as if you have a point here is you just being deceptive. The frequency is what makes them physically unique even if you're colorblind and cannot physically see it and means your inane point has literally no place in this conversation.

I think this analogy is an interesting rabbit hole to tunnel down... When we first labelled or described yellow, I doubt that we had discovered the concept of frequencies of light. I imagine we were still hunting mammoths. Yellow was an approximate identification based on a common understanding of a vague collection of similar looking things.

The term "yellow" could be described as a hangover term from a period before we understood as much as we understand now about light. Within the context of our current understanding, yellow is helpful as a general term to describe a frequency range, but unhelpful as a specific term to describe a specific frequency (because it also describes others). Thus in design for example, we use PMS or Hex or RGB or other more accurate terms to describe a specific colour, so that we don't end up using two visibly different colours when we want one.

So for me this analogy does have some relevance when describing "The West". The concept was first described and used when our understanding of the world was different to what it is now. It was used to describe parts of the world that are in reality completely different to how we understood them at the time, and people and places that no longer exist as they did. This is the point I was making earlier: that it is a useful term when used generally to describe vague ideas or relationships. But the more specifically the term is used, the more it becomes open to subjective interpretation that can be unhelpful.

For example: Your pee is yellow. So long as it looks yellow and not brown or red, you're ok. The exact type of yellow might reflect how dehydrated you are, but the difference in a few increments of wavelength isn't important. On the other hand if I'm designing safety markings for the front of a train, when I talk to the decal manufacturer I have to be specific or else they'll give me a decal that has sub-optimal performance that might lead to someone not seeing the train in twilight and being killed. So I tell the printer I want the decal to be PMS 13-0630 TN, rather than "yellow". In the context of this discussion: England the state is generally western, but is a person born in Manchester to mixed Eurasian ancestry who speaks English as a first language but is a practicing Hindu specifically Western or specifically not?

In this sense, probably going beyond the colour analogy: "Western" is a flexible collection of possible identifying characteristics that don't all have to be present to identify something or someone as "Western". And those characteristics can also apply to something or someone that is "non-Western". And the difference between the two is down to subjective interpretation rather than empirical analysis. This makes the term "Western" both extremely handy, and extremely dangerous at the same time.

[sumskilz]

Actually, yellow isn't a specific frequency. It's a range of frequencies with ambiguous borders which gradually blend into what we perceive as orange on the lower side and green on the higher side. If you look it up, you'll see a variety of answers such as ~510–530 THz, or ~510–540 THz, or ~508–526 THz, but few of us would describe those frequencies toward the edges of those ranges as yellow, rather they would be orangish-yellow or yellowish-green. It's only toward the center of the range that there will be consensus. Even if you view a series of color swatches at one terahertz intervals, you'd be hard pressed to decide when yellow becomes yellowish-green, much less when yellow becomes green. So in my view, Muizer's analogy is quite apt. Nevertheless, there is a good point in Gaidin's objection, which is that neither what we call a phenomenon nor how we group it with other phenomena changes what it is. This seems to be a rather obvious and unimpeachably accurate point, but members of our species have a tendency to behave as if they believe otherwise.

[Muizer]

Anyway, if I were tasked to come up with an answer to the question "What is The West", what I would do is compile a questionnaire and send it out to all corners of the world. "The West" is what people make it today, and it's bound to vary from place to place. You'd also have gotten a different answer 50 years ago and will get a different one 50 years from now. The historical narrative is bound to be teleological; subject to continuous revisionism.

[Cyclops]

This is getting better and better. "The West is an Hellenic mutation of a Jewish teacher's SJW jag, but only the Right Version (presumably the one dominated by the African Manichee and the supervisor of the Latin mos maiorum?)", "50% of the western hemisphere is not in the West" (I mean the concept of a global South is an interesting one if only as an antidote, but it puts Australia in the North, which I find offensive [trigger warning required]) and "yellow something something" (is this an art thing?).

...This seems to be a rather obvious and unimpeachably accurate point, but members of our species have a tendency to behave as if they believe otherwise.

"People are stupid".

Mate I'm working from a sample size of one, and speaking only for myself I think you are 100% correct. At the same moment I have complete confidence in my own supreme intelligence, another 100% correspondence so by my calculations you are 200% correct.

[swabian]

Culturally, the "West" covers the spread of Indo-European languages as a minimal criterium. At least this has to apply. The most important facet of this complex question is the connection to Europe, of course. Nothing can be "western" without having some ethno-cultural tie to Europe. That's of course a platitude, but it's inevitable and i haven't seen it discussed here in a compact, smart and comprehensive way.

Apart from the ethno-cultural and linguistic aspect, there is the concern of modern times during which all the classic wisdom dissolves to pave way for what has become the lifestyle of modern Western culture. Which is democracy and the rule of law. Maybe we are living right in the days, where the term "Western" is rightfully extended to denominate a way of life, rather than a culture and/or ethno-linguistic origin.

[pacifism]

Oh christ this is exceptionally dumb. Yes japan doesn't make sense to you in the "west" which is a concept rooted in a fictional piece of geography but much more rooted in conceptual notions of people who engage in democracy which japan did post ww2 but I'm sure you can ridicule that its almost like you did not get the west as an idea as opposed to a geographical location such a person could ridicule anything so go on act superior while having the basic understanding of a 10 year old.

It sounds like you view the West as strictly being the countries that have a particular kind of government: a liberal democracy. And while there might be a certain kind of sense to call liberal democracies Western countries – or Westernized countries – is that the same thing as the West itself? Can the West be reduced to a broad system of governments? You yourself said that the West has a “culture, philosophy, military, politics and geo-political progression”. But the ancient Greeks whom we are told founded the West were nowhere near an actual liberal democracy, and some foundational Western philosophers in ancient Greece such as Plato theorized that the ideal government is an idealized monarchy.

Even if we only define the West by a form of government, there is still a lot of ambiguity in when a country becomes Western. It’s not every day that a totally new government is installed like in Japan. Most countries’ governments tend towards being the result of day-to-day internal practices. So Japan might be an easy one, but at what point is Hungary and its decline in effective checks and balances make it no longer a liberal democracy and therefore no longer "Western"? It’s hardly a gimmicky question, considering how Orban portrays his policies as defending Europe and Christianity in Europe: coincidentally the effective heart of the West!

And after that you need to raise your game to get a reply from me. I only engage where it means something, here it does not.

Oh no, whatever am I going to do?

I think I got other people to start a much more interesting discussion anyway.

Not necessarily. The near complete demographic displacement of Native Americans in the United States meant that Anglo-American culture became the substrate into which all other ethnic groups had to integrate. While Native Americans, the descendants of African slaves, and all major immigrant groups have contributed to some degree to American culture, those aspects which became part of the mainstream were largely mediated by the tastes and values of the dominant culture. For example, there were attempts to repress most aspects of West African culture, but their musical traditions became a part of mainstream American culture because they appealed to segments of the dominant Anglo-American population, whereas their religious traditions were almost completely erased.

In contrast, Latin Americans are largely the decedents of European fathers and Native American mothers which resulted in a culture that is much more syncretic in almost every aspect, even in its religion. Although this latter fact is not apparent without some foreknowledge. For example, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was built on a site where Mary the mother of Jesus was said to have appeared speaking Nahuatl, which just so happened to have been the ruins of a temple of the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin.

Of course I was initially referring to the general perception of Latin American as non-Western. The more well-thought out points I've made here are just to demonstrate that such a perception isn't necessarily based on ignorance and/or racialist ideology. Though for some people, it may very well be. If Catholic Iberian culture is considered Western then logically Latin American countries are at least partially Western, or significantly influenced by Western culture, or whatever depending upon the particular country.

The race angle did cross my mind. I imagine that white nationalists would ridicule the idea that a nonwhite person could be truly Western, but I ultimately decided against including such a distasteful fringe opinion.

I think that you make a good point: countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are somewhat exceptional for the extent that European cultures and their descendent forms dominated the country’s overall culture – for better or worse. But there are some Latin American countries that are on par with those countries in terms of self-identified white populations, or at least majority white. I think Uruguay even exceeds them. I will admit that I don’t know enough about Uruguay to say off-hand whether it’s actually more like a European country than a Latin American one.