Toynbee, Is There a Western Tradition
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World ffairs Institute
IS THERE A WESTERN TRADITION?Author(s): Arnold J. ToynbeeSource: World Affairs, Vol. 111, No. 3 (Fall, 1948), pp. 151-156
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WORLD
AFFAIRS
PAX
OMNIUM RERUM
TRANQUILLITAS
ORDINIS
WORLD AFFAIRS
welcomes all constructive
comments
and
proposals
for
world
order and
peace.
It neither
sponsors
nor
censors
any
of
the
views
expressed
by
the
writers.
IS
THEREA
WESTERN TRADITION?*
BY
ARNOLD
J.
TOYNBEE
Teacher
and
author in
the
field
of
History.
Among
his
recent
books
are
A
STUDY
OF
HISTORY
and
CIVILIZATION
ON
TRIAL
'Is there
a
Western
tradition?'
The
question
is
arousing
deep
feelings
among
Western
people;
and
this,
I
believe,
is
a new
thing
that has
happened
within
our
own
lifetime.
Thirty
years
ago,
before theRussian
Revolution,
people
in
the
West
were
not
asking
themselves
whether
there
was
such
a
thing
as
a
Western
civilisation
with
a
way
of
life
of
its
own.
At that
time,
we
Westerners
were
wholly
ab
sorbed
in
domestic
quarrels
inside
our
Western
family,
we were
not
bothering
much
about
our
relations
with the
rest
of
the
world,
for,
though
we
were
and
are a
rather
small
minority
of
the human
race,
at
that
time
we were
undisputedly
top
dog.
We
just
took
it
for
granted
that
the
rest
of
mankind
had
to
submit
to
being
dominated
by
the
West,
and
that
this was
a
blessing
for
them.
What
has
made
this
question
about
a
'Western
tradi
tion'
such
a
live
one
in
theWest since
then?
Well,
I
sup
pose
we
have
had
a
great
shock. For
about 250
years,
down
to
1917,
we
Westerners had assumed
that the
rest
of
the world
was
at
our
feet,
and
that
it
was
going
to
stay
there. And
then,
suddenly,
our
Western
supremacy
was
challenged
by
a
great
non-Western
community.
COUNTER-OFFENSIVE
AGAINST WESTERN IDEALS
Before
that,
ever
since
the time
of
Peter the
Great,
the
*By
permission
of the British
Broadcasting-
Co.
and Mr.
Toynbee.
151
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152 World
Affairs,
Fall,
1948
Russians
had,
for
the
most
part,
taken
Western
life and
thought
as
their
pattern.
And
then,
all
at
once,
they
be
gan
to
denounce
the
West
and all
its
works.
They
even
launched
a
counter-offensive,
and
started
the
same
kind
of
missionary
work in the
West
that
we
Westerners have
been
carrying
on
for
the
last
few centuries
in
Russia,
India,
China,
and
the
rest
of
the
world.
This
Russian
propa
ganda
has
not
been
altogether
unsuccessful:
and
that
has
given
us
a
fright.
This is
not
the
first
time
that
we
Westerners
have
found
ourselves
in
danger
of
this
kind. Between 300
and 400
years
ago,
there used
to
be
cases
of Western
Christians
'turning
Turk,'
as
in
our
time
we see
Western
believers
in
free
enterprise
'turning
Communist';
and
though
then,
as
now,
the number
of the
converts
was
not
large,
and
there
were
no
Muslim
propaganda
cells
inside
our
West
ern
body
social,
our
ancestors
took
those
defections
tragi
cally,
as we are
taking
our
similar
losses
today.
Here is a
point
which we Westerners often overlook, I
think. This
upsetting
experience
of
being
bombarded
by
a
foreign
way
of
life,
and
losing
converts
to
it,
is
not
an
experience
that
has
been confined
to
us.
We
are
being
put
through
it
now
by
the
Russians,
and
our
ancestors
were
put
through
it
by
the
Turks.
But
what
we
Westerners
have
suffered
in
this
way
at
the
hands
of Turkish
Muslims
and
Russian Communists
is
mild
compared
to
what
we
have been
inflicting
on
the
Russians,
Muslims and
Hindus, Chinese, Japanese.
and
Africans,
and
all
other
non-Western
peoples
in
the
Old
World
and
the
New in
modern
times.
The
very
moderate
dose
of
the
same
upsetting
treatment
that the Russians
have
been
giving
us
during
the
last
thirty
ears may
help
us
faintly
to
imagine
what the terrific
impact
of
the
West
has
meant
for
the
rest
of
mankind
during
these
last
three
centuries.
'Is there
a
Western
tradition?'
The
other
fellows,
who
have
been
hit
by it,
certainly
believe that there is.
We
Westerners have not a common name for ourselves; we
did
not
need
one
so
long
as we were
securely
top
dog
and
were
not
on
the
defensive.
But the Eastern
orthodox
Christians and the Muslims do
have
a name
for
us.
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World
Affairs,
Fall,
1948
153
They
call
us
'the
Franks,'
because the
Franks
were
the
dominant
people
in
an
empire embracing
the
larger
part
ofWestern
Christendom,
which Charles
the
Great
put
together
round
about
A.D.
800.
In
practice,
today,
the
name
'Franks,'
as
the
Orientals
use
it,
means
all Catholics
and
all
Protestants.
In
fact,
religion
enters
into this
for
eign
definition of
our
Western
society;
and
I
think
that
makes
sense,
because
every
civilisation
has
religious
foun
dations which cannot be conjured away by forgetting
or
denying
or
concealing
their
existence-as
I
expect
the Rus
sians
will
find
out
as
well
as
we.
Let
us
test
this Oriental belief
in the
existence of
a
pe
culiar
Western
tradition
by
some
familiar
piece
of
history.
Take
the
Reformation:
that
is
certainly
an
event
in
the
history
f
England,
Scotland,
and
Ireland;
Spain
and Por
tugal;
France, Germany,
and
Italy;
the Low
Countries,
and
Scandinavia;
Poland
and
Hungary.
But
when
we
pass
on
from Poland into Russia,
or
from
Hungary
into
Serbia,
or
from
Spain
into
Morocco,
we
do
not
find the
Reformation
happening
in
these
other
countries,
too.
There is
a
definite,
geographical
line
at which
this
West
ern
event
called the
Reformation
came
to
a
stop.
Turn
the
page
of
history
from
the
sixteenth
to
the
eighteenth
century,
and
you
will
find
wigs
and
powder
stopping
at
the
same
line
as
the
Reformation.
Work the
line
out
for
yourselves,
and
you
will find
that,
even now
that
our
Western
world
has
expanded
out
of
Western
Europe
into
the
Americas,
and
the
antipodes,
it includes
only
a
small
part
of
the earth's
surface,
and
a
still smaller
fraction
of mankind.
The
Reformation,
then,
is
one case
of
an
experience
shared
by
all
Western
people,
but
peculiar
to
them
as
dis
tinct
from
the
rest
of
the world.
A
common
experience,
yes
But
not
one
that
has
given
birth
to
common
princi
ples
or
common
ideals
Catholics and Protestants
are
equally
Western,
yet
they
are
poles
apart
on
issues
of
the
utmost importance:forexample, thecrucial issue between
authoritarianism
nd individualism.
It is
difficult-perhaps impossible-to
find
any
set
of
principles, ideals,
or
practices
that
re
accepted
and
agreed,
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154 World
Affairs,
Fall,
1948
without
dispute,
by
all
Westerners
as
being
the
hall-mark
of
the
Western
tradition.
What
are
our
Western
hall-marks?
Let
us
run
through
the
main
provinces
of social life.
In
religion,
is
it
Cath
olicism
or
Protestantism
that
represents
the
genuine
West
ern
tradition?
It
can
hardly
be
both,
and
we
have been
disputing
for
more
than
four
centuries
now
without
being
able
to
agree
which
of the
two
is the
true
Western
religious
faith.
In
politics,
is
it
autocracy,
parliamentarianism,
or
mili
tary
dictatorship?
The
English-speaking
peoples
always
assume
without
discussion
that
parliamentarianism
is
the
true
political
faith
of
Western
man.
Yet,
in
the modern
Western
world,
the
states
in
which
parliamentary
govern
ment
has been
a
going
concern
have
always
been
in
a
minority.
If
one
is
to
decide
the
question democratically by
count
ing heads, the main line of ourWestern political tradition
is
represented,
not
by
the Mother of
Parliaments,
but
either
by
an
old-fashioned
autocracy
in
the
style
of
King
Phillip
II,
of
King
Louis
XIV,
or
by
a
revolutionary
mili
tary
dictatorship
in the
style
of
Cromwell, Napoleon,
Mussolini,
or
Hitler.
And
now
what
about
economics,
which
arouse
stronger
feelings
in modern
Western hearts
than
ever
politics
or
religion?
In
economics,
is it
Socialism
that
is the
true
Western
faith,
or
is it
the
rival
economic
system
that is
called 'free
enterprise'
by
its
friends
and
'capitalism'
by
its
enemies?
Free
enterprise
is
certainly
Western;
but,
then,
so
is
Socialism,
too;
yes,
and
Marxian Socialism
as
well
as
other
brands.
Where did Marx
get
his
doctrine
and
his
programme?
Such
things
are
not
invented
in
a
vacuum.
Marx created
Marxism
under the
painful impression
of
industrial
con
ditions
inVictorian
England.
And where
did
the
prophet
himself
foretell
that his
social
revolutionwould
break
out
first? In Russia? Marx never thought of that. The
Marxian
revolution
was
to
be the
appropriate
retort to the
social
evils of the
Western industrial
revolution;
and
Marx had
no
doubt
that
England,
the
pioneer
industrial
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World
Affairs,
Fall,
1948
155
country,
would
be
ripe
for
social
revolution
before
any
other
candidate.
In
England, today,
we
seem
at
last
to
be
righting
a
good
many
of
the
wrongs
inflicted
by
the
industrial
revo
lution,
but-though
one
says
this with
fear
and
trembling
-it
does
look
as
though
we
might
succeed
in
achieving
this
great
social
readjustment
without
committing
the
un
principled
acts
of violence
to
which
the
Marxian
scheme
would
condemn
us.
PRODUCT
OF
THE
WEST
Now UNACCEPTABLE
That the
Marxian
inoculation should
have
'taken'
in
Russia,
where
it
is
a
foreign
Western
import,
when
it
had
not
'taken''in
England,
where
it
is
a
native
Western
prod
uct,
is
one
of
those
pranks
that
history
loves
to
play.
Marx
ism
is
a
native
product
of
the
West,
and
a
foreign
Western
import
into
Russia;
yet
Russia,
not
the
West,
is
where
the
Marxian
ideology
has,
in
fact,
made
its future.
Why have the Russians taken to this
particularly
West
ern
ideology
so
kindly?
I
suppose,
because
they
feel like
soldiers in
a
battle
who
have
captured
an
enemy gun
and
have turned
it
against
its
original
owners.
Marxism
is
a
handy
anti-Western
weapon
because
it
is
a
Western
heresy.
Those
of
us
who
belong
to
the
non-Marxian
majority
of
Westerners would
have
very
much
preferred
to
see
our
Western
ideas and
ideals
exported
in
some
less
anti-tra
ditional
form. But
our
own
past
Western
attempts
to
ex
port
our
traditional Western religion have all been fail
ures.
In
the
sixteenth
and
seventeenth
centuries,
for
instance,
the
Jesuits,
by
exercising
very
great
skill and
tact,
made
considerable
progress
towards
converting
China
and
Japan
to
Roman
Catholicism.
But
when
they
had reached
a cer
tain
point,
the
Chinese
and
Japanese
would
not
have
it.
Russia
is
the first
on-Western
society
that
has
been
con
verted
to
a
Western
religion
of
any
kind;
and
if
you
think
of it like
that,
you
will
see
that,
n
embracing
our
Marxism,
theRussians have paid theWest a kind of left-handed
compliment.
Has,
then,
our
Western
civilisation
any
distinguishing
mark
at
all
that is
common
to
all
Westerners,
in
contrast
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156
World
Affairs,
Fall,
1948
to
the
majority
of
mankind?
If
you
put
that
question
to
non-Westerners,
most
of
them,
I
believe,
would
say
that there
was one
quite
distinctive
thing
about the
West:
our
uncanny
genius
for
technology.
Here
we
have,
per
haps,
hit
on
something
that
is
common
to
Westerners
of
every
creed.
This
special
turn
that
we
have
for
applying
scientific
knowledge
to
practical
affairs
is
the
source
of
our enormous
material
power.
It
is
the
talisman
that has
made
us
mas
ters
of
the
modern
world.
And,
whatever
may
be
the
out
come
of
Russia's
challenge
to
our
present
Western
su
premacy,
we
may
be
fairly
sure
that,
in
any
event,
the
world
is
going
to
remain
at
the
mercy
of Western tech
nology.
What will
our
Western
tradition look like
in
retrospect,
in
some
future
age
when
our
Western
society,
the
Russian
society,
and
the other
now-living
civilisations
are
all
long
since
dead and
buried?
One
thing, think,
can
be
fore
told already about the ultimate effectsof ourWestern
technology:
these
effects
are
going
to
be
extreme,
whether
for
good
or
evil.
If
our
characteristic Western
gift
proves
to
have been
a
blessing
for
mankind,
it
will
be
a
great
blessing; and,
if
a
curse,
a
great
curse.
If
things
go
well,
the
epitaph
of
history
on
the
Franks
may
run:
'Here
lie
the technicians
who
united
mankind,'
and
if
things
go
badly:
'Here
lie
the technicians
who
exterminated
the human race.'
What
are
the hundred
years
of the
history
of the
ma
chine
compared
with the
two
hundred
thousand
years
of
the
history
of
man?
It
was
only
yesterday
that
we
began
to
pitch
our
camp
in
this
country
of laboratories nd
power
stations,
that
we
took
possession
of this
new,
this
still
un
finished, ousewe live in.Everything roundus isnew and
different-our
concerns,
our
working
habits,
our
relations
with
one
another.
Antoine
de Saint
Exup~ry
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