The West’s Strange Genius

The power of self-criticism

Photo by Nikita Ti on Unsplash

From 2016, the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign called for the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, University of Oxford. Rhodes was seen by his detractors as a symbol of the worst outcomes of Western civilisation – a racist imperialist who gave his life to extracting the wealth from southern Africa, and yet continues to be applauded as a great philanthropist and imperial visionary. Not only was he seen as prejudiced and greedy, but he was also applauded for it. The statue was finally not removed despite the wishes of the governing body of the college - but for reasons of cost and heritage rather than ideological preference.

The Rhodes controversy is a symptom of contemporary debates about the legacy of Western civilisation. For several decades, the tendency amongst the academics of the great universities of the West has been to view ‘the West’ not as the bearer of universal ideals but as a hegemonic project bound up with oppression – Rhodes being an embodiment of that purpose.

This view has been shaped by various postcolonial thinkers such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Dipesh Chakrabarty. More recently, Walter D. Mignolo has argued that the project of Western modernity has been inseparable from colonial domination and proposes “decolonial” ways of thinking and being in response.[1] Their arguments have helped inspire contemporary calls to “decolonise” the university curriculum and rethink, or replace, the authority of the Western canon.

The assessment of Christianity’s role in Western civilisation is likewise scathing. The liberal and post-modern readings of the history of the West see moral enlightenment as coming not because of Christianity but in the move away from it. The less Christian we’ve become, in other words, the more just and equitable we’ve also become.

The Christian missionary movement is seen as a useful tool of extractive colonialism, rendering docile the peoples from whom resources were stolen. Missionaries were present, too, because they believed that not all religions are true and that not all moral systems were equal – a view that is now held to be repugnant by the critics of Western civilisation.

Latterly, there’s been a reaction from more conservative quarters by writers like the historian Niall Ferguson that challenges the dominant narrative and attempts to foreground the great achievements of Western civilisation, such as medicine, property rights, and the Protestant work ethic. Writers like Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson agree with the progressive critics of the West that it rests on a Judaeo-Christian moral foundation, which is being undermined by postmodernism and identity politics. The disagreement lies in whether that is a good thing or not. Journalist and commentator Victor David Hanson likewise argues that the West has been brought to the brink of collapse by the undermining of the institutions that have sustained its civic ideals.

These thinkers see ‘the West’ as under relentless attack from a combination of large bureaucratic government and the elitist intellectuals who dominate the universities and the mainstream media. This has unleashed a kind of loathing for the institutions and traditions that would ordinarily provide (in philosopher Charles Taylor’s expression) a ‘social imaginary’ – a vision of what the society aspires to be. The idea of ‘the West’ must therefore be defended so that civilisational confidence can be restored. Christianity – or at least ‘Judaeo-Christian values’ - is crucial to this restoration project, because it is held to generate the principles that have shaped the culture in the first place. This defence of Western civilisation desperately needs Christianity to give it some kind of substance – even when the proponents of that defence are only vaguely or hesitantly Christian themselves.

Photo by Damien Perez on Unsplash

But it also risks becoming more rhetorical than substantive. The temperature has certainly risen in the context of debates about immigration, which has not made the issues clearer. Terms like ‘Anglo-Celtic’ are bandied about as if the sectarian and nationalist conflicts of the last two hundred years never happened. At the root of the problem for both sides of the debate is the question of what ‘West’ we are talking about. ‘Western civilisation’, which in former times could be called ‘Christendom’, was never just one entity. As Niall Ferguson has noted, Western Europe is and always has been geographically, economically, linguistically, politically and even religiously divided.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the defence. However, I also sense in this turn the danger of a nostalgic vision that is blind to the deficiencies in Western culture or which makes of it something that it never was. What I should like to argue instead is that the most distinct and important contribution of the West is the tradition of moral self-critique, which was deeply shaped by Christianity. The West is not defined by moral superiority, but by the capacity to recognise its own sins and reform.

The ‘Western Civilisation’ revival tends to reduce Christianity’s role within it to the generator of values and principles. That is the grave temptation of the movement, which outwardly seems attractive to Christians. But Christianity is only ethical insofar as it is spiritual. It resists being so reduced. Christianity, in its proper position, destabilises civilisational pride rather than bolsters it. It is like Nathan the prophet before David, exposing his terrible sins (adultery and murder) to him. David must face the judgment of God - as indeed, all emperors and kings must.

Christianity has introduced several spiritual ideas that have reshaped Western civilisation and, as such, are indispensable to it. These must never be forgotten, even as we celebrate the great achievements of our tradition.

The first is the dignity of the weak. It was precisely this idea that Nietzsche saw in Christianity and despised. There is a stream in Western Civilisation that has been deeply attracted to the hatred of the weak. How easily Darwinian ideas became racist political doctrines, not much more than a century ago!

The second is the moral equality of persons, which is fundamental to the rights of the individual. This is not a doctrine that can emerge from nature. It is utterly metaphysical. Judeo-Christian revelation is its source. It is difficult to derive the same conclusion from purely naturalistic accounts of human society, or from other religious sources.

Third, the critique of power. The Bible is shot through with critiques of arrogant human power. At its centre is a figure who was crucified by corrupt political and religious power. He was, for the early Christians, a sign that God’s power in weakness triumphs over human tyrannies of all kind. The New Testament develops a sophisticated political position in which human political authority can be respected as God-given, but also critiqued as prone to cruel oppression. Political power is only ever temporary, however absolute it looks in history.

Fourth, grace and the possibility of repentance. Christianity is fundamentally suspicious of the human heart, but also optimistic about the possibility of change in response to grace. It names free generosity for the undeserving as central to the character of God, which generates a humble spirit of service for the other.

As a result of these extraordinary theological ideas, the West has institutionalised self-criticism. The University itself is a feature of this civilisational idea, with academic freedom at its core. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are extraordinary blessings necessary to a democratic political system in which ideas are debated. Ironically, the most vehement critics of the West have been enabled by institutions of human knowledge that would be unthinkable without Christianity.

The most oft-cited example of this tradition in action is the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19^th century, led by evangelical Christian campaigners like William Wilberforce. There were always critics of slavery in Western Europe, even as there were slave traders. The moral language used by figures such as Wilberforce drew deeply on Christian convictions about the dignity of the human person. Thus, Western civilisation did something unusual: it treasured within it the ideas that were capable of condemning its own injustices.

The most persuasive defence of Western civilisation does not begin with selective nostalgia, but with historical memory. Historians such as Tom Holland and Larry Siedentop have reminded us that many of the moral intuitions modern Westerners take for granted - the equal dignity of persons, the moral significance of the individual, the suspicion of unaccountable power - were shaped in no small part by the long and often subterranean influence of Christianity. At the same time, the Viennese philosopher Karl Popper saw that the West’s distinctive political achievement was the ‘open society’: a civilisation that not only permits criticism but builds it into its institutions.

Beneath both insights lies a deeper theological realism, articulated centuries earlier by Augustine of Hippo, who, in his mighty critique of Roman civilisation, The City of God, insisted that every earthly order stands under judgment. If these strands belong together, then the West’s most remarkable inheritance is not merely its wealth or its power, but a habit of conscience - a civilisation formed by the unsettling conviction that even its own achievements must answer to a higher, divine standard. No constitution or declaration can substitute for this notion.

If we leave this behind, what are we left with? We are seeing it now: cynicism, which is just power without morality, where the only aim is to do deals. Or we have morality without foundations, which leads (ironically) to a puritanism that devours its own adherents, since I can never admit my own sins.

It will not do to have a nostalgic vision of Western civilisation, as if the past could be recaptured in any case. The West has had its blind spots. But it also had within it the seeds of its own renewal and reformation – not just a checklist of ‘values’, but a right regard for the Almighty and all his ways. It has carried within it its own prophets. Even as its Davids sinned, it produced its Nathans.

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[1] Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Duke University Press, 2011