Will Western Civilization Be Conquered From Within?

Setting the historical scene for the Moral Disarmament of the West

For some time now I have been thinking about what I have referred to as the Moral Disarmament of the West, and the capacity of Western Civilization to engage with this problem. In my study, The Road To Ukraine: How The West Lost Its Way,I explored some of the symptoms of this malaise. [i]  

By Moral Disarmament I refer to cultural trend that in some cases unconsciously and in other cases consciously seeks to undermine and explicitly reject the civilizational attributes of the Western world. It is driven by a corrosive impulse that attempts to de-civilize what were once considered to be normal forms of civilized behaviour as well blemish and stigmatise the historical achievements of Western societies.

The grotesque spectacle that unfolded in Malmö during the course of the recent Eurovision contest exemplifies a display of uncivilized boorishness. The crowd did not only behave badly but through the booing of the Israeli singer they also highlighted their emotional affiliation with a cause that is zealously opposed to the civilizational accomplishment of the West.

The acceleration of the process of moral disarmament has reached the point that Western Civilization risks being conquered from within. The most striking symptom of this threat is that since the turn of the 21^st century this process of disarmament has accelerated to the point that even within its intellectual and cultural establishment the term Western Civilisation has acquired a distinctly negative connotation. Their rejection of this term is not merely animated by a commitment to Human rather than Western civilizational ideals but by a refusal to embrace society’s inheritance of the legacy of the past

Moral disarmament is the outcome of the crisis of normativity and a refusal to confront this problem. It implicitly and often explicitly rejects that values that have historically played a central role in helping western society deal with the historical challenges it faced. Moral disarmament has eroded the willingness to fight for principles such as freedom, national and popular sovereignty.  Most ominously it refuses the embrace its heritage and self-consciously rejects the legacy of Western Civilization.

My interest in the moral disarmament of the West has inevitably drawn me towards an exploration of the meaning of the civilization that underpins it. Through my study it soon became evident to me that Western Civilisation is different to others in many respects but arguably its most important and unique feature is its centuries long tradition of separating the religious and secular sphere. In turn the separation of these two distinct spheres, and its codification has created the precondition for the subsequent gradual diminishing of the power of religion.

 From the long view of history, it is the estrangement of the West from religious and transcendental codes that has proved to be the most distinct characteristic of this civilization. In his magisterial study, A History of Civilizations, the French historian Fernand Braudel argued that ‘since the development of Greek thought’ the ‘tendency of Western Civilization has been towards rationalism and hence away from the religious life’. He added that this is its distinguishing characteristic’[ii]. Braudel claims that ‘no such marked turning away from religion is to be found in the history of the world outside the West’. To reinforce this point, he stated that unlike in the West;

‘Almost all civilizations are pervaded or submerged by religion, by the supernatural, and by magic: they have always been steeped in it, and they draw from it the most powerful motives in their particular psychology’.

Braudel clearly has a point. Through the centuries, civilizations like that of Islam or India have not turned away from religion as decisively and thoroughly as the West. During their everyday life, they continue to draw on the traditional moral resources it provides.

The turn away from religion was facilitated by the historical presence of another unique feature of Western civilization; the division of authority between the secular and religious spheres. This unique tradition unfolded in the aftermath of the unravelling of the Roman Empire

A creative tension between the religious and the secular

The disintegration of Roman civilization in the fifth century had a devastating impact on European societies. The unified system of administration institutionalised during the Roman Empire gave way to fragmentation and a highly unstable form of rule. In the absence of a recognised ethos of authority, no stable institutions of governance emerged to provide a focus for cultural unity. Latin Christianity was the only institution that could contain or at least minimise the tendency towards political fragmentation. The Church itself lacked unity and it took centuries for the establishment of an effective papal monarchy which could serve as a focus for spiritual unity. The pope served as a symbol of religious authority of a medieval Europe that shared a common religion.

One of the principal questions confronting Europe in the Early Middle Ages was to develop an authoritative alternative to the one possessed by the rulers of Rome. The Church of Rome sought to claim authority on the grounds that it was responsible for the spiritual guidance of Christendom. Although the Church was militarily weak, the ‘Popes were enormously influential as custodians of ideational bonds that continued to hold medieval society (populous christianus) together’.[iii] Despite the political divisions that plagued medieval Europe order, Christian culture could draw upon the legacy of the Roman past, and possessed an idealised version of how authority worked in previous times.

The distinctive feature of medieval authority was the idea of divided lordship. This idea was based on the principle ‘that human society was controlled by two authorities, a spiritual as well as a temporal, represents the development of what is one of the most characteristic differences between the ancient and the modern world’. Unlike other religions, Christianity accepted what the sociologist Talcott Parsons has characterised as a ‘fundamental differentiation between church and state’.[iv]

In medieval doctrine, Christendom was represented as consisting of two distinct jurisdictions – the sacerdorium, or priesthood; and the imperium, or empire. According to the prevailing political theology, ecclesiastical and temporal hierarchies ‘coexisted within the same territory and claimed allegiance from the same persons’.[v] This was a system based on institutional independence but an allegiance to a shared Christian doctrine. The tension – creative and destructive – between these two jurisdictions played a significant role in influencing the elaboration of medieval ideas about how European societies should be ruled.

This tension was immanent in the uneasy relationship between spiritual and temporal authority, and expressed through a ceaseless attempt to assert, claim and contest authority. As a result, every assertion of supreme authority was challenged by counter-claims.

Parsons noted, that the ‘differentiation of the church from secular society’ and its institutionalisation was one of the distinct features of Western socio-cultural development.[vi]. For Max Weber, one of the fathers of the discipline of sociology, the differentiation of society into two independent spheres represented a significant contrast with the workings of other cultures. He wrote that ‘at least from a sociological viewpoint, the Occidental Middle Ages were much less of a unified culture than those of other societies’ and was particularly struck by its remarkable tendency to contest authority. His statement that ‘in the Occident authority was set against authority, legitimacy against legitimacy’ recognised one of the defining feature of this era.[vii]

The division of authority between the secular and religious limited the scope for the emergence of uncontested power. Competition between the two spheres also created opportunities for people to pursue their lives in a way that was far freer than in other civilizations. This divided lordship between religious and secular authority created a regime of permanent tension between the two. It also ensured that a system of checks and balance limited opportunities for the absolutisation of power. One of the most important outcomes of this regime of permanent tension was that it provide opportunities for the emergence of a cultural attachment to liberty at a relatively early point in human history. That is why freedom and liberty with all its attendant consequences became an integral feature of Western Civilization.

The creative tension between the religious and secular authority that emerged during the early medieval endures to this day. The constant struggle to overcome this tension endowed Western Civilization with a unique dynamic that it continues to possess to the present era. Braudel suggests that Europe took shape during the period between the fifth and thirteenth century. Secular ideals such as an orientation towards risk taking and openness to new experience alongside the valuation of reasoning and the application of science fostered a climate hospitable to formidable unleashing of the power of the human imagination. Its resultant achievements transformed the world and eventually led to the ascendancy of Western Civilization.

However, over the centuries the tension immanent within the secular and religious divide has acquired greater and greater intensity. To anticipate what has turned out to be an unresolvable problem – the turn away from religion coinciding with the rise of rational and scientific thought has created what has become in the modern era a ‘crisis of meaning’. Turn away from religion did not mean that it ceased to influence Western Civilization. Christianity remained integral to European thought and even influenced rationalist thought, which it frequently attacked.

Until the middle of the twentieth century the creative tension between the religious and secular order was able to sustain a normative outlook that was more or less accepted throughout the western world. Most societies provided their citizens with a web of meaning through which people were able to make sense of their everyday experience. Rational and scientific beliefs and practices coexisted with religious moral norms. Not even the rise of ideologies such as communism and fascism could deprive society from interpreting their existence through a web of meaning rooted in the past.

It is important to note that a ‘crisis of meaning’ can also have a creative dimension. The search for meaning has been an integral feature of human civilization. Through the struggle to endow experience meaning important insights about the human condition have been gained. The search for meaning has been a constant feature of Western Civilization in the modern era and continues to influence its art, philosophy, science, and spiritual life. The crisis of meaning only becomes a problem when society becomes resigned to it, accepts a condition of meaninglessness, and seeks to dispossess humanity from the insights and truths it learned through the ages.

The systematic and thoroughgoing targeting of the past and the legacy of Western Civilization had to wait until the outbreak of the Culture Wars during the last third of the 20^th century. In this respect the current cohort of Culture Warriors and their allies among the Western Elites appear to be much more successful than the zealous idealogues that brought Europe to its knees in the 1930s and 1940s.

During the current Culture Wars the Western world is under pressure to turn away not only from its religion but also all of its historical achievements. That is why so-called Western science, Western rationality (including Western mathematics) and Western philosophy and political ideals are all under attack. These attacks are encouraged by the dominant elites who are not prepared to defend their civilization and fight back. Their willingness to morally disarm is unprecedented in the history of Western civilization. In effect they did not need to open the gates to the barbarians because the most bitter enemies of Western civilization come from within.

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[i] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Ukraine-West-Gruyter-Disruptions/dp/311099562X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=A0EJ9138IVCS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OYlvuImGu9hDwGV8p6pTRA.ke112cI6rCxh9b8HumFfmNWUedd-2HPVI4i3MGJTfKA&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Road+To+Ukraine+Furedi&qid=1716024667&s=books&sprefix=the+road+to+ukraine+furedi%2Cstripbooks%2C81&sr=1-1

[ii] Braudel F. (1993) A History of Civilizations, p.23, Penguin Books : London.

[iii] Damaska, M. (1985) ‘How Did It All Begin’, The Yale Law Journal, vol.94, p.1813.

[iv] Parsons, T. (1963) ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 107, no.3., pp.42-43

[v] Damaska (1985)p.1813.

[vi] Parsons (1963a)p.49.

[vii] Weber, Max (1978) (edited by Roth, G. & Wittich C.)  Economy and Society; An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, volumes 1 &2, University of California Press : Berkeley,

p.1193.