Matt Simonton on "Western Civilization"

Here's a thread of tweets recently posted by Matt Simonton, a very good
ancient historian at Arizona State University.  His reference to the
Spartan rhetra brings to mind the Frankfurt School's studies of the
"conditioning" of democratic citizens by corporate / authoritarian
entities *even
in modern democracies*, something NAS and the "Coddling the American Mind"
folks assiduously ignore.  Dan-el Padilla Peralta's reference to the "well
intentioned compliments for 'grace' and 'composure' under fire [that] only
serve to underscore the domestication of brown bodies" captures the
contradictions of our condition.

See Simonton <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthreadreaderapp.com%2Fthread%2F1101538282318442496.html&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C22f080e7ed4143a5710108d69f05eada%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636871245105748941&amp;sdata=Nv76T5p5tzvXjNEiMgiWzT%2Ftg4b%2BbwGtezuot67e%2F6o%3D&amp;reserved=0>
 below.

Dan

A short thread on the "Classics and its relation to 'Western Civilization'"
brouhaha. There's already been enough said about the relatively recent
development of the concept of "Western Civilization" and its ideological
uses. I would focus instead on relating past and present. /1

As @Twhittermarsh has already said, most classicists seek to historicize the
ancient past, i.e. to understand it on its own terms and not in the service
of some teleological argument that makes the present the straightforward
inheritor of the Greeks and Romans. /2

I wholeheartedly agree: One thing that emerges rather organically, I would
say, from having my students read the ancient sources is their sense of
alienation from the Greeks and their "weird" practices (bloody animal
sacrifice, pederasty, etc.). /3

This kind of distancing ("the past is another country" etc) seems to me one
purpose of any good history course: to "de-naturalize" or make unfamiliar
something the students previously thought straightforward. /4

By the same token, if something does appear at first glance familiar, it is
useful to dwell on it and work through the complexity. My students see, eg,
the Spartan Great Rhetra as a kind of precursor to US divided government.
But is it? /5

The Rhetra (eternally argued over by scholars, of course) encourages, IMO,
a *system in which the mass of citizen males in assembly are conditioned to
give assent to policies devised by an elite class (gerontes + kings). *The
US Constitution differs in important ways. /6

And in any case it is important to highlight the extent to which the US
founders intentionally rejected ancient Greek models of government, finding
them too direct and unstable. The Rhetra and the Athenian constitution
played almost no role in drafting the Constitution. /7

In part, of course, because the Aristotelian Ath Pol had not yet been
discovered. But even if it had, I seriously doubt the Founders would have
found it attractive. And this gets to the supposed inheritance of Greek
ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy by "the West." /8

IMO, any account that tries to draw a straightforward connection is
seriously lacking in historical accuracy and nuance. Early modern
republicans did not typically look to the Greeks for models (Rousseau and
Sparta being an exception). /9

Indeed, the whole idea that "the West" unproblematically took up the Greek
mantle of democracy is just wrong: (Greek) democracy was largely a dirty
word until people like George Grote began its rehabilitation in the mid-19th
century. (@Kleisthenes2 knows this well.) /10


In general, see Jennifer Tolbert Roberts' book on "Athens on Trial": it was
a long, hard process for the idea of the Athenian democracy being a
positive model to gain acceptance, and for quite contingent historical and
political reasons. /11
This brings me to a final point: proponents of a "pro-Western Civilization"
narrative in Classics seem to me to engage in a rather sloppy, selective
reading of the historical record, in which
"freedom+democracy+capitalism+the West" comes in a too-neat and tidy
package. /12

After all, for the century between 1815 and 1915, the Conservative Order in
Europe defended what it thought of as the values of Christendom (God,
family, property, monarchy) against the rising tide of liberalism,
sovereign parliaments, written constitutions, etc. /13

To say nothing of socialism! Which even liberal orders attempted for a long
time to stave off using property requirements for the franchise. Universal
male suffrage was only begrudgingly bestowed. There is nothing inherent in
"the West" that made this inevitable. /14

And anyway, as I hope I've already made clear, there were developments in
Europe that the proponents of "Western Civ" conspicuously leave out:
socialism, first and foremost, but also feminism, nationalism, even
environmentalism, etc. /15

One can assess these developments however one wants. But whittling them
away to leave a supposedly natural core of "freedom+democracy+capitalism"
is a political choice, not one attuned to the complexity of history. /16

What does it mean for these proponents that some of these other
developments in European history, such as national, racism, and fanatical
anti-Bolshevism, led "the West" to tear itself (and many others) apart in
the conflagration that was WWII? /17

What does it mean to them that an ideology of unchecked economic growth,
which (ironically) usually refuses to consider the environment as a limited
resource, now threatens to degrade the entire planet? /18

The world is too complicated, and the stakes are too high, to formulate a
self-serving conception of "the West," its achievements, and its supposed
connection to Classical antiquity and to pat ourselves on the back. In fact
it protests too much. /19

What a lot of these proponents seem to want, IMO, is reassurance that their
own particular (assumed) identity remains valid, in fact remains at the top
of the political pecking order, in a time of uncertainty and change. /20

In that respect the demand that Classicists somehow make clear and even
celebrate the present's debt to the ancient past strikes me as reactionary
in the most literal sense: they are reacting (negatively) to a world in
which other groups and identities are gaining a voice. /21

And so for me, this demand for reassurance of the continuity between
"Western civilization" and the Classics strikes me as childish, and also as
a sign of fragility. But most importantly for me, it strikes me as very bad
history. /end

(Yes, I understand the Conservative Order was somewhat on the retreat after
1848, but these sentiments remained strong down to WWI and played out in
different countries and empires differently and with varying degrees of
success.)

On this notion of the late and politically motivated emergence of "Western
Civilization," the diligent research in progress of Rebecca Futo Kennedy
(@kataplexis) has already been very illuminating.

A final thought: this thread, fwiw, benefited from the work of (i.a.)
Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Simon Schama, Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Evans,
Donald Sassoon, and Ian Kershaw. So it's not that historians aren't reading
and appreciating European history: just different lessons drawn.