Charles
W. HEDRICK, Jr. Ancient History and Western
Civilization
Scholars
are, as a rule, pleased to think of their writing as a
purely intellectual product with no connection to their
work-a-day lives: dissimulation of the social context of
thought is one of the foundational principles of the
modern academy. In this paper I will emphasize one
example of the relationship between the two: the place of
ancient history in the Western Civilization curriculum.
Everyone is familiar with the claim that Greco-Roman
civilization is the "cradle" of the modern western world.
The ancient Greeks bequeathed us the characteristic
European ways of thinking, while the Romans, through
political and military successes, domesticated Europe,
defined its limits, and provided an eternal model of
stable political practice. For some time this has been
the explicit or implicit "big idea" of all ancient
history, the lifeline that ties it to the present world.
The Greeks and Romans have occupied a place at the
beginning of the narrative of Western Civilization for as
long as there has been a narrative of Western
Civilization. The modern conceptions of Western
Civilization and Europe are conventionally traced back to
the Renaissance, with its secularization of the earlier
idea of Christendom and the attendant modification of the
genealogy of the West to include not only Biblical, but
pagan antiquity.
The
"Western Civilization" curriculum began in New York City
in 1917, at Columbia College. The immediate impetus for
it arose from persistent pragmatic considerations. At the
end of the nineteenth century, American higher education
became more professional and specialized. Courses
proliferated and the rigid old Classical curriculum was
replaced with a more flexible system that included many
electives. The Western Civilization curriculum was
created to provide a common educational experience for
all students, and to create a large required course that
would subsidize smaller electives. The decision to make
Europe the focus of the curriculum certainly owed
something to the tradition of thought that originated in
the Renaissance, but it must also be understood in terms
of the situations of the day, including the patriotic
ideal of civic education; the demography of immigration;
and even the political alliances of World War I. The
Western Civilization curriculum spread and became a
staple of higher education throughout America. The
Western Civilization course was the foundation of the
college experience in most of America from the 1930s
through the 1950s. Classicists, whose position in the
university at the time was precarious, lent their support
to the idea, and positions in ancient history were
guaranteed.
Criticism
of the concept of Western Civilization has proliferated
in recent decades, but entrenched institutional support
provided by the Western Civilization curriculum has shown
itself to be resilient, even if not entirely invulnerable
to the attacks of theorists. The curriculum faded
somewhat in the 1960s as requirements eroded further and
the number of electives exploded. History departments
today are no larger, but far more diverse than they were
20, never mind 80, years ago; consequently, European
history is taught more selectively.
Will
Western Civilization survive? Five years ago I would have
confidently answered no; but scholars are notoriously
poor prophets, and four years of the "civilizational
thinking" of Samuel Huntington and the Bush
administration have given me pause. Western Civilization
may well be moribund, but it is certainly not dead. If
the end of Western Civilization is at hand, ancient
historians should try to be involved in the determination
of its replacement.
Abstracts
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