Culture and Civilization

Volume 4, Religion in the Shadows of Modernity

Irving Horowitz, Irving Louis Horowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351524346
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología cultural y social

Debates on the meaning of religious belief in an advanced technological age have established the emergence of religion as a fact of daily life. The nineteenth-century imagery of "warfare" between science and religion is long dismissed. Emphasizing this fact of the continuing relevance and importance of religion as a driving force in contemporary life is the stunning emergence on the world scene of militant Muslim beliefs in a period of relatively inactive religious belief elsewhere. In this volume of Culture and Civilization, religion is examined in the context of post-modern societies.

The collection of essays is divided by themes: religions, civilizations, cultures, and the history of ideas. The contributors William Donohue, Simon Kuznets, A. L. Kroeber, Greg Mills, Yoani Sanchez, Murray Weidenbaum, Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Daniel Bell, John W. Gardner, John Charles, and Liu Xiaobo's discuss a variety of topics, with titles including "The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse," "Why is Africa Poor?," "Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba," and the "Economic Structure and the Life of the Jews."

This volume concludes with a grouping of review essays on famous figures ranging from Crane Brinton and Herbert Spencer to Max Gluckman and Hannah Arendt. The volume as a whole projects a sense of the future and avoids hysteria about the past. The contributors have a sharp edge and speak in a critical voice to the dilemmas of the present world order.

1

Christian Sources of Western Civilization

A. L. Kroeber

OUR OWN CIVILIZATION, the Western, grew up largely on the European part of the soil previously occupied by the Roman half of the Hellenic or Greco-Roman or Classical civilization, but with some extensions beyond the former Roman frontier, as in Germany. The time of its beginning may be set somewhere between 500 and 900 A.D.

Toynbee says before 700. One might shade this more narrowly to 650, as the date perhaps marking most closely the nadir of barbarization intervening between the past Classical and the coming Western civilization. Spengler says 900, or sometimes tenth century, in referring to the birth of the Western culture; but with a gestation or “prodromal” period since 500.

In favor of the recognition of such an embryonic stage there are the following facts. By 500 all of the Roman west was in barbarian power and political control, and the old Classical culture was in clear disintegration there; but nothing was yet apparent that was qualitatively suggestive of the future European civilization. However, around 900 or soon after, as Spengler observes, the main modern nationalities of Western Europe emerged: that is, they attained consciousness of themselves as nationalities. The first historical appearance of the French and German languages, as distinct from Latin and from Germanic vernaculars, is in a tenth century record of the Strasbourg oaths which the grandsons of Charlemagne gave each other in 842. Spengler’s prodromal phase of 500-900 has the merit of doing something, conceptually, with Charlemagne’s empire and the so-called Carolingian cultural renaissance. This Carolingian renaissance obviously underlay all Western civilization chronologically; and yet it left so little impression on this civilization as to be puzzling. If it was a revival, how could it have so little permanent effect? Was it therefore perhaps an abortive endeavor rather than an actual revival? In fact, in the century after Charlemagne, everything Carolingian disintegrated¹—the empire with its internationalism as well as much of the meager little rebirth of culture. By contrast, the basic alignments that emerged during the following tenth century—whether national, social, or cultural alignments—have persisted until today under all the enrichments and modifications that have been added to them.

It has always been a question of what the Carolingian empire and unification of western Christian Europe—and this was the only political unification that Europe ever attained!—what Charlemagne’s empire really meant, on long-range view. Apparently its significance lay in its declaration of autonomy. Charles the Great’s empire declared the westerly Greco-Roman civilization definitely dead, and the West now independent of the Byzantine survival of easterly Greco-Roman civilization. Hence the suddenly overt tensions between West and East within the Christian Church at this period.² But the West was still too poor in material wealth and in cultural content to develop a real civilization under Charlemagne. So it had to begin over again, and much less pretentiously, a century or more later when the Carolingian empire had not only fallen to pieces, but had been definitely superseded by the emerged nationalistic consciousness.

Western civilization has throughout remained multinational, “polyphonic and orchestral,” as it then began in the 900’s. It is of very real significance that Charlemagne’s unification has never yet been successfully imitated in Europe, though Spaniards, French and Germans³ successively have tried; and Russians are apparently still trying. Precedent is therefore against the Russians, if they belong to the Western civilization. Whereas if they represent an essentially separate civilization, as Danilevsky contended, there is no precedent for or against their prospects. In that case, the “youth” of Russian culture may mean either that it possesses greater vigor and strength than the older Western civilizations, or that it is characterized by greater immaturity and fumbling.

The basic multinationalism of Western civilization is also evident from the fact that it had hardly begun to crystallize out when, within a generation of the year 1000, there were added to the French and German consciousnesses a further series of emerging nationalities: Polish,⁴ Hungarian, Scandinavian, and English,⁵ which have persisted.⁶

We may therefore conclude that at some time between 500 and 650 or 700 the essential detachment of western Europe from Greco-Roman civilization became effective; that from 650-700 on this autonomy began to come into the consciousness of western societies and that these tended to assume first political cohesion and then national scope; and that around 900 or 950 the framework of the new culture began to fill, however humbly at first, with cultural content of its own creation. By 1100, with the Crusades, the youthful Western society had already become aggressive against the societies of the Byzantine and Arab Islamic civilizations—impracticably aggressive as regards permanent expansion, it is true, but nevertheless actually successful for a time.

Western civilization is at the moment the dominant one in the world. Its ending has been repeatedly forecast.

This Western civilization is at the moment the dominant one in the world. Its ending has been repeatedly forecast: as follows. By Danilevsky, it was forecast to happen soon, whenever Russia shall become consolidated; because the West is already overripe. By Spengler, the prediction is for about 2200, Caesarism and the “civilization” phase having been entered on around 1800. By Toynbee, the end threatens and is indicated by numerous warning symptoms. This end may possibly happen soon, but it is by no means inevitable, because ultimate resources are moral and religious, and are therefore beyond real predictability. For my part, I refrain from long-range prophecy. It is tempting but usually unprofitable, practically as well as intellectually: its emotional repercussions tend to be high, its probability values low.

The course of this Western civilization of ours is remarkable for the strong degree of difference of content between its two main phases, which are usually called the Mediaeval and the Modern. The first, which culminated in the twelve hundreds and really ended soon after 1300, is characterized by the power and success of the Church. It was in the High Mediaevalism of the West that Christianity reached the crowning success of its career. Christianity at that time achieved an organization and domination of society that were not only extraordinarily effective but were culturally productive and concordant. Mediaeval philosophy, architecture, and art are thoroughly religious and at the same time embody secular values of a high order. Other branches of Christianity—Greek, Slavic, and Nestorian—were equally sincere and fervid, but they failed to produce even rudiments of anything comparable either aesthetically or intellectually.

Around 1300 and the ensuing decades the tight High Mediaeval Christian frame began to be unable to contain any longer the cultural creativity that was swelling within it. The earlier satisfaction afforded by mere existence within this frame and the essential indifference or hostility to everything outside it now commenced to disappear. Knowledge of what lay beyond, knowledge of the past, and secular knowledge became more and more sought. Religious feeling weakened, at least relatively. The Church as an organization fell into troubles: there happened the attempt of Anagni, the Popes at Avignon, the Great Papal Schism, the Hussite Revolt, and the Councils that failed to result in reforms. Systematic scholastic philosophy virtually died as knowledge increased by leaps and bounds—knowledge of the world as well as inventions and technologies: gunpowder, printing, oil painting, seaworthy ships, spectacles, clocks, playing cards, Arabic numerals and algebra, casting of iron and other metallurgical processes. Not one of these had anything to do with religion or furthered religion, but they all enriched the civilization and the life under it. The Gothic arts continued for a time, on momentum. But they showed definite symptoms of decadence: flamboyancy, perpendicularity; or they were applied secularly to guild halls and tomb monuments, not to cathedrals. The Mediaeval profane vernacular literatures, lyrical and narrative, now became arid, allegorizing, or extravagant. Even the political structure shook. The monarchies receded from such mild strength as they had attained in the thirteenth century. Towns grew in wealth and strength but also in embroilments; feudalism was losing its hold, but no substitute for it had forged into consciousness. Politically, the two centuries were centrifugal and disruptive; in Spain and Germany as in France and England royal power receded.

Only northern Italy now marched forward to an affirmation and realization of cultural achievements; while in France, the Low Countries, Germany, and more or less in all the rest of Europe, culture, though growing, was at the same time floundering and sliding as a result of the progressive weakening of the traditional Mediaeval patterns. This was the period of the north Italian city-states; of growth, of commerce, and industry, as well as of applied science—spectacles, chimneys, “Arabic” arithmetic and calculation. It was also the time of great Italian literature, painting, architecture, sculpture, then of the foundation of great Italian music—in short, the Renaissance. The beginnings are around 1300, with Dante and Giotto as the symbols—both still Mediaeval in their thinking and feeling, but also initiators of a long line of illustrious personalities whose surge did not begin to enter full culmination until 1500 and was two centuries more in subsiding. This stretch of Italian greatness was achieved wholly without national political unity or military triumphs. It was briefer and more localized than the Mediaeval phase, and thus is perhaps more usefully construed as an interphase transition than as a phase in its own right.

Around 1550 or 1600—perhaps 1575 will serve fairly as a precise definition, though nothing of this sort occurs without gradation—the second main movement in the European symphony began to be played when the other West European countries drew abreast of Italy in wealth, refinement of manners, the arts, and the sciences, after having politically consolidated themselves into organized nation-states. This consolidation gave them a massive weight which before long put them culturally ahead, as regards to productivity, of the free but fragmented Italian cities, or of the “duchies” into which most of these had been transformed or absorbed. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, and France successively achieved this new phase of activity. Meanwhile, with the Reformation, a degree of ideological and emotional autonomy from Italian supremacy was also attained by the northerly nations. This autonomy aided the northern nations, such as Germany, that remained nationalistically or culturally backward, to lay a foundation for greater accomplishment in a subsequent century.

Still later, after about 1750, industrialism, enormously rapid accumulation of wealth, experimental science, democracy and liberalism developed especially in the northwesterly countries, and gave this corner of the continent an increasing precedence of strength, prestige, and influence, in which America came to share and predominate. Now, this shift is fully familiar; also, like everything that touches us immediately, it is difficult to appraise in historical perspective. A complete understanding of this shift, if it could be attained, would no doubt be full of implications as to the future of our Western civilization—as to its “fate.” But that is just what we are not considering at the moment when we are trying to define the known boundaries and organization of our civilization, not to guess or argue its future.

Western Civilization has throughout been multinational and Christian. After a gestational period of some centuries, it entered a first full phase of about four hundred years in which all higher achievements were meshed into religion. This was the time of culmination of not only the church as an ecclesiastical institution but of Christianity as an ideology and affective nexus. There followed a two or two-and-a-half century period of transition in which many or most of the patterns of this first phase were increasingly loosened and softened, while a set of modified or new patterns gradually formed which were to characterize the subsequent second or Modern phase. Creative cultural leadership in both phases was Transalpine, mostly centering in or near France; in the intervening transition time the leadership and influence were strikingly Cisalpine.⁷

Italy as a segment of Western civilization thus culminated while the remainder of the West was formally uncreative due to being in metamorphosis. But, as the northern and western countries got their second phase patterns organized, by about 1575, Italy receded in innovation and influence. Italy’s peculiar role within the civilization seems bound up first with its having been the political and prestige center of the last phase of the preceding Greco-Roman civilization, with consequent tendency to retain remnants or remembrances of that civilization. Second, Italian particularity seems connected with having, perhaps on account of its retentions, resisted with a measure of success full acceptance of the High Mediaeval patterns with their barbarian Transalpine provenience and “Gothic” feudal and non-Classical quality. And third, as these patterns were nevertheless at last partly accepted in Italy, but, by a sophisticated population which had never wholly left its towns, they blended with the vestiges and occasional recoveries⁸ of the former civilization on the same soil, and above all with the now unleashed creative energies of the people. This put Italy transiently into the van of Western civilization. At about the time when the impulses of this spurt were waning, the Transalpine peoples had begun to formulate their new patterns—such as a dissenting cast of anticlerical Christianity, geographical discovery and expansion, centralized monarchy of power, and noticeable accumulation of wealth. Blending these with what they took over from High Renaissance Italy in patterns of manners and art—as Italy had previously accepted some of their Mediaevalism—these northern and western nations attained to the full second phase of Western civilization. This phase in turn, from about 1750-1800 on, spread toward the margins of Europe—Germany, Scandinavia, the Slavic areas—and into the Americas.

The course of a large multinational civilization may be more complex than a smooth rise, culmination, and decline.

If this characterization of the salient physiognomy of Western culture history is essentially correct, it has certain implications of a general and theoretical nature. Such general implications may be more important than even successful close-up predictions would be. The implications may in fact be what in the end will contribute most to our capacity to predict reliably. What this formulation shows is that the course of a large multinational civilization may be more complex than a smooth rise, culmination, and decline; that it may come in successive surges or pulses—what we have called phases. It is further plain, so far as the preceding formulation is sound, that the intervals between the pulses may be, at least over most of the area of the civilization, periods of pattern dissolution, preparatory to pattern reconstruction. Consequently, even if the mid-twentieth century suffered from a breakdown of its cultural patterns—as is so often alleged and perhaps with most force and reason as regards the arts—the question still remains open whether such a breakdown is part of the final death of our civilization, as is sometimes feared or asserted; or if, on the contrary, it is merely symptomatic of an inter-pulse reconstruction. In the former case, Spengler’s prophecies and Toynbee’s fears would be right; ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Editorial Board Members
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• 1 Christian Sources of Western Civilization
• 2 The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse
• 3 Economic Structure and the Life of the Jews
• 4 Why is Africa Poor?
• 5 Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba
• 6 Regime Change and Democracy in China
• 7 Shifting Balances between Business and Government in the United States
• 8 The Democratic Warrior and his Social Identity
• 9 Reconstruction of Liberal Education
• 10 The Anti-leadership Vaccine
• 11 The Social Context of Medicine
• 12 Crane Brinton, the New History, Retrospective Sociology, and The Jacobins
• 13 Herbert Spencer and the Science of Ethics
• 14 Hannah Arendt as Radical Conservative
• 15 Max Gluckman, The Politics of Law and Ritual in Tribal Society