Word News from the Past
Index of Topics Originating from Past Events
Noah Webster: Dictionary Introduction
Excerpts and Quotes Index from the Past
Civilization is not simply a collection of virtuous concepts
Clivilization is a collection of historical effects that "virtuous concepts" have generated. The history of the western world is said to contain an almost unbearable amount of suffering and misery, of injustice and cruelty to ourselves and to others.
Do we include war and torture, slavery and genocide in our concept of civilization? If we simply place them outside our definition of civilization, are we not in danger of misunderstanding the real meaning of our past?
If we seek a real understanding of civilization, we need to ask whether the glories and disasters of our past that accompany each other through the pages of history form a necessary conjunction.
Does freedom always mean that the freedom to exploit others, is tolerance always matched by exclusion, is opportunity always partnered by selfishness and greed?
The quest for the meaning of civilization must begin with the untangling of the threads of our history
The word "civilization" was first used in eighteenth-century France, but the western idea of a civilized society dates back to ancient Greece and Rome.
During the classical period, Greeks began to see themselves as not just different from, but better than, other people. When Herodotus, writing in the mid-fifth century B.C., referred to "the barbarians", this was really a shorthand term for non-Greeks; but by the time of Aristotle, a hundred years later, barbarians and barbarous nations could be defined by certain types of behavior; their treatment of slaves, a barter rather than money economy, all of which were frowned on by the civilized Greeks.
Barbarians, through their cultural habits, were considered below the level of the Greeks, who were seen by themselves, and later Europeans, as the epitome of civilization.
The etymologies of civilizaion
"Civilization" derives from civis, the Latin word for "citizen". Although the Romans used the word cultura or "culture", rather than "civilizatin", to describe their spiritual, intellectual, social, and artistic life, to be a citizen was to be part of this culture.
The Romans, like the Greeks on whom they modelled much of thkeir behavior, believed themselves to be uniquely cukltured. The two concepts of culture and civilization became, in retrospect, synonymous.
Romans, surrounded by barbarians, also felt impelled to bring civilization to others; as Virgil wrote: "Romans, be it your duty to rkule the nations with imperial sway . . . to impose the rule of peace, to spare the humbled and crush the proud."
The definition of "civilization" was revived by Christian scholars
The Christian scholars of the seventh and eighth centuries restored the definition of "civilization"; such as, Gregory of Tours and Bede, whose histories of the previous centuries showed Christianity under severe threat, before triumphing over the pagans. The organizatoin of the church, its literacy and its alliance with the likes of Charlemagne allowed Latin Christendom to become self-consciously synonymous with western civilization.
The concept of western civilization as a continuous (if occasionally interrupted) chain of history was strengthened by renewed interest in both the classical and Renaissance worlds. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British, French, Dutch, and German gentleman-scholars toured the continent and went south to unearth for themselves the wonders of the past.
History is selective depending on the background, and social status of the historian, in the time it is written, in the availability of documents, in its connection to the great themes of the past, and in the possibility of new revelations and discoveries.
If there is not much we can do to alter the course of our journey through the past, we should at least be aware of the invisible forces that guide our footsteps.
—The contents of this page have been excerpted
from the Prologue of Civilization, a New History of the Western World
by Roger Osborne, Pegasus Books, New York, 2006, pages 1-19.
A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.
—Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
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