Civilization ‒ Commonplace References
The thread of 'civilization' in A Whirld of Words
Excerpted from A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary. Find the LINK to the Introduction and WORKS CITED below.
civilization
the later medieval library system was neither a survival nor a revival, but a spontaneous generation of the new Western civilization
(Thompson 1939) p. 14
if we contemplate a savage nation in any part of the globe, a supine indolence and a carelessness of futurity will be found to constitute their general character. In a civilized state, every faculty of man is expanded and exercised; and the great chain of mutual dependence connects and embraces the several members of society
(Gibbon 1983) v. 1, p. 193
in every experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when counteracted by great public calamities and by bad institutions, to carry civilization rapidly forward
(Macaulay 1966) p. 209
of all the inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species
(Macaulay 1966) p. 279
our civilization has made its entire journey under two banners: Romanticism for the heart and Idealism for the head
Herzen (Kelly 2016) p. 8
the grand instrument of civilization consists in the division of labor and the combination of efforts
(Comte 1975) p. 22
civilization properly so called consists on one hand in the development of the human mind, on the other in the results of this – namely, the increasing power of man over nature. In other words, the component elements of civilization are science, the fine arts, and industry
(Comte 1975) p. 37
the prolonged existence of any political system is inconceivable, unless it confers supreme power on the predominant social forces, the nature of which is invariably prescribed by the state of civilization
(Comte 1975) p. 37
the kernel of Burkhardt's philosophy: that human civilization, which he valued so highly for its variety and creative strength, is in reality a delicate, precarious thing which only an educated ruling class can effectively protect against the revolt of the masses with their numerical strength, their materialism, their indifference to liberty, their readiness to yield to demagogic power
(Burckhardt 1958) p. xiv
the heart of Burckhardt's philosophy – civilization is a delicate and precarious thing which only an educated and perhaps unscrupulously self-preserving hierarchy can protect against the numerical revolt of the masses with their materialism, their indifference to liberty, their ready surrender to demagogic power; and the crises of civilization consist in precisely that revolt of the masses which, however, can never prevail against the strength of conservative institutions unless it is aided from within by moral and intellectual decay
(Trevor-Roper 1957) p. 275
the three chief prizes of modern civilization, liberty of speech, toleration, and equality before the law
(Adams 1887) p. 308
how solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary ‒ but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey ‒ I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail ‒ and behold, civilization is established for ever in the land. But whiskey, you see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work. It always is
(Twain 1994) p. 436
civilization has always claimed that what it wants, and all it wants, and all it values is the truth, and let the results take care of themselves. As usual, civilization is lying; its dearest care from the beginning has been to avoid the truth when it can, and fight it and destroy it when it can’t. And yet the truth is valuable and proves itself so whenever it gets a chance
(Twain 2015) p. 274
the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort
Ortega (Auden and Kronenberger 1962) p. 210
the will to live in common; restrictions, standards, courtesy, indirect methods, justice, reason are all summed up in the word civilization; civilization is nothing else than the attempt to reduce force to being the ultima ratio
(Ortega y Gasset 1961a) p. 57
'the history of civilization, if intelligently conceived, may be an instrument of civilization'
Charles A Beard (Hofstadter 1968) p. 314
the co-operation of regional societies under a common spiritual influence
(Dawson 1978) p. 41
Dives in Hell and Lazarus in Abraham's bosom are centers and types of our civilization; a civilization which tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to make of others mere human machines, must inevitably evolve anarchy and bring destruction
(George 1953) p. 6, 8
every civilization rests on a compulsion to work and a renunciation of instinct and therefore inevitably provokes opposition from those affected by these demands
(Freud 1964) p. 11
we were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become
Benito Mussolini (Hayek 1980) p. 43
civilization rests ultimately on coercion. What holds society together is not the policeman but the good will of common men, and yet that good will is powerless unless the policeman is there to back it up
(Orwell 2008) p. 170
every civilization is a world unto itself, and incommensurable with every other
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 187
the great abysm of pain and commodities that is civilization
(Rexroth 1968) p. 255
civilization is the manifestation of concentrated wealth, accumulated primarily through the exercise of political authority
(Chang 1983) p. 8, 124
civilization, a way of living and an expression of a society characterized by an identifiable pattern, a central style which informed, if not all, yet a great many of its activities, and so revealed, even in its internal tensions, its differences and conflicts, a certain degree of unity of feeling in purpose
(Berlin 2000) p. 18
the idea of the unity of Western civilization with which we are familiar arises from a radical simplification of the past. Europe has always been the scene of more or less deep disunity and of conditions which, to a close observer, must appear chaotic
(Southern 1953) p. 15
America
it is in mandates relating to public education that, from the outset, the original character of American civilization is revealed in the clearest light
(Tocqueville 2003) p. 53
art
art offers substitutive satisfactions for the oldest and still most deeply felt cultural renunciations, and for that reason it serves as nothing else does to reconcile a man to the sacrifices he has made on behalf of civilization
(Freud 1964) p. 18
atavism
if one were to try to reduce to a formula what Heine extrapolated from his apprehension of Saint-Simonianism, the most important idea would be, I think, the end of scarcity. What he understood from the orientation on technology and industry was that a stage of human potential had been reached in which society no longer had to be organized, as it always had been heretofore, on the premise that the goods of the earth could not possibly satisfy the needs and desires of everyone, that Malthusian gloom that caused economics to be called the ‘dismal science’. Up to now the logic of political organization and religious consolation had been that the basic material desires of the majority of men could not possibly be satisfied, and yet civilization and morality had to be preserved against the anarchic and revolutionary pressure that this persistent deficit caused. Heine was all for civilization and morality, but he came to believe, with the help of the Saint-Simonians, that the repressive structure was no longer necessary and survived only as an atavism managed in the interest of the privileged. In the modern age there was potentially enough for everyone and the ideology of denial was no longer relevant
(Sammons 1979) p. 165, 166
baroque
in civilizations, as in human beings, recognizable phenomena signalize certain epochs. In periods of transition an inward uneasiness is often expressed by affectations designed to conceal it; baroque performed this function in the civilization of western Europe, bridging the gap between the crude assurance of the Renaissance and the polished assurance of the eighteenth century
(Wedgwood 1989) p. 70
bite the bullet
the Sepoy Mutiny. This massive rebellion lasted almost a year from the first outbreak at Meerut on May 10, 1857, until March 1858, when the siege of Lucknow was lifted. For a short period, the mutineers even captured the capital of the British Raj, Delhi. It was one of the few instances in modern history of a genuine clash of civilizations. The British in India had come to think of themselves as a master race and looked down on the native Indians, both Hindu and Muslim, serving in the British army. They even sent Christian missionaries among the troops to try to convert them. In 1857, when the British introduced one of the earliest versions of the Enfield rifle, the bullets came soaked in grease made from animal fat, including fat from cows and pigs. Cows are sacred to Hindus; pigs are repulsive to Muslims. One of the idiosyncrasies of the ammunition for this particular rifle was that a twist of paper attached at one end had to be bitten off before the gun could be used. Rumors quickly spread among the sepoys that the British were trying to humiliate them by forcing them to violate religious taboos. So when one British commander ordered his troops to bite the bullet, a soldier shot him
(C. Johnson 2004) p. 138
books
books are the carriers of civilization, engines of change, windows on the world; without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill
Barbara W. Tuchman (Bettmann 1987) p. 13
bourgeois
the First World War was the beginning of the end of the bourgeois civilization of Europe
(W. Barrett 1962) p. 33
the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image
(Marx 1969) p. 19, 20, 22
bourgeois mind
undoubtedly the dominant factor of our civilization; the enemy of all believers, students, scholars, soldiers, and saints
(Michel 1987) p. 77
calendar
Julius Caesar’s calendar started on January 1, 45 BC, and remained the standard calendar in Western civilization until 1582, when a slightly modified version known as the Gregorian Calendar was instituted
(Molnar 1999) p. 55
capitalism
capitalism means a scheme of values, and attitude toward life, a civilization – the civilization of inequality and of the family fortune. This civilization is rapidly passing away, however
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 419
Carolingian
the paramount importance of the written word in the Carolingian world; Carolingian civilization was one largely dependent on the written word for its religion, its law, its government, its learning and its recording of the past; the use of the written word gave the Carolingian Empire unity: the elite of the Carolingian world actively participated in literacy as a means of identification, for their own benefit
(McKitterick 1990) p. 297, 318, 324
coercion
there are two widespread human characteristics which are responsible for the fact that the regulations of civilization can only be maintained by a certain degree of coercion – namely, that men are not spontaneously fond of work and that arguments are of no avail against their passions. External coercion gradually becomes internalized
(Freud 1964) p. 6, 13
Communism
Communism will rush in stormily, horribly, bloodily, unjustly, quickly. Amid the thunder and lightning, in the glow of burning palaces, on the ruins of factories and offices new commandments will appear, the strongly inscribed features of a new symbol of faith. The contemporary state way of life with its civilization will die – will be, as Proudhon politely expresses it, liquidated. Are you sorry for civilization? I am sorry for it too. The masses, to whom it gave nothing except tears, need, ignorance, and degradation are not sorry for it
(Herzen 1995) p. 199
Communist Manifesto
the Communist Manifesto is an account nothing short of glowing of the achievements of capitalism; and even in pronouncing pro futuro death sentence on it, Marx never failed to recognize its historical necessity. This may seem to be an exaggeration. But let us quote from the authorized English translation: ‘The bourgeoisie has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals. The bourgeoisie draws all nations into civilization. It has created enormous cities and thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together’
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 7
Constantine
Augustine sees the coming of Constantine as the acme of Roman history. The Roman world achieves its ‘providential’ destiny and becomes the civilizational seedbed for the historical planting of the Christian religion. His reasoning is as follows. In the fourth century, from Constantine to Theodosius and his immediate successors, the religio catholica takes on a particularly imperial aspect
(Camporeale et al. 2014) p. 113, 114
cynic
a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail
(Ortega y Gasset 1961a) p. 81
demagogue
the demagogue has been the great strangler of civilization. Macaulay said, 'in every century the vilest examples of human nature have been among the demagogues'
(Ortega y Gasset 1961b) p. 76
education
the system of education in the early Middle Ages, that is, from the time of Gregory the Great (c. 600) to the intellectual revival of the eleventh century (c. 1050), was a lineal descendant of the education that had been brought to perfection in the ancient classical civilization
(Knowles 1962) p. 59
one of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 152
Eleventh Century
the Germany of the eleventh and even of the twelfth century continued to present the most solid political structure in Europe. For two hundred and fifty years there was a series of emperors who, whatever their lapses and failures, had no rivals among the secular rulers of Europe for largeness of designs, personal grandeur and the respect paid them by their contemporaries. Freedom and lightness ‒ two of the most prominent characteristics of the civilization which was slowly emerging in the eleventh century
(Southern 1953) p. 20, 24
English people
Heinrich von Treitschke would tell his Berlin students, ‘The English think soap is civilization’
(P. Johnson 1991) p. 754
everyone
there are an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the universe, leading to conservative estimates that the number of planets could top 700 quintillion or more. In 1961, the astrophysicist Frank Drake estimated that between 1,000 and 100,000,000 planets in the Milky Way alone probably have some sort of civilization on them. Drake went on to found SETI, the planet’s premier nongovernmental effort to look for alien life. As a 2019 University of Rochester paper explained it, ‘If technologically advanced exo-civilizations are common, then we should already have evidence of their existence either through direct or indirect means’. So where is everyone?
(Ward 2022) p. 285
fear
the deepest passion of the human mind is fear. Fear of the unseen, the spiritual world, represented by the priest; fear of the tangible world represented by the soldier. It is the conflict between these forces which has made civilization
Brooks Adams (Beringause 1955) p. 93
footnote
where civilization survives
(Brodsky 1986) p. 99
Franks
after the end of the Roman empire in the West, it was the Franks who created a new imperial framework there, unifying the north and pushing farther into central Europe than the Romans ever had. Internally, the Franks were politically weak and disunited, but they were still more powerful than their neighbors. They set most of the trends that enabled the Latin West to emerge and recognize itself as a kind of coherent civilization, loosely coordinated to be sure but developing in tandem with the expansion of ‘Frankish’ institutions. This expansion was accomplished in part by conquest and imposition and in part by emulation of Frankish prestige in the periphery. This new Europe was diverse in all ways, but one of the instruments that allowed its component parts to speak to each other and come to a common understanding of their place in the world was the idea of Rome – its empire, history, language, and Church – which functioned as a template coordinating languages, polities, histories, and ethnicities. It was inevitable that a Frank would one day be proclaimed ‘emperor’ in Rome, even if no one in the West knew what that meant, not even Charlemagne himself. It sounded right because it gave a prestigious label to the fact of his overwhelming power. However, in the western empire that he created ‘Roman’ corresponded to no identity – other than the people of the city of Rome – and there were no conventions governing its use. Claims to ‘empire’ petered out in the late ninth century along with the Carolingian dynasty itself
(Kaldellis 2017) p. 57
Gibbon
as one of his most acute modern critics, Mr. Christopher Dawson, has said, Gibbon 'stood on the summit of the Renaissance achievement, and looked back over the waste of history to ancient Rome, as from one mountain top to another. The tragedy for him is the dethronement of a noble and intelligent civilization by force and ignorance. It is the triumph of the illiterate and the irrational that he records and deplores'
(Wedgwood 1989) p. 350
history
the era of agrarian civilizations has dominated conventional accounts of human history. The large-scale rhythms of modern history are shaped less by Malthusian cycles, which were a result of insufficient productivity, than by business cycles, which are generated by overproduction
(Christian 2004) p. 283, 352
human race
the human race was always interesting, and we know, by its past, that it will always continue so. Monotonously. It is always the same; it never changes. Its circumstances change from time to time, for better or worse, but the race’s character is permanent, and never changes. In the course of the ages it has built up several great and worshipful civilizations, and has seen unlooked-for circumstances slyly emerge, bearing deadly gifts which looked like benefits, and were welcomed ‒ whereupon the decay and destruction of each of these stately civilizations has followed. It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. Whenever man makes a large stride in material prosperity and progress, he is sure to think that he has progressed, whereas he has not advanced an inch; nothing has progressed but his circumstances. He stands where he stood before
(Twain 2013) p. 370
humans
human history so far has seen 200,000 years of Homo sapiens and 10,000 years of civilization
(Ord 2020) p. 218
imperialism
imperialism is hard to define but easily recognized. In the words of the early-twentieth-century English political economist John Hobson, imperialists are ‘parasites upon patriotism’. They are the people who anticipate ‘profitable businesses and lucrative employment’ in the course of creating and exploiting an empire. They hold military and civilian posts in the imperial power, trade with the dominated peoples on structurally favorable terms, manufacturing weapons and munitions for wars and police actions, and provide and manage capital for investment in the colonies, semicolonies, and satellites that imperialism creates. The simplest definition of imperialism is the domination and exploitation of weaker states by stronger ones. Numerous sorrows follow from this ancient and easily observable phenomenon. Imperialism is, for example, the root cause of one of the worst maladies inflicted by Western civilization on the rest of the world – namely, racism. Imperialism and militarism are inseparable – both aim at extending domination
(C. Johnson 2004) p. 28, 29, 30
Latin
Latin was the language of law and government, of oratory and history. A long time elapsed before it was capable of dealing with abstract ideas. The words did not exist. The adaptation was completed at last by Cicero. He transmuted Greek conceptions, translated Greek terms and, not least, modified the meaning of many native words. Thus the speech of peasants and soldiers was converted into the vehicle of a world civilization
(Syme 1984) p. 953
the Roman acquaintance with Greek civilization went back a long way. It was broadened and deepened when in the second century BC the imperial Republic defeated and broke the kingdoms founded by the generals of Alexander. Rome emerged as the dominant power in the world ‒ all in the space of fifty-three years, as the historian Polybius was insistent to proclaim. Diverse and fateful perspectives opened. One of them, not under discussion by Romans at the time, was the survival of their language. A conquering people is not always able to preserve it. Think of the helpless Normans who lost their language in France ‒ and for a second time in England. Latin, it is clear, was saved by two potent factors. First, that hard, crude speech had already been shaped and refined, on Greek models, to produce drama and a national epic (prose among this prosaic people took much longer to develop). Second, the Roman performance in law and government, achieved under the guidance of an aristocracy both liberal and cohesive, had nothing to learn from the republics of old Hellas ‒ and the new kingdoms had been shown inadequate. The debt in civilization incurred by the Romans could never be denied, only qualified
(Syme 1988) p. 1
law
horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth
(Milosz 2001) p. 39
liberalism
Hobbes, to a much higher degree than Bacon, for example, is the author of the ideal of civilization. By this very fact he is the founder of liberalism. The right to the securing of life pure and simple – and this right sums up Hobbes’s natural right – has fully the character of an inalienable human right, that is, of an individual’s claim that takes precedence over the state and determines its purpose and its limits; Hobbes’s foundation for the natural-right claim to the securing of life pure and simple sets the path to the whole system of human rights in the sense of liberalism, if his foundation does not actually make such a course necessary. Hobbes differs from developed liberalism only, but certainly, by his knowing and seeing against what the liberal ideal of civilization has to be persistently fought for: not merely against rotten institutions, against the evil will of a ruling class, but against the natural evil of man; in an unliberal world Hobbes forges ahead to lay the foundations of liberalism against the – sit venia verbo – unliberal nature of man. Hobbes in an unliberal world accomplishes the founding of liberalism. The radical critique of liberalism is thus possible only on the basis of an adequate understanding of Hobbes
(Schmitt 2007) p. 107, 108, 123
Hobbes is the founder of liberalism. The right to the securing of bare life, i.e. the only natural right that Hobbes recognizes, has the character of an inalienable right of man, i.e. of a claim of the individual which precedes the State and determines the purpose and the limits of the State. Hobbes differs from full grown liberalism only by what he regards as the obstacle against which the liberal ideal of civilization is to be established in a determined fight: the obstacle is not corrupt institutions or the ill will of a ruling stratum, but man’s natural malice. Hobbes establishes liberalism in an illiberal world against the (sit venia verbo) illiberal nature of man, whereas his successors, ignoring their presuppositions and goals, trust in the original goodness of human nature, guaranteed by God’s creation and providence, or, basing themselves on scientific neutrality, hope for and improvement of human nature to which man’s experience of himself does not entitle him. For Hobbes, the basic political fact was natural right as the justified claim of every individual, while duty or obligation was a subsequent restriction of that right
Comments on … Carl Schmitt (Strauss 1965) p. 338, 344
man
man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. We know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization and we are therefore shocked by occasional outbreaks of its true nature: but if and when the bolts and bars of the legal order once fall apart and anarchy supervenes it reveals itself for what it is
(Schopenhauer 1970) p. 138
Marx, Karl
Marx was a prophet – and in order to understand the nature of this achievement we must visualize it in the setting of his own time. It was the zenith of bourgeois realization and the nadir of bourgeois civilization
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 5
materialism
MACHIAVELLI: Yes, I shall make good emerge from evil. I shall exploit materialism for the sake of harmony and civilization. I shall extinguish the political passions of men by placating their ambitions, covetousness, and material needs
(Joly and Waggoner 2002) p. 137
Middle Ages
the change of mood which set in during the middle years of the fourteenth century gradually hardened during the next two centuries into a fixed belief that the clerical schools of what came contemptuously to be envisaged as a trough between two periods of civilization – and therefore dismissively called the Middle Ages – with their formalized procedures and legalistic distinctions, were not simply the agents of a great failure, but the promoters of a great deception. When leaders of opinion lost confidence in the power of the scholastic system of thought to achieve the promised ends, which had sustained the concentrated efforts of successive generations of scholars throughout the period from about 1070 to about 1320, the whole effort began to seem increasingly repellent and wasteful. The almost universal condemnation of scholasticism prevailed from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries
(Southern 1995) p. 54, 55, 56
misery
I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. It is only by organizing civilization on such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed
(Paine 1961) p. 346
modern
I see others who strive, in the name of progress, to turn men into materialistic beings and who want to discover the expedient while paying scant attention to fairness, knowledge far removed from beliefs, and prosperity which has nothing to do with virtue. These people are called the champions of modern civilization, insolently placing themselves at its head, usurping a position left open to them and one which highlights their unworthiness
(Tocqueville 2003) p. 22
equality of men before the law, the corner-stone of modern civilization
(Adams 1887) p. 319
Max Weber described the late modern human beings as 'specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines it has attained a level of civilization never before attained'
(Breisach 2003) p. 36
very tired of the modern form of historicism which sees in this civilization the defeat of the best hopes of Western religion and thought, what Heidegger calls the second Fall of Man into the quotidian or ordinary. No philosopher knows what the ordinary is, has not fallen into it deeply enough. The question of ordinary human experience is the principal question of these modern centuries, as Montaigne and Pascal, otherwise in disagreement, both clearly saw. – The strength of a man's virtue or spiritual capacity measured by his ordinary life
(Bellow 1964) p. 117
New World
America began as a sobering experience. The colonies were a disproving ground for utopias. A new civilization was being born less out of plans and purposes than out of the unsettlement which the New World brought to the ways of the Old. The flavor of American life was compounded of risk, spontaneity, independence, initiative, drift, mobility, and opportunity
(Boorstin 1964) p. 1, 85
New York
New York makes one think about the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it
(Bellow 1970) p. 277
Nineteenth Century
‘the perennial Western malady, the revolt of the individual against the species’, as that nineteenth-century totalitarian, Auguste Comte, has described it, was indeed the force which built our civilization. What the nineteenth century added to the individualism of the preceding period was merely to make all classes conscious of freedom, to develop systematically and continuously what had grown in a haphazard and patchy manner, and to spread it from England and Holland over most of the European continent
(Hayek 1980) p. 16
Northmen
the Northmen. Having destroyed large parts of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries, they proceeded in the eleventh and twelfth to play a massive part in the formation of European politics and civilization. From their bastion in Normandy, they went out to conquer England and Southern Italy, and to take a leading part in the Crusades. They seemed to have a knack of being in a vital spot at the right time. They came to England at a time when the country was wavering between a closer approach to, or a wider alienation from, the culture and organization of Latin Europe, and they settled the question in favour of the first alternative for the rest of the Middle Ages. They went to Southern Italy in a dark and troubled time when Latin, Greek and Moslem influences jostled uneasily side by side, and they settled the question in favour of the first of these influences once and for all. They were the friends of the Popes at a time when the Popes needed every friend they could get, and having defeated the Moslem rulers of Sicily they were powerful agents in the transmission of Arabic influence to the West
(Southern 1953) p. 28
novel
an especially useful agent of the moral imagination. The novel is an incomparable representation of the spiritual circumstances of our civilization. The novel took its rise and its nature from the radical revision of the class structure in the eighteenth century
(Trilling 1976) p. vii, 92, 247
philosophy
what, after all, does the whole of philosophy have to tell us about meaning other than that it is a matter of connectedness? there is one theme and one theme only that philosophy has had to deal with since its beginning among the Greeks, and that is the everlasting struggle between Being and Seeming; Western civilization, as we now know it, begins with Plato dividing mind and body; out of that split came philosophy
(W. Barrett 1972) pp. 58, 73, 182
poverty
a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult; a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization
Samuel Johnson (Boswell 1952) p. 383, 1014
prejudice
organic fictions of a civilization; assure its duration, preserve its physiognomy; whose function consists, precisely, in subordinating, in enslaving consciousness to action
(Cioran 1998) p. 55
production
the forms or conditions of production are the fundamental determinant of social structures which in turn breed attitudes, actions and civilizations
(Schumpeter 1962) p. 12
racism
racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization
(Arendt 1958) p. 157
reality
from Barthes's Discourse on History: 'historical discourse does not follow reality, it only signifies it; it asserts at every moment: this happened, but the meaning conveyed is only that somebody makes that assertion (emphasis in the original).' Traditional history had not produced the true image of reality but only a 'reality effect' or the 'referential illusion'. In the new narrativism 'reality is nothing but a meaning, and so can be changed to meet the needs of history, when history demands the subversion of the foundations of civilization 'as we know it'’
(Breisach 2003) p. 73, 74
Roman
in the defining epic of Roman civilization at its height, Virgil’s Aeneid, the great poet acknowledged Greece’s cultural supremacy (in contrast to Rome’s eventual military and political superiority), when he had the hero Aeneas hear from the shade of his father Anchises that others (meaning the Greeks) will make better art, craft finer speeches, and do better natural science. Rome, instead, will rise to great heights. As it does, it will be better than all others at war and wielding power. Rome’s destiny? ‘To impose the ways of peace, to show mercy to the defeated, and to war down the proud’
(Celenza 2021) p. 13
Roman Empire
the effect produced upon the nations of Europe by the conquest of Rome – this great phenomenon stands out in the very center of human history, and may be called the foundation of the present civilization of mankind. Every historical student knows that it was the incubus of the Empire which destroyed liberty at Rome. In a great part of the Empire her very language was worsted in the competition by the Greek
(Seeley 1971) p. 189, 194
the chief function which as a political power the Eastern Empire performed throughout the Middle Ages was to act as a bulwark for Europe, and for that civilization which Greece had created and Rome had inherited and diffused, against Asiatic aggression
(Bury 1930) p. 219
Romans
the contact with the alien civilization of Greece originally roused the Romans to become conscious of their own individual character as a people. While they took over and assimilated all that the Hellenes could give, they shaped their history, their traditions and their concept of what was Roman in deliberate opposition to what was Greek. The national spirit of Rome was a reaction against Hellas
(Syme 1960) p. 440, 448
Rousseau
the fundamental characteristic of Rousseau's whole philosophy is that he puts in the place of the Christian doctrine of original sin and of the original depravity of the human race an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility thereof, which had been led astray merely by civilization and its consequences; and on this he then establishes his optimism and humanism
(Schopenhauer 1966) p. 585
school
Theology, Law, and the liberal Arts were the three props on which European order and civilization were built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – that is to say, during the period of Europe’s most rapid expansion in population, wealth and world-wide aspirations before the nineteenth century. All three of these props owed their coherence, and their power to influence the world, to the development of schools of European-wide importance. To these schools, masters and pupils came from all parts of Europe and took back to their places of origin, and sometimes much further afield, the sciences which they had learned, and from which they proposed to make their livelihood by applying them to the practical issues of life and death, and to the advancement of their own general well-being
(Southern 1995) p. 1
science
as American civilization became increasingly permeated by its technology, it lay increasingly at the mercy of the internal logic of advancing knowledge. Science and technology had a momentum of their own: each next step was commanded by its predecessor. To fail to take that next step was to waste all of the earlier efforts. Once the nation had embarked on the brightly illuminated path of science, it had somehow ventured into a world of mystery where the direction and speed would be dictated by the instruments that cut the path and by the vehicles that carried man ahead. The autonomy of science, the freedom of the scientist to go where knowledge and discovery led him, spelled the unfreedom of the society to choose its way for other reasons
(Boorstin 1973) p. 597
Seventh Century
the seventh century, and not the inconclusive political crisis that we call the 'barbarian Invasions' of the fifth century, witnessed the true break between the ancient world and what followed. The seventh century appears to us to be something of a trough in the overall development of European civilization. A new cultural zone, characterized by distinctive forms of religious life, was created in north-western Europe in the course of the seventh century
(Brown 2003) p. 219, 220, 252
sex
civilization does not express the sexual instinct but represses it; institutions arise not from natural inclinations but from the fear of natural inclinations
David Hume (Gay 1969) p. 200
signs
ancient myths report that on the day when Ts'ang Chieh, inspired by divinatory figures, traced the first signs, Heaven and Earth trembled, and gods and demons wept. Thus, the quasi-sacred veneration devoted to the ideographic writing itself in China. Signs incised upon the shells of tortoises, upon the bones of oxen. Signs borne upon bronze vessels, sacred and mundane. Divinatory or utilitarian, these signs are manifest first of all as tracings, emblems, fixed attitudes, visualized rhythms. Each sign, independent of sound and invariable, forms a unity of itself, maintaining the potential of its own sovereignty and thus the potential to endure. From its beginning the Chinese writing system has refused to be simply a support for the spoken language. That system of writing has engendered a profoundly original poetic language. Poetic language proposes to explore the mystery of the Universe by means of signs. The earliest known specimens of Chinese writing are divinatory texts carved on bones and shells. Later inscriptions, cast in bronze vessels, are also extant. Both date from the Shang dynasty (eighteenth to eleventh centuries BC). Man, heaven, and earth constitute, for the Chinese, the Three Talents (san-ts'ai); these participate in a relationship of both correspondence and complementarity. The role of man consists not only of 'fitting out' the universe, but of interiorizing all things, in recreating them so as to rediscover his own place within. In this process of 'co-creation', the central element, with regard to literature, is the notion of wen. This term is found in many later combinations signing language, style, literature, civilization, and so forth. Originally it designated the footprints of animals or the veins of wood and stone, the set of harmonious or rhythmic 'strokes' by which nature signifies. It is in the image of these natural signs that the linguistic signs were created, and these are similarly called wen. The double nature of wen constitutes an authority through which man may come to understand the mystery of nature, and thereby his own nature. A masterpiece is that which restores the secret relationships between things, and the breath that animates them as well
(Cheng and Seaton 1982) p. x, xii, 3, 213
Sixteenth Century
in the course of the sixteenth century the center of civilization moves from the Mediterranean to the neighborhood of the Atlantic
(Seeley 1971) p. 81
Sixth Century
Cassiodorus – father of the famous Cassiodorus whose writings are our chief authority for Theoderic’s reign – who had held both the great financial offices under Odovacar, continued to serve under Theoderic, and in the early years of the sixth century became Praetorian Prefect. It is remarkable that Theoderic, who was educated at Constantinople and was imbued with sincere admiration for Greek and Roman civilization, was illiterate. It is recorded that he was unable to write his own name. He caused a gold stencil plate to be pierced with the four letters l e g i (I have read), so that he could sign documents by drawing a pen through the holes
(Bury 1958) p. 458, 467
stoicism
the Stoic school of antiquity was preceded by the Cynic. Stoicism has been called ‘Cynicism adapted to the purposes of civilization’. Stoicism has no proper place in its scheme for Love. Stoicism can only picture the end of all things as the reabsorption of the precipitated matter into the fire of God, to be followed by the creation of a new world, and so on ad infinitum
(Willey 1964) p. 58, 59
Teutonic
as the French Revolution’s promise of universal liberation was transformed into Napoleonic imperialism, young Germans found consolation in a Romantic nationalism inspired by Herder’s rejection of the Enlightenment view that there is one right life for all and his belief that each people has its own ‘soul’, its distinctive values. They became fervently patriotic, glorifying the Middle Ages as a time when the people had been an organic community, untouched by the destructive forces of modern civilization. Pursuing the study of the Teutonic past in literature and art through folksongs and legends, they sought their roots in the simple people who expressed the authentic Volksseele. In his Lectures to the German Nation of 1807-1808, delivered to an eager audience in a Berlin under French occupation, Fichte confirmed that the freshness and purity of the German spirit, uncorrupted by alien influences, equipped them for their historical mission – the spiritual regeneration of mankind. This foundational text of German nationalism resonated with the Heimweh of talented young men who longed to identify with some larger whole that would give their lives a universal meaning and purpose
(Kelly 2016) p. 16
wealth
we have traced the unequal distribution of wealth which is the curse and menace of modern civilization to the institution of private property in land. We have seen that so long as this institution exists no increasing productive power can permanently benefit the masses; but, on the contrary, must tend still further to depress their condition
(George 1979) p. 328
today there is but little doubt in the minds of thinking people that the redistribution of wealth is a necessity if we wish to preserve our civilization. It only means the taking of money from the estates of the very wealthy, where it can perform no real service for humanity, and the giving of it, in the form of taxes, to all the people from whom it was originally taken, and under whose laws it was accumulated
Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska (Myers 1939) p. 345
Western Civilization
Western civilization has been the greatest ferment of change in the world, because the changing of the world became an integral part of its cultural ideal. What distinguishes Western culture from the other world civilizations is its missionary character – its transmission from one people to another in a continuous series of spiritual movements. The beginnings of Western culture are to be found in the new spiritual community which arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire owing to the conversion of the Northern barbarians to the Christian faith
(Dawson 1958) p. 17, 18, 26
women
Isabella Beecher Hooker threw herself into the woman’s rights movement among the earliest, some sixty years ago, and she labored with all her splendid energies in that great cause all the rest of her life; as an able and efficient worker she ranks immediately after those great chiefs, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mrs. Livermore. When these powerful sisters entered the field in 1848 woman was what she had always been in all countries and under all religions, all savageries, all civilizations—a slave, and under contempt. The laws affecting women were a disgrace to our statute book. Those brave women besieged the legislatures of the land, year after year, suffering and enduring all manner of reproach, rebuke, scorn and obloquy, yet never surrendering, never sounding a retreat; their wonderful campaign lasted a great many years, and is the most wonderful in history, for it achieved a revolution—the only one achieved in human history for the emancipation of half a nation that cost not a drop of blood. They broke the chains of their sex and set it free
(Twain 2015) p. 4
words
to build a purely mental concept, you need a secret ingredient: words. From infancy, little human brains have an affinity for processing speech signals and quickly realize that speech is one way to access the information inside other people's minds. I don't know about you, but every time I think about this, I find it bloody amazing. Any animal can view a bunch of similar looking objects and form a concept of them. But you can show human infants a bunch of objects that look different, sound different, and feel different, and merely add a word – a WORD – and these little babies form a concept that overcomes the physical differences. They understand that the objects have some kind of psychological similarity that can't be immediately perceived through the five senses. This similarity is what we call the goal of the concept. The infant creates a new piece of reality. This sort of social reality, in which two or more people agree that something purely mental is real, is a foundation of human culture and civilization
(L. F. Barrett 2017) p. 97-99
Subscription to A Worlde of Wordes is FREE.
LINK to the Introduction to A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary.
WORKS CITED
Adams, Brooks (1887), The Emancipation of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin) vi, 382.
Arendt, Hannah (1958), The Origins of Totalitarianism (2d enl. edn.; New York: Meridian Books) 520.
Auden, W.H. and Kronenberger, Louis (1962), The Viking Book of Aphorisms (New York: The Viking Press) viii, 405.
Barrett, Lisa Feldman (2017), How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) xvi, 425.
Barrett, William (1962), Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday) 314.
--- (1972), Time of Need: Forms of Imagination in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row) 401.
Bellow, Saul (1964), Herzog (Penguin) 416.
--- (1970), Mr. Sammler's Planet (New York: Viking Press) 313.
Beringause, Arthur F. (1955), Brooks Adams: A Biography (New York: Knopf) xiii, 404, x.
Berlin, Isaiah (2000), Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (Princeton: Princeton University Press) xiii, 382.
Bettmann, Otto (1987), The Delights of Reading: Quotes, Notes and Anecdotes (Boston: Godine) xiii, 139.
Boorstin, Daniel J. (1964), The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Vintage Books) 434.
--- (1973), The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House) xiv, 717.
Boswell, James (1952), The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: Modern Library) xv, 1 , 559.
Breisach, Ernst (2003), On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and Its Aftermath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) ix, 243.
Brodsky, Joseph (1986), Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 501.
Brown, Peter (2003), The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (2nd edn.; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers) viii, 625.
Burckhardt, Jacob (1958), Judgments on History and Historians (Boston: Beacon Press) xxiv, 280.
Bury, J. B. (1930), Selected Essays of J. B. Bury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) xxxii, 249.
--- (1958), History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I. to the Death of Justinian, Vol. 1, 2 vols. (1; New York: Dover Publications) xxv, 471.
Camporeale, Salvatore I., Valla, Lorenzo, and Baker, Patrick (2014), Christianity, Latinity, and Culture: Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla (Boston: Brill) xiv, 336.
Celenza, Christopher S. (2021), The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press) xi, 327.
Chang, Kwang-chih (1983), Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) x, 142.
Cheng, François and Seaton, Jerome P. (1982), Chinese Poetic Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) xiv, 225 p., 8 p. of plates.
Christian, David (2004), Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press) xxii, 642.
Cioran, E. M. (1998), The Temptation to Exist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 222.
Comte, Auguste (1975), Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, trans. Gertrud Lenzer (New York: Harper and Row) lxviii, 505.
Dawson, Christopher (1958), Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (New York: Sheed and Ward) xvi, 286.
--- (1978), Dynamics of World History 489.
Freud, Sigmund (1964), The Future of an Illusion (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books) x, 105.
Gay, Peter (1969), The Science of Freedom: The Enlightenment, An Interpretation, 2 vols. (2; New York: Knopf) xxii, 705, xviii.
George, Henry (1953), Social Problems (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation) 256.
--- (1979), Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth ... the Remedy (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation) xxx, 599.
Gibbon, Edward (1983), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 1, 3 vols. (New York: Modern Library) viii, 956.
Hayek, Friedrich A. von (1980), The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) xxiii, 248.
Herzen, Aleksandr (1995), Letters from France and Italy, 1847-1851 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press) xxxv, 304.
Hofstadter, Richard (1968), The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf) xvii, 498, xiii.
Johnson, Chalmers (2004), The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books) 389.
Johnson, Paul (1991), The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830 (New York: HarperCollins) xx, 1095.
Joly, Maurice and Waggoner, John S. (2002), The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books) xxv, 394.
Kaldellis, Anthony (2017), Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade (New York: Oxford University Press) xxxi, 399.
Kelly, Aileen (2016), The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) x, 592.
Knowles, David (1962), The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York: Vintage Books) 356.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1966), History of England from the Accession of James II Vol. I (London: Dent) xvi, 621.
Marx, Karl (1969), Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Gateway Editions) xiv, 82.
McKitterick, Rosamond (1990), The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press) xvi, 345.
Michel, Virgil (1987), The Social Question: Essays on Capitalism and Christianity (Collegeville, Minn.: St. John's University) vi, 87.
Milosz, Czeslaw (2001), Milosz's ABC's (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 313.
Molnar, Michael R. (1999), The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press) xvi, 187.
Myers, Gustavus (1939), The Ending of Hereditary American Fortunes (New York: J. Messner) vi, 395.
Ord, Toby (2020), The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (New York: Hachette Books) x, 468.
Ortega y Gasset, José (1961a), The Revolt of the Masses (London: Unwin Books) 144.
--- (1961b), History as a System, and other Essays toward a Philosophy of History (New York: Norton) 269.
Orwell, George (2008), All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays (New York: Harcourt) xxxii, 374.
Paine, Thomas (1961), Thomas Paine: Representative Selections (Rev. edn.; New York: Hill and Wang) clxiii, 436.
Rexroth, Kenneth (1968), The Collected Longer Poems (New York: New Directions) 307.
Sammons, Jeffrey L. (1979), Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press) xvii, 425, 8 l. of pl.
Schmitt, Carl (2007), The Concept of the Political (Expanded edn.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press) xxxi, 126.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966), The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications) xii, 687.
--- (1970), Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books) 237.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1962), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (3d edn.; New York: Harper) xiv, 431.
Seeley, John Robert (1971), The Expansion of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) xxvii, 248.
Southern, R. W. (1953), The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press) 280.
--- (1995), Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe; v.1, Foundations (1; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell) xxi, 330.
Strauss, Leo (1965), Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books) 351.
Syme, Ronald (1960), The Roman Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press) xi, 568.
--- (1984), Roman Papers: Vol. 3 (New York: Clarendon Press) viii, 863-1558.
--- (1988), Roman Papers: Vol. 4 (New York: Clarendon Press) viii, 429, 1 pl.
Thompson, James Westfall (1939), The Medieval Library (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) viii, 681.
Tocqueville, Alexis de (2003), Democracy in America: and Two Essays on America (London: Penguin) lii, 935.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1957), Historical Essays (New York: Harper) viii, 324.
Trilling, Lionel (1976), The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: Scribner) xvi, 303.
Twain, Mark (1994), Life on the Mississippi (New York: Modern Library) xviii, 481.
--- (2013), Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press) xix, 733.
--- (2015), Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press) xix, 747.
Ward, Jake (2022), The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back (New York: Hachette Books) ix, 303.
Wedgwood, C. V. (1989), History and Hope: Essays on History and the English Civil War (New York: E.P. Dutton) 506.
Willey, Basil (1964), The English Moralists (London: Chatto and Windus) 318.
Interesting read nice one!