When my father, Jackson Spielvogel, first wrote the textbook, “Western Civilization,” now in its 12th version, he hoped to craft a singular narrative that organized the complexities and contradictions of an unlimited historic legacy. Many years of educating massive survey programs at Penn State College led my father to worth the facility of major sources in stimulating the creativeness and significant colleges of his college students. At this time, over thirty years because the first version of Spielvogel’s best-selling textual content, we launch “Main Issues in Western Civilization,” a brand new, first version designed to boost our understanding of Western Civilization at a time when its significance and relevance is being reevaluated.
Why examine Western Civilization?
With the appearance of globalization, many have questioned the usefulness of historic fashions centered on the “West” — which frequently interprets to Europe and america. Whereas at present’s students rightly emphasize world connections and variety to fight historic biases and colonialist (imperialist) mindsets, the centrality of Western Civilization as a foundational mannequin for human improvement can’t be overstated. The folks, writings, and tradition that shaped the core of the “Western custom” laid the muse for a lot of of at present’s establishments and modern efforts to reshape them. The worth in finding out Western Civilization contains understanding the event of our present programs — political, judicial, financial, instructional, non secular, scientific, and cultural — and the way they form our lives, each in america and throughout the globe.
Western beliefs
The legislative programs of america and European nations are ruled by the rule of democracy, beliefs shaped to problem historic energy buildings and hierarchies. New ideas of sovereignty have been proposed throughout the Enlightenment and American and French revolutions, significantly the appropriate of the folks to manipulate themselves. The concept that a nation, itself a brand new idea within the nineteenth century, needs to be ruled by the folks and never by a divinely ordained hereditary kingship, and that people owned the appropriate to take part in selecting who led their authorities, have been radical concepts. These Western beliefs led to the formation of countries supporting democratic norms, free and truthful elections, capitalist economies, strong instructional programs, freedom of speech and the press, truthful judicial processes, non secular tolerance, and open cultural expression.
Nonetheless, regardless of the promise of freedom, many underneath the rule of European and American governments have been compelled to help the wants of the nation, typically struggling subjugation by the hands of racist ideologies and colonial networks. The provisional governments held by Western leaders in Southeast Asia, Asia, Africa, the Center East, and Latin America additional attest to the complexity of the Western Civilization narrative and issues inherent when freedom shouldn’t be accessible to all.
Main Issues in Western Civilization: a fancy and numerous first version
In “Main Issues in Western Civilization,” college students will discover the phrases of those that constructed these programs and establishments. They are going to be taught to put folks and locations inside historic contexts by studying first-hand accounts of those that formed, and have been formed by, Western affect. College students will encounter poetry and artwork that painting the human situation, non secular relics and buildings embodying non secular devotion, and texts and artworks that challenged political regimes and social norms. Letters to family members, tales of heroic feats, legislation codes and novels all seize the spirit of the age. This textual content introduces college students to those major sources, offering a higher understanding of how historical past has been crafted whereas stimulating a nuanced consideration of its legacy.
As college students dive into this numerous narrative, they are going to be met by the contradictions of historical past. For instance, whereas expertise can advance humanity, it could possibly additionally destroy it. Albert Einstein’s work on the atom revolutionized the best way we considered the world, however it additionally led to our best potential weapon, the atomic bomb. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave us the flamable engine, permitting us to extra simply journey and produce items which have enriched many individuals’s lives. This financial system of mechanized manufacturing developed right into a capitalist monetary system that has dominated not solely the West, however all the planet.
The coed takeaway
What has been the price of these developments on the surroundings, world economic system, and public well being? Western developments in manufacturing, consumption, transportation, and communication have fueled globalization. Nonetheless, we can’t perceive the affect of those developments, or our present views, with out contemplating their origins. Equally, the democratic beliefs famous above symbolize makes an attempt to make sure freedom from the tyranny that too typically plagued human historical past.
But the thought of sovereignty stays contested at present, and the significance of finding out Western Civilization stems from its relevancy, significantly throughout a time when concepts of nationhood are continually revised. What freedom appears to be like like stays an open query for at present’s college students, and their position in defining freedom can solely be completed by understanding the programs and elements that bore its very premise. “Main Issues in Western Civilization” goals to assist college students take a purposeful step in direction of reaching this objective.
Written by Kathryn Spielvogel, M.A. Pennsylvania State College, co-author of “Main Issues in Western Civilization,” 1e.
Kathryn Spielvogel earned a B.A. in historical past, and M.A. in Artwork Historical past from The Pennsylvania State College. She continued her graduate research in historical past on the College at Buffalo, SUNY, earlier than working as a analysis editor on historical past textbooks for the previous fifteen years. Captivated with historic preservation and financial improvement, Kathryn volunteers for a number of non-profit organizations whereas renovating historic properties and business buildings all through Pennsylvania.
on this first version textual content to your historical past course? Be taught extra about Quantity I and Quantity II of “Main Issues in Western Civilization” now.
