It is difficult to find a suitable name for the institutions and ways of life which now shape people in every part of the world. The term ‘Western’ was applied because Europe, which was not the source but rather the incubator of this civilization, is west of Asia, and more precisely, west or northwest of those parts of Asia which contributed essential parts of what would become Western Civilization.
Europe is west of Babylon and Mesopotamia, and west of Persia and Jerusalem. Europe came to view itself as the “West.” Yet those locations to the east are indispensable parts of the emergence of Western Civilization. The “West” could not have come to be without the “East” - without Hammurabi or Moses, without Darius or Abraham. So ‘West’ is a misnomer in terms of origin. The “West” came out of the “East.”
For a second reason, ‘West’ is a misnomer, because the ‘West’ is now everywhere. If this civilization hatched and matured in Europe, it is now found in China and India, in Africa and South America. The “West” is neither west nor east, but all around the world.
The West is in China, which no longer binds women’s feet. The West is in India, which is working to abandon the practice of suttee or sati. The West is in Africa, which seeks education and universal suffrage. The West is in South America, which works toward the recognition and freedom of the individual.
Gandhi studied in England, where he harvested ideas from John Locke, from the Magna Carta, from Edmund Burke, and from the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Mao proclaimed himself a Marxist, i.e., the follower of a German Jew. In rather non-Western places, the West is making itself felt.
So whatever the West is, it is misleading to call it the ‘West’ - it came from the East, and is now everywhere.
What else can we call it? Some historians use the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition,’ which points again to sources: Both Judaism and Christianity arose outside of Europe, in Asia. To be sure, the unique set of values and worldview which emerge from Judaism and Christianity have greatly shaped Western Civilization. To that extent, the name ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition’ might be correct.
But Judeo-Christian values have now spread widely, into many cultures which are neither Jewish nor Christian. The indignation and outcry against torture, the desire for respectful treatment of women, and a worldview which values mathematics and the observational sciences are infiltrating the minds of many who are Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist. To call this civilization ‘Judeo-Christian’ is perhaps historically correct, but ignores the fact that Judeo-Christian values have been adopted, individually and collectively, by millions of people who are neither Jews nor Christians.
The popularity of the environmentalist ‘green’ sentiment in the early decades of the twenty-first century are directly attributable to the Judeo-Christian ethic. While the Mesopotamians saw the physical world as an accidental product of the activities of various gods and goddesses, and therefore unworthy of special protection, the Hebrews saw the earth as a divinely-planned artistic creation, worth nurturing and preserving.
The observation will be made: the West has not always behaved according to Western values; Jews and Christians have not always instantiated Judeo-Christian values. Have crimes been committed by the West? Yes. Have Jews and Christians sinned? Yes.
It is in the West’s sins that we can perhaps most clearly see its distinctiveness. Occasional acts of torture, committed by the West, have called forth public furor - in the West. The harshest condemnations of the West’s sins have come from the West itself. Other civilizations expressed less outrage - even when they were the victims of the West’s crimes.
The members of other civilizations don’t protest when their own civilizations commit torture: that is simply what is expected. Torture is not merely tolerated in those civilizations: it is expected. It is institutionally enshrined.
In the West, crimes against human dignity, crimes against human freedom, provoke outrage. That is why Western Civilization began the movement to end slavery, and began the movement for women’s suffrage.
Women in Western cultures take their right to vote for granted, and are now moving toward other forms of legal and social equality. In non-Western cultures, slavery still exists; in non-Western cultures, the explicit inferiority of women is articulated and embodied in legal codes and societal attitudes.
A third candidate for a name is simply “European Culture.” For the reasons outlined above, it should be clear to the ready why this name is as insufficient as the other two.
The conclusion is reached: it cannot be “Western Civilization,” nor can it be the “Judeo-Christian Tradition,” and it also can’t be “European Culture.” But whatever it is, it nurtured and expressed distinctive ideas - ideas not found elsewhere - ideas that every human life deserves individual recognition and dignity, ideas that human beings all seek freedom, find a measure of fulfillment in it, and find further fulfillment in struggling to gain it, both for themselves, and for others.
This unique perspective has now infiltrated much of the world: in every nation, there are individuals who are ‘Western’ - ironically, on both sides of the Chinese civil war: Mao’s communism was the product of Marx, a European; Chiang Kai-shek looked to create a European-style nation-state governed by freely-elected representatives with a free market.
The West’s roots go back thousands of years, and milestones along the way can be identified. Between 311 and 313 A.D., Roman Emperor Constantine, through a series of legislative maneuvers, made the Christian religion legal. For nearly three hundred years, Christians had been persecuted: arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and executed, simply because they followed Jesus. The Romans had murdered tens of thousands of Christians.
When Christianity finally became legal, the older pagan religions of Rome were also still legal. Constantine created one of the first, if not the first, societies with religious tolerance. Side-by-side, various religions coexisted.
Constantine, himself a Christian, had established religious tolerance. But that tolerance soon encountered resistance. Some within the empire wanted one single religion to established as the official religion, and other religions to be marginalized or even outlawed. It became necessary to defend religious tolerance, as author Mark Koyama illustrates:
In the late 4th century, the Roman senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, a pagan, issued a plea for religious pluralism: “We gaze up at the same stars; the sky covers us all; the same universe encompasses us. Does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the Truth? The heart of so great a mystery cannot be reached by following one road only.”
By contrast, in the previous Persian Empire, various religions existed, but were geographically segregated. Under Constantine, Christians and Roman polytheists lived in the same towns and shopped in the same marketplaces.
Constantine is, then, an important milestone on the way to a mature version of Western Civilization. Senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus is another. Symmachus is naively willing to embrace mutually contradictory propositions, which later Western philosophy would need to sort out, but there is a distinct seed of tolerance in his words.
Tolerance is a key ingredient to Western Civilization. Tolerance is allowing other people to carry on with ideas, words, or actions which are judged to be wrong or incorrect. Tolerance is asserting that one’s intellectual or political opponents have a right to exist, because they are human beings.
To show tolerance, a person is not required to affirm, support, accept, or welcome an idea which he opposes. Consider twentieth century American elections: Republicans and Democrats debated fiercely, and did not affirm, support, accept, or welcome either’s ideas: they opposed each other at every turn. But they demonstrated tolerance toward each other.
Western Civilization is in danger any and every time that there is an attempt to eliminate, silence, or stifle opposition.
Tolerance does not mean accepting, affirming, supporting, or welcoming opposing ideas. Tolerance means allowing someone else to believe or say what is firmly believed to be wrong. To tolerate is not to be silent; to tolerate is recognize someone’s right to say something which is confidently considered to be wrong - one person can tolerate another person’s ideas even while debating against those ideas.
Tolerance is the act of clearly identifying another person’s beliefs, words, and actions as wrong and incorrect, and maintaining that individual’s right to carry on, even while vocally and vociferously condemning those beliefs, words, and actions. In this concept of tolerance, the two key Western concepts are seen: the importance of the individual and the importance of freedom.
