Prof Andrew Roberts - Why we must believe in Western Civilisation

[Music] a very warm welcome to the ramsey center's online lecture series for 2020 our journal of the plague year as defoe might have said except that the sense of impending threat so many people seem to be feeling this year does go beyond the grim medical situation and the dire economic outlook to a place that's perhaps more camus than defoe to something more like the existential or civilizational level and that is what our distinguished speaker today will be talking about that is how the undoing of western civilization seems not so much to alarm but actually to appeal to so many people in the west and why it's so important to get ourselves out of this frame of mind professor andrew roberts is a most eminent british biographer and historian as well as an acclaimed history of the second world war he has written prize-winning lives of lord salisbury napoleon and most recently winston churchill this being a book which has been called the best one volume biography of churchill yet written professor roberts is the roger and martha mertz visiting research fellow at the hoover institution at stanford university he's the lernan institute distinguished lecturer at the new york historical society and he's a visiting professor at the department of war studies at king's college london he's a fellow of both the royal society of literature and the royal historical society so no one is better qualified to address the topic he's chosen to speak to us about so here is professor andrew roberts on why we must believe in western civilization on tuesday december the 3rd 1940 winston churchill read a memorandum by the military strategist basil little heart which advocated making peace with nazi germany this argued that otherwise britain would soon see quote western europe racked by warfare and economic hardship the legacy of centuries in art and culture swept away the health of the nation dangerously impaired by malnutrition nervous strains and epidemics russia profiting from our exhaustion churchill nevertheless courageously concluded that we should be wrong to hesitate in rejecting any negotiation with adolf hitler it's illuminating especially in our own time of nervous strains and epidemics did in that list of horrors the fear of losing the legacy of centuries of art and culture rated above almost everything else the churchill the prospect of losing the legacy of western civilization was worse even than succumbing to the hegemony of the soviet union yet today eight decades later we have somehow reached a situation in which somali rashatwa who is described by the philadelphia inquirer as a fat positivity activist and instagram therapist can tell that newspaper quote i love to talk about undoing western civilization because it's just so romantic to me how have we come this far for ms rashatwa and the cohorts who genuinely want to undo western civilization and now succeeding where adolf hitler and the nazis failed the evidence is rampant in the academy where a preemptive cultural cringe is decolonizing college syllabuses that is wherever possible removing dead white european males from it often with overt support from deans and university establishments western civilization courses insofar as they exist under other names are routinely denounced as racist phobic and generally so unwoke as to deserve axing western civilization so vital to our forefathers sense of who they were and what they existed to promote is being ridiculed abused and marginalized often without any coherent response of course today's non-western colonizations such as india's in kashmir and china's in tibet and its exterminationist war against the uyghurs are not included in the sophomores concept of imperialism and occupation which can only ever be done by the west the amritsar massacre only ever refers to the british in the punjab in 1919 for example rather than the indian massacre of 10 times the number of people there in 1984. nor can the positive aspects of the british empire even be debated any longer as the closing down of professor nigel bigger's conferences in oxford eloquently demonstrates we all know the joke that mahatma gandhi supposedly made when he was asked what he thought about western civilization i think it might be a good idea the gag's apocryphal in fact uh first appearing two decades after his death but many very very many people have taken it literally arguing that there really is no such thing as western civilization from ideologues such as noam chomsky to the activists of the rhodes must fool movement at oxford university who succeeded in pulling down the statue of the benefactor of the rhodes scholarships from oriole college increasingly glamorous demands by african and asian governments for the restitution of artifacts supposedly stolen from their countries during colonial periods are another aspect of this attack an attempt to guilt-shame the west even though the taking of booty has been seen in every single war throughout history this belief that western civilization is at heart uniquely morally defective has recently been exemplified by the new york times inane and wildly historically inaccurate 1619 project which essentially attempts to present the entirety of american history from the plymouth rock to today solely through the prism of race and slavery america wasn't a democracy until black americans made it one is the headline of one essay in the new york times magazine launching the project alongside american capitalism is brutal you can trace that to the plantation and how segregation caused your traffic jam when no fewer than 12 and the circumstance is very brave american civil war historians sent a letter itemizing all the myriad factual errors in the project's founding document the new york times refused to publish it yet the project plans to create and distribute school curricula that will re-centre america's memory none of this would amount to much if only schools and colleges in britain america australia and across the english-speaking peoples were not so keen to apologize for and deny western civilization or to abolish or dumb down the teaching of important aspects of it the classics faculty at oxford university to take one example of many has recently recommended that homer's iliad and virgil's iniad be removed from the syllabus in ancient literature history and philosophy giving us their reason the difference in recent exam results between male and female undergraduates and the difference in expertise in latin and greek between privately and publicly educated students one of the supposed guardians of the discipline are therefore willing to put social experimentation before the best possible teaching of the humanities a disgraceful position to have been adopted by britain's second best uh university yet instead of apologizing for christian western civilization we should still believe in it be proud of it and proselytize it for all that we must of course take proper cognizance of other cultures in terms of both its sheer quality and its quantity the legacy of the western one is unsurpassed in human history we're deliberately underplaying the greatest contributions made to poetry architecture philosophy music and art by ignoring that fact often simply in order to try to feel less guilty about imperialism colonialism and slavery even though the last was a moral crime committed by only a minority of some few people's great great great grandparents as a result future generations cannot be certain that they will be taught about the overwhelmingly positive aspects of western civilization they might not now be shown the crucial interconnection between for example the chapel by giotto at padua which articulates the complex scholasticism of some augustine in paint machiavelli is the prince the first work of modern political theory botticelli's primavera the quintessence of renaissance humanism in a single painting the works of teresa of aquila and descartes which wrestle with the proof of discrete individual identity beethoven symphonies arguably the most complex of profound orchestral works ever written and shakespeare whose plays harold bloom has rightly pointed out quote remain the outward limit of human achievement aesthetically cognitively in certain ways morally even spiritually even if they are taught about these things individually they will not be connected in a context that makes it clear how important they are to western civilization we cannot therefore know that once the present campaign against with western civilization reaches its goal what our children and grandchildren will be taught about the living thing that intimately connects europe's gothic cathedrals which are meditations in stone between the individual and sublime the giants of the 19th century novel from dickens to flow bear to tolstoy where contemporary life realistically observed becomes a fit subject for art the dutch masters of the 17th century such as rembrandt who wrestled visually the human condition in a fashion which still speaks to us across the centuries their psy the hermitage the alhambra which though bombastic are undeniably ravishing expressions of the human will faced with the argument that western culture is no longer relevant it's tempting to adopt dr samuel johnson's argument aim a good kick at the nearest neoclassical building and announced i refute it thus mention of the alhambra in grenada prompts the thought that any course in western civilization worth its name or also to include the umayyad caliphate of which cordoba in modern-day spain was the capital between 756 and 929 a.d in the wake of the conquest of spain and the establishment of the muslim confederacy kudoba became a flourishing polyglot multicultural environment in which religious tolerance despite jews and christians being obliged to pay a supplementary tax to the state produced an atmosphere of intellectual progressiveness which made it one of the most important cities in the world discoveries in trigonometry pharmacology astronomy and surgery can all be traced back to cordoba a certain point then a very particular set of historical circumstances produced an equally particular set of intellectual ideas which had significant material consequences the study of western civilization is therefore emphatically not solely that of christian dead white european males what the old western civ university courses did really was to root a people in their past and their values the trajectory of modern culture was shown to have run from greece by rome to christendom infused by judaic ideas and morality along the way by jerusalem but then detouring briefly through the dark ages recovering in the renaissance which led to the reformation the enlightenment and thus the scientific rational and politically liberated culture of europe and european america australia and the english-speaking peoples from plato to nato as the catchphrase went the very center of this transference of values across time and space was democracy of which winston churchill famously said many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time the generations who grew up knowing that truth rather than weltering in guilt and self-doubt about false consciousness and so on were the lucky ones because they were allowed to study the glories of western civilization in a way that was unembarrassed unashamed and not saddled with accusations of guilt the centuries-old crime that has absolutely nothing to do with them i.e slavery they could learn about the best of their civilization and how it benefited and continues to benefit mankind as ian jenkins the senior creator of the ancient greek collection at the british museum put it in his book on the elgin marbles somewhat politically correctly entitled the parthenon sculptures quote human figures in the freeze are more than mere portraits of the athenian people of the day rather they represent a timeless humanity one which transcends the present to encompass a universal vision of an ideal society arthur on itself set out the architectural laws of proportion which still obtained to this day and later in the book jenkins points out how the sculptures transcend national boundaries and epitomize universal and enduring values of excellence it was no coincidence that interest in them permeated the western enlightenments of the 18th century while the parthenon was being built heracles contrasted the openness and moderation of athenian civic life with the militaristic secretive dictatorial spartans in his great funeral speech at 430 bc and this struck a chord with the enlightenment thinkers of 23 centuries later just as it should continue to uh with us today reminding us why western values are indeed superior to those that actuate the leaders of modern china russia iran venezuela north korea and also of course zimbabwe and yes we know that the architect phidias employed slaves and medic foreigners in building the parthenon not just athenian freeman carved around the middle of the 5th century bc writes neil mcgregor former director of the british museum the elgin marbles quote are a product of a creative culture that is credited with the invention of such aspects of modern western civilization as democracy philosophy history medicine poetry and drama of course no one is claiming for a moment that ancient oriental persian and arab civilizations did not have all of those listed except democracy which they did not then and most still do not today and no one suggests that south sea islanders the aztecs and incas ancient egyptians or the khmer empire that built angkor wat for the god vishnu did not have their own worthy civilizations too yet even the very greatest achievements and physical creations of those other civilizations simply cannot compare with what the greco-roman and judeo-christian western civilization has produced in philosophy history medicine poetry and drama let alone democracy anyone reading charles murray's superb and unanswerable book human accomplishment cannot but accept that the contribution made to mankind the whole of it not just the west by dead white european males has statistically utterly dwarfed that made by the whole of the rest of the world combined this is demonstrable in terms of its cathedrals concertos nobel prizes medical breakthroughs and the fact that there is no one in any other civilization who can objectively match the sheer body of poetic and dramatic work of shakespeare to deny that is to start going down the route of the data of chad um who uh was reduced to claiming that the light bulb television and telephone were all invented there from the constitution drafted by the founding father of the american republic to the wartime speeches of winston churchill uh jenkins writes many have found inspiration for their brand of human liberalism and for a doctrine of the open society in the funeral speech of parakeets if pericles had lost an election or was ostracized in the annual vote of the athenians he would have stood down from office in the same way that boris johnson angela merkel scott morrison and emmanuel macron would after a defeat in a fair and free and fair election in their countries whereas that is inconceivable in many totalitarian countries not infused by the ethics of the west that is ultimately why we should still believe in western civilization not apologize for it why it should be proselytized around the world and certainly taught us a discreet discipline in our schools and universities the west never pretended that uh it invented civilization as the french anthropologist uh claude levi strauss emphasized in his 1951 forward to the unesco international social science bulletin considering some of the most ancient sites of human habitation in the world such as harappa in the indus valley he observed straight streets intersecting at right angles individual industrial workshops utilitarian housing for workers public baths drains and sewers pleasant suburbs for the wealthier classes in short what he called all the glamour and blemishes of a great modern city five thousand years ago therefore the most ancient civilizations of the old world were giving their liniments to the new the inhabitants of egypt china and persia were creating sophisticated art and architecture legal and numerical systems literary and musical traditions while the people of europe were still covered in woden living in mud huts what might homer have to say about being civilized iliad which describes the clash between the greeks and the trojans is not a description of a conflict between two nation states adam nicholson characterizes the conflict in the mighty dead why homer matters as the deathly confrontation of two ways of understanding the world in this 4 000 year old scenario the greeks are the barbarians they are northern warriors newly technologically empowered with ships and bronze spears who want what the trojans have got their pirates of course animalistic in love with violence they're savage ruthless nomads who trade women as commodities a three-legged metal tripod to put vases on is worth 12 oxen a woman only four and lust after the treasure hidden within troy's walls the city of troy is wealthy ordered graceful stable and the greeks want it the climax of the poem achilles the ultimate man of the plains confronts hector of troy the man of the city in disarmingly exhilarating and violent poetry the outsider slaughters the insider the barbarians have won or have they after the battle priam hector's grieving father visits achilles in his tent troy is doomed but achilles marvels at priam's humility but his ability to respect the man who has murdered his beloved son from the mutuality and courage of that wisdom writes nicholson its blending of city and plain a vision of the future might flower the crusaders of medieval europe were no more bloody and cruel than the wars of conversion enacted by the expanding islamic world in the 7th and 8th centuries the ethiopian empire 1270 to 1974 was founded upon slavery as well as the ottoman empire 1922-1924 if the history of the west needs to be taught critically then so does that of the east or the so-called global south no civilization has been morally pure competition and monopoly writes neil ferguson sagely in his book civilization the west and the rest science and superstition freedom and slavery curing and killing hard work and laziness in each case the west has been the father to both the good and the bad those early western civ courses never tried to argue that it was flawless karl marx sometimes used to be taught in them after all but in the 20th century students had better common sense and took that for granted and we're not looking for ever new ways to be offended christianity for all its schisms and intolerance its occasional obscurantism and obnoxious iconoclasm has been overall an enormous force for good in the world the sermon on the mount was as churchill put it the last word in ethics christians abolished slavery in the 1830s or three decades later in america's case whereas outside christendom the practice survived for much longer and identifiable versions of it still exist in some non-christian and anti-christian countries today the abolition of slavery did not merely happen by votes in parliament and proclamations from presidents it was fought for by and against christians with much blood spilt on both sides that would not have happened without the judeo-christian values that are so central to western civilization the royal navy ran its west africa preventive squadron for over 60 years the sole task of fighting slavery during which time it freed about 160 000 slaves and an estimated seventeen thousand british seamen died achieving that when considering the rest those civilizations that did not produce what western civilization has neil ferguson is unblushingly honest we must resist the temptation to romanticize history's losers he writes the other civilizations overrun by the west's or more peacefully transformed by it through borrowings as much as by impositions were not without their defects either of which the most obvious was that they were incapable of providing their inhabitants with any sustained improvement in the material quality of their lives unquote for all my earlier concentration on art and architecture poetry and music ferguson is also correct to point out that quote civilization is much more than just the contents of a few first-rate art galleries is a highly complex human organization which is why his book is about as much about sewage pipes as flying buttresses in response to the issuing of the united nations universal declaration of human rights in 1947 the american anthropological association released a critique which asked how can the proposed declaration be applicable to all human beings not be a statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in the countries of western europe and america the question assumes that the 30 articles of the declaration could not be universal since universality of human rights was of necessity a western assumption that this was intended as a criticism of course not an endorsement yet the west has not stolen these values as the greeks stole the trojan's gold it has not appropriated or co-opted them rather they are seen as objectionable because they do indeed according to their detractors in here in western culture so given that a belief in human rights is apparently predicated on western culture is not that culture worth examining and teaching instead there's an entire industry devoted to trying to topple dead white european males and heroes of them from their pedestals literally so in the case of the british activist afuer hirsch's attempt to have admiral nelson removed from his column in trafalgar square in london on the grounds that he did not actively campaign to abolish the slave trade which wasn't abolished by britain until two years after his death the self-hatred virus is a particularly virulent and infectious one and has almost entirely overtaken the academy in its attitude towards western civilization once again charles murray is invaluable here in enumerating in numbers and places and names and statistics the contribution made in every field by jews over the millennia around 100 times what it ought to be in relation to their demographical numbers on the planet writing of max warburg's daughter gazella in his book the warburgs ron chernow recalls how once asked that a party whether she was jewish gizella refused to answer when her mother asked her why gizella stammered confusedly you always told us not to boast that might be true of her but phylocemetic gentiles like me enjoy boasting about the contributions the jews have made to western civilization in every sphere the where the hater of western civilization very often there's an anti-semite not very far away french postmodern theory refuses to distinguish between high and low culture attempting to make it futile even to discuss whether this or that work of art is or is not lovely or important if you want to argue that kanye west's lyrics are as good as shakespeare or mongolian yurts are as valid a form of architecture as the sydney opera house then fuco will support you all the way if you want to understand why we do not have child slavery in the west or disenfranchise women or imprisonment without trial or the imprisonment of newspaper editors you simply have to study the cultural history that produced such an unusual and extraordinary situation in human history it's inescapable and not susceptible to post-modernist analysis it's not about the aesthetic or literary superiority of certain artworks but about the unequivocal good of human dignity if ms sonoli reshatwa really finds the idea of losing her human rights so romantic she's always welcome to move to saudi arabia which is still awaiting its enlightenment very great late gertrude himmelfarb identified three separate enlightenments english french and scottish different though overlapping stages of the 18th century with different emphases in different places at different times chart cathedral was not dedicated until 1260 so there were five centuries between then and the enlightenments but they were the moment that people began to throw off superstition and a belief in magic and witchcraft to look at the world afresh unafraid of what they might find and where it might take them even at the risk of unbelief if the islamic world had had such a moment it would not have been left behind in so many areas of accomplishment since it was turned back from the gates of vienna in 1683 with the result that its fascist fundamentalist wing um not have existed to lash out in such fury and resentment on 9 11. the recent security conference in munich took as its theme entitled restlessness an ugly word in english worse in german intending to prompt international decision makers into thinking what might happen if the trump administration were ever to get as tough over nato under funding as it has long threatened to do another fear of restlessness however should be about the eclipse of western civilization as a subject for study as a result of a hugely successful gramscian march through the institutions for far becoming a kumbaya touchy feely place a truly restless world would be a neo-darwinian free-for-all in which every state merely grabbed what it could a return to the world hobbs wrote about in levath left should beware what it claims to wish for western civilization should be taught once more in our schools and colleges as churchill knew as the bombs were falling and london was burning in december 1940 it is still worth leaving it thank you very much well i'm sure you found that lecture as challenging and as thought-provoking as i did there will have been things you agreed with or things you disagreed with or others you hadn't thought of at all but surely the idea of a restless world is indeed both frightening and somewhat incoherent and addressing this idea is a key part of our remit at the ramsey center many thanks to professor andrew roberts for that wonderful lecture as our play gear continues do watch out for more of our online lectures including by such luminaries as isa buttrose bethany hughes peter baldwin noel pearson and lionel shriver and meanwhile thank you for listening stay safe and if you can stay cheerful and see you next time

Channel: The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation

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Keywords: Western civilisation, Ramsay Centre for western civilisation, Ramsay Lecture, Andrew Roberts, Western civilisation is under siege, Western civilisation course, Classical studies, 1619 Project, Parthenon, Democracy, Ancient Greece, Why study Shakespeare today, classical studies, What is western civilisation based on, New York Historical Society, Ian Jenkins British Museum, Study Western Civilisation, History of western civilisation, Western Canon, The Ramsay Centre

Id: b5Uw15ir42A

Length: 32min 42sec (1962 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020