West
The West is an expression that arose in the XVI century to refer to the cultures of Christian base located in the western part of Eurasia and by extension used to also refer to those countries that, in the process of European expansion, adopted their culture (Western culture) and formed the so-called Western civilization or bloc. Its relationship with the geographical location is uncertain and relative, varying according to the times and international politics, being able to cover from a limited region of Europe, to a wide area that includes the entire European and American continents, considerable parts of Oceania and Asia and some countries in Africa. During the Cold War, "the West" was identified with capitalism confronted with the communist world. Today the "West" is understood to mean the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, and those countries that are under its sphere of influence.
There is no single scope of the concept of the West, varying considerably according to the time and the person or culture that uses it. In its most restrictive meaning, it is limited to the western region of Europe, as it was defined during the European Middle Ages, grouping the monarchies that were under the political and religious command of the Catholic Church. In its broadest sense, it includes practically the entire world today, transformed by European culture through the process of Westernization.
Western historiography usually identifies the foundations of Western civilization with the birth of Afro-Asiatic historical societies (with writing), beginning with the Sumerian cities of the 4th millennium BC. C., and its extension to the Ancient Near East, especially to Ancient Egypt; culminating in the Greco-Roman or Classical culture of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
The idea of the West is opposed to the idea of «East», used to encompass a very diverse group of civilizations or cultures of Asia; However, that of the West does not include other civilizations located in the western region of the world, such as African civilizations or native American cultures; nor does it even properly include many civilizations of ancient and early medieval Europe itself, such as the "northern barbarians", the Vikings or the Magyars until their incorporation into medieval Latin Christianity. The West-East opposition is expressed in the concept of "Orientalism". », the Western stereotype of those other cultures. The Slavic case, especially that of Russia, is peculiar in that it constitutes an intermediate in tension between the West and the East.
It is usual to identify the West in terms of religion and religious struggles, coinciding with the spread of Christianity or the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is common to oppose the notion of the West to Islam; but also with only a part of Christianity: Western or Latin Christianity (Catholics and Protestants), as opposed to Eastern Christianity (Orthodox).
Some authors use the category "Far West" to refer to the Antilles and Latin America without including indigenous cultures, whose origins predate the European conquest and colonization of America. For other authors, Latin America it became a "Third World of the West" due to its generally anti-Western sociopolitical position at the regional and international level. For this reason, Spain and Portugal are classified as the only Spanish-Portuguese or Iberophone countries in the West. On the contrary, there is the case of the Anglosphere (by Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand with the United Kingdom) and in the Francophonie by Quebec (Canada) with France, since they are ex-colonial countries and territories that share Societies with a European demographic majority without indigenous influence and are therefore classified under the fixed definition of the West.
In liberation philosophy, «the western» is often distinguished from «the westernized», while the category of the North-South divide (or «global North» and «global South») is used to specify the inconspicuous components of domination and dependency in the category "West".
In Catholic thought it was usual to distinguish the categories of Eastern Church and Western Church. However, from the middle of the XX century, Latin American liberation theology developed a third category defined as «Latin American Church», with its own theological, cultural, political and anthropological characteristics, while Pope Francis differentiated the "Church of the South" from its eastern and western precedents.
Origin of the term
The term "West" arose as a counterpart to "East", which Luther first used in his translation of the Bible, and was introduced into the German language by Kaspar Hedio in 1529.
Western
Until the 17th century, the narration of world history was carried out in Europe in Eurocentric terms, in the same way that each civilization had done it on its own terms, for example, sinocentric in the Chinese civilization. Thus, when Cristóbal Cellarius proposed a periodization, he considered the events and processes of European history to establish the dividing milestones of the Ancient, Middle, and Modern ages. But, simultaneously with the European geographical discoveries and the establishment of the first world-system, introspection and self-awareness of the specificity of European civilization in the face of "otherness" from the rest of the world, both in a positive and negative sense: along with imperialism and racism, came the appreciation and even the defense of the colonized and the criticism of colonization by the colonizers themselves (“myth of the noble savage”, “controversial of the natural ones").
Gobineau distinguished seven civilizations in history, including Western civilization; not precisely on an equal footing, since he explicitly considered the "inequality of human races" (1853-1855). The main European powers established in the XIX century their indisputable economic and military superiority (Industrial Revolution, Gunboat Diplomacy) over the whole of the world; and even the independence of the new nations of the American continent, carried out by the local European elites, reinforced the same idea: The idea of progress that emerged with the Enlightenment, and even the extension of evolutionary theories outside their biological sphere (the so-called Darwinism social), seemed to identify with the imposition of Western civilization on others; even more so, with the triumph of the same European concept of "civilization" over other necessarily lower degrees of social development ("savagery" and "barbarism"). This imposition was not seen as a reward, but as a responsibility (“the white man's burden”).
The era of optimism came to an end with the Belle Époque and armed peace. The outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918), initially among enthusiastic nationalist mobilizations that silenced the minority pacifist protests, quickly gave way to awareness of the unprecedented disaster that it brought with it: an apparent suicide of civilization. In this environment Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West (1918-1923), where he conceives civilizations as closed entities that are born, grow, fight for survival and die, clearly distinguishing the Western world from the world. Hellenic. His ideas were adopted and perfected by Arnold J. Toynbee in his great treatise A Study of History (12 volumes, 1933-1961, revised in 1972). its heyday in the Middle Ages.
The nineteenth-century concept of civilization (which, in Hegelian terms, had reached the realization of the “absolute spirit” in history: the national or liberal state –for Hegel, in its Prussian version–) was challenged by Soviet totalitarianisms and fascist, and therefore that alleged "end of history" was destroyed. For Ortega y Gasset it was the time of The Rebellion of the Masses (1929) and The Dehumanization of Art (1925). The crisis of 1929, the Second World War (1939-1945) and the Cold War (1945-1989) successively put the entire world in trances that were perceived as possible apocalyptic catastrophes. Decolonization and Third Worldism again questioned the centrality of the West in terms of civilization.
In 1989, the collapse of the communist bloc and the emergence of a new era of globalization brought to the fore the Hegelian concept of the “end of history” in a single world civilization, reworked by Francis Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992). In response to this, the Toynbean conception of a more or less closed West and united by a Christian and European cultural tradition, was resumed by Samuel Huntington in his thesis of the "clash of civilizations" (1993), which will acquire a new popularity after the attacks of September 11, 2001 provoked by Islamic radicals.
Six are, according to Harvard professor (Niall Ferguson), the reasons that established that predominance (of Western culture): the competition that tied the fragmentation of Europe in so many independent countries; the scientific revolution, since all the great achievements in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology from the centuryXVII they were Europeans; the rule of law and representative government based on the right of property that emerged in the Anglo-Saxon world; modern medicine and its prodigious advance in Europe and the United States; the consumer society and the irresistible demand for goods that accelerated in a vertiginous way industrial development, and, above all, the ethics of work that, as Max Weber described, gave capitalism in the Protestant realm a stable exercise...
but in the book of Niall Ferguson (Civilization: the West and the rest, 2012) there is an absence that, I think, would greatly counteract its elegant pessimism. I am referring to the critical spirit, which, in my opinion, is the main distinctive feature of Western culture, the only one that, throughout its history, has had in its heart so many detractors and contestants as valetors, and among those, a good number of its most lucid and creative thinkers and artists. Thanks to this ability to skin itself continuously and relentlessly, Western culture has been able to renew itself without truce, to correct itself every time the mistakes and jars grown in its womb threatened to sink it. Unlike the Persians, the Ottomans, the Chinese, who, as Ferguson shows, despite having reached very high quotas of progress and might, entered into irremediable decay for their ensimism and impermeability to criticism, the West — better said, the spaces of freedom that their culture allowed— always had, in their philosophers, in their poets, in their scientists and, of course, contest their political institutions. And this permanent contradiction, instead of weakening it, has been the secret weapon that allowed him to win battles that seemed already lost.
Mario Vargas Llosa, Apogee and Decay of the West.
Western or Westernized countries
The term western civilization is a concept that, depending on the context in which it is used, can include or exclude certain countries for political, cultural or historical reasons, for which reason there are different meanings of what countries, nations or geographical areas belong to it.
In Ancient Greece, the world was divided between the Greek peoples and the barbarians. This division became a geographical definition according to the territories located in the western zone (Greece, the islands of the Aegean Sea and Magna Graecia), in contrast to the eastern of Egypt., Anatolia and Persia, for example. The Medical Wars, therefore, are considered one of the first acts of war between the West and the East.
The Mediterranean basin, unified by the Roman Empire, maintained an east-west division, between the western peoples of Latin predominance, as opposed to the eastern Mediterranean, where the Greek culture predominated. Diocletian divided the empire into two regions in 292. The eastern part later evolved into the Byzantine Empire, while the west collapsed due to barbarian invasions, giving rise to various kingdoms under the power of the Papacy, mainly.
The division that occurred in Christianity maintained the division of the East with the West during the Middle Ages. Thus, a feeling of Christianity was born, which took hold during the Crusades against the Arabs and Turks. However, the Byzantines were also considered a different culture by Westerners, despite their common origin, due to their break with the Roman patriarchy after the Eastern Schism, a distinction that is highlighted to this day and from the which its greatest expression is the branch of Christianity that predominates in these countries, the Orthodox Church (and its different patriarchates, usually divided by nation), unlike Catholic-Protestant Europe, considered part of the West.
The conquest of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania by the Europeans placed these peoples under the religious and cultural control of Christianity and the civilization of the conquerors in the form of colonialism. The decolonization processes had different effects; from the United States, which became the leading power in the West, to Cuba, Vietnam, India or China, which openly located themselves outside the West.
During the so-called Cold War, a new concept emerged that represented the metaphorical division of the world into three worlds: the first world, made up of NATO member states and United States allies, like South Korea, Israel, Japan or Thailand; the second world, made up of the member states of the Warsaw Pact and the allies of the Soviet Union, such as Cuba or Mongolia, plus China and other Asian socialist states, such as Cambodia, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam; and the third world, which refers to the states that were not aligned with either of the two blocs, such as Saudi Arabia, Latin America or India.
The partition of the world according to their political alignment, however, produced many contradictions. Thus, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland, considered as part of the first world, remained neutral throughout the period. Finland, which was bordered on the east by the Soviet Union and therefore belonged to its sphere of influence, remained neutral. It was never a socialist state nor did it belong to the Warsaw Pact or the CMEA. Austria also maintained a policy of neutrality from 1955, being west of the Iron Curtain and therefore in the US sphere of influence. Turkey, a member of NATO, could not establish that it was a country of the First World or Western civilization. Thus, the Western world was later defined as the first world, including the exceptions of the Western Bloc countries and excluding Turkey.
After the end of the Cold War, the use of the term second world fell into disuse, while the two other worlds evolved into other concepts. The first world continued to designate the same group of states, but according to economic rather than political criteria. Instead, the third world became synonymous with poor and developing countries.
From a cultural and sociological perspective, Western civilization tends to be defined based on some fundamental elements, such as Greek philosophy, Roman law, Christian religion, Renaissance art, and Enlightenment and "modern" thought. Colonialism, the universalist vocation and the global expansion of Western languages and culture also play an important role in defining the West. Some categories such as liberal democracy, capitalism, socialism, individualism, the rule of law, the welfare state, human rights and feminism, have a strong relationship with the notion of the West.
Arts and culture
The works that are traditionally done on art history normally have as their object of study the evolution of Western art history, the result of Eurocentrism. These works tend to even exclude some artistic periods such as Byzantine or classical Arabic, even when part of these were developed in European territory. This study, however, considering Western culture as a fundamental element of contemporary life, is necessary in order to understand the scope of art around the world, receiving influences and being influenced by other movements.
Without wanting to carry out an exhaustive analysis of this civilization, we can identify the following characteristics:
- Religion: Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism) and to a lesser extent Judaism.
- classic legacy: Hellenic philosophy, Roman law and Christianity.
- Indo-European languages: the vast majority derive from Latin or have their influence, having a smaller contribution from the Greek. Romance languages, Greek languages, Germanic languages and Slavic languages stand out, even if there are exceptions such as: Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Greenland or Basque.
- separation between Religion and the State.
- the rule of law. The concept that respect for laws is one of the foundations of society is a legacy of the Romans.
- the strength of civil society.
- institutions and institutional memory.
- individualism.
Studies on art history, on the other hand, tend to focus on painting, architecture and sculpture, leaving aside other branches such as literature, music, goldsmithing, ballet, theater, cinema, crafts and photography, which are studied in more specialized jobs.
The cultural heritage of ancient Greece and Rome in general
Western culture is linked to ancient Greece and Rome. His ideals of beauty and art had their roots there. His philosophy was based on that of Aristotle and Plato. Its literature, above all European poetry and drama, grew out of ancient Greco-Roman traditions. Since the Middle Ages, Europe and later America have turned to Greece and Rome for instruction and inspiration.
The Greek and Roman literary heritage
Roman literature did not cease to exert influence during the Middle Ages. The works of Virgil, Ovid, Horace and Cicero continued to be read. This influence increased in the 14th and XV, when a greater number of Roman works were known; At that same historical moment, the surviving literature of Greece was gradually being recovered.
Study and imitation of Greek and Roman art
In literature, as in other fields (especially sculpture), Western medieval or Renaissance artists had the advantage of being able to study and, if they wanted, copy the models of Antiquity. They had before them the authentic poems or statues of that time. The same was not the case with music.