Transcription
Civilization. Western Civilization. It has existed for a while, but suddenly everyone is talking about it. Some yearn to save it; others would love to see it disappear. But what exactly is Western Civilization? Is it the great cathedrals of Europe or the Nazi concentration camps? Is it the freedom guaranteed by the US Constitution or slavery? Life-saving medicines or toxic gases?
The left likes to focus on what is bad--genocide, slavery, destruction of the environment. But these aspects have been present in all civilizations, from the earliest times. The positive aspects are unique to the West. Religious tolerance, the abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method: these are achievements of a scope and grandeur that only the West can claim.
These are not the only accomplishments that make the West special and uniquely successful. With the evolution of Western thought, the rights of women and minorities were guaranteed, billions of people escaped poverty, and most of the modern world was invented. Progress has not been a straight line, of course. But the panorama of history is clear. The most obvious proof is that the world is predominantly Western. And, with rare exceptions, the parts that are not, aspire to be.
Why? Why has Western Civilization been so successful? There are many reasons, but the best place to start is with the teachings and philosophies that arose in two ancient cities: Jerusalem and Athens. Jerusalem represents the religious revelation expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition: the beliefs that a good God created an ordered universe and that this God demands moral behavior from his supreme creation, man.
The other city, Athens, represents reason and logic as expressed by the great Greek thinkers Plato, Aristotle, and many others. These two ways of thinking--revelation and reason--live in constant tension. The Judeo-Christian religion postulates that there are some fundamental truths delivered to us by a transcendent being. We did not invent these truths; we received them from God. The rules He gave us are vital for building a functional and moral civilization, and the path to a happy life.
Greek thought postulates that we only achieve truth through observation, testing, and measurement. It is not faith, but facts, that guide our understanding and our exploration of the universe. Western Civilization, and only Western Civilization, found a way to balance religious belief and human reason. This is how this balance works.
The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that God created an ordered universe and that we have an obligation to try to make the world better. This gives us purpose and indicates that history is always advancing. Most pagan religions taught the opposite: that the universe is illogical and random, and that history is cyclical. History repeats itself indefinitely--and in this case, why bother innovating or creating something new?
Secondly, the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that every human being is created in the image of God; this means that the life of every individual is infinitely valuable. This seems self-evident to us now, but only because we have lived with this belief for a long time. The most natural belief is that the strong should subjugate the weak--which is exactly what people did in virtually every society throughout history. Only by recognizing the divine in others do we leave behind this amoral thinking and concern ourselves with human rights, democracy, and the free market that characterize the West.
But the Judeo-Christian religion did not build our modern society alone. We also need Greek reason to teach us objective observation: that man has the capacity to seek answers beyond revelation. Greek reason brought us the notion of natural law: the idea that we can discover the natural purpose--the telos--of everything in creation by observing its character. Human beings were created with the unique capacity of reason; therefore, our telos is reason. By investing so much in reason, Greek thought became an integral part of the Western mission.
This is expressed most perfectly in the American Revolution, where the Founding Fathers took the best of European Enlightenment, with its roots in Greek thought, and the best Judeo-Christian practices, with its roots in the Bible, and fused them creating a completely new political philosophy. Without Judeo-Christian values, we fall into scientific materialism--the belief that physical matter is the only reality--and therefore also fall into nihilism--the belief that life has no meaning, that we are mere star dust in a cold universe. Without Greek reason, we fall into fanaticism--the belief that fundamentalist adherence to principles that cannot be proven is the only possible path in search of meaning.
The Soviet Union, Communist China, and other socialist tyrannies rejected faith and murdered 100 million people in the 20th century. Most of the Muslim world embraced faith but abandoned reason. It is worth remembering that when the Muslim world embraced Greek reason between the 8th and 14th centuries, they became a leading center in scientific development. So, again, we need both. Jerusalem and Athens. Revelation and reason.
But many still reject both. They are people who call themselves "progressives." Ironically, they want to take us back to the past, to a time when men were governed neither by reason nor by faith, but by feelings, therefore back to a time of moral chaos and disorder, of feelings that override facts. It would be a fatal mistake to follow the "progressives." Stay with Athens and Jerusalem.
I am Ben Shapiro, editor of "The Daily Wire" and author of "The Right Side of History" for Prager University.