Re: Matt Simonton on "Western Civilization"

Addendum:

“Mere fig leaves for the new repressive social order” brings to mind
Ethan Shagan’s fine *Rule of Moderation
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2Fu%2F0%2F%25E2%2580%259CMere%2520fig%2520leaves%2520for%2520the%2520new%2520repressive%2520social%2520order%25E2%2580%259D%2520brings%2520to%2520mind%2520Ethan%2520Shagan%25E2%2580%2599s%2520fine%2520_Rule%2520of%2520Moderation%2520Violence%2C%2520Religion%2520and%2520the%2520Politics%2520of%2520Restraint%2520in%2520Early%2520Modern%2520England_%2520%2520%25E2%2580%259CWhy%2520was%2520it%2520that%2520whenever%2520the%2520Tudor-Stuart%2520regime%2520most%2520loudly%2520trumpeted%2520its%2520moderation%2C%2520the%2520regime%2520was%2520at%2520its%2520most%2520vicious%3F%25E2%2580%259D%2520%2520(Recommended%2520by%2520a%2520historian%2520after%2520he%2520heard%2520David%2520Brooks%2520speak%2520on%2C%2520you%2520guessed%2520it%2C%2520moderation.)%2520%2520https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2Fcore%2Fbooks%2Frule-of-moderation%2F07250E449FA7573E67C7C96585D411C9%25202%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf73d2a9cbd3e44214d7008d69f1b5829%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636871337136467573&amp;sdata=mjhA6CVzhSKwMtcelLbmQz6jcVs19Qapd8ywQkKsYF8%3D&amp;reserved=0>**Violence,
Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England <“Mere fig
leaves for the new repressive social order” brings to mind Ethan Shagan’s
fine _Rule of Moderation Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint
in Early Modern England_ “Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime
most loudly trumpeted its moderation, the regime was at its most vicious?”
(Recommended by a historian after he heard David Brooks speak on, you
guessed it, moderation.)
https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2Fcore%2Fbooks%2Frule-of-moderation%2F07250E449FA7573E67C7C96585D411C9&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf73d2a9cbd3e44214d7008d69f1b5829%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636871337136467573&amp;sdata=d%2BEKdJ3ig2Cr%2B%2FEAlaOSPi1%2BqpIPSRpsYAQ7YUIn7FA%3D&amp;reserved=0
2/>:*



"Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime most loudly trumpeted its
moderation, the regime was at its most vicious?”



(Recommended by a historian after he heard David Brooks speak on, you
guessed it, moderation.)



Dan

On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 6:54 AM DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
wrote:

> 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%7Cf73d2a9cbd3e44214d7008d69f1b5829%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636871337136467573&amp;sdata=UH5xWfqcpsyxEVkhl1YmaERlAPPY%2FvxhZ4raRuR9Xh0%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.
>
>
>
>