My Notes on Kagan – as promised

* Meaningful description of the human condition: ‘Freedom to chose an act, but bound by his own nature – knowing that he will never achieve perfection, but determined to continue the search no matter what’

• cannot be achieved without examination of the Western experience
• at the root of the civ stand the Greeks

Modern World as ‘Our Universal Civilization’ shaped mainly by the West Western Science and Technology/Freedom

Reason and Objectivity essential to knowledge

Political Freedom that sustains it

Institutions and Ideas that provided for the improvement of life

Reason lacked independence from religion in non-Greek world

2] GOVERNMENT

• Standard form of ancient government has been monarchy (republics unknown outside West)
• rulers were thought to be specially divine / govt and religion were intertwined, mutually supported
• govt not subject to secular analysis
• individual freedom not no importance to most civs

* first break w this came in Ancient Greece Polis –>  no kings, decisions made by themselves (by community)

• participation in political life valued
• little concern with life after death

SCIENCE/PHILOSOPHY –> scientific theories require accurate observation of the world and reasoning

Temple at Delphi: – Know Thyself – Nothing in Excess   < — YOU ARE MORTAL!

‘Our universal civilization, shaped mainly by the West’ – V.S. Naipal

•  Most significant starting point of Western civ – which shapes the West and most of the world today
• unprecedented freedom for its people
• invented a body of scientific knowledge and achievement

Makes for health and material prosperity undreamed of in earlier times and unknown outside the West

Essential for Achievement:

1. Commitment to reason and objectivity as essential to knowledge
2. Commitment to political freedom that sustains it

Not inevitable – emerged from a unique history

Westerners who wish to preserve these things need to study its development

1] Greek Strand

Other Govt rested upon divine sanction

Polis – participation in political life valued/ruled by laws of the community, not by gods, or a single man

• MONARCHY – not a Greek
• No separate caste of priests
• No real concern with life after death
• Natural science and philosophy – free to investigate or ignore divinity
• Increasingly relied upon REASON over mysticism – accurate observation of the world

“Most arrogant view of their relationship to divinity” – combined with a painful understanding of the limits of man

Combination of the greatness and limitation à tragic condition of the human tradition

To cope – urged humans to restrain their ambitions

DELPHI – the navel of the universe: ‘No Theyself’ ‘Nothing in Excess’ [you are mortal –exercise moderation]

‘As man is the best of animals when perfected, so he is the worse when he is separated from laws and justice’ Aristotle

2] Judeo-Christian Strand

Christianity an insurgent movement – independent of and hostile to the state / found nowhere else

Dependent upon one aspect of Greek culture

• West of the Germanic tribes was weak and divided/conditions permitted many rulers [freedom allowed to grow]
• Church never able to impose total domination over the state

Problem with Western Attitude

– Temptation to Dominance [hubris] /  – must remember: man is potent BUT fallible