EB and the West

[SigniferOne]

Hi Urnamma,

It's actually rather interesting to be thought of as anti-western, considering that I am often considered the opposite in professional circles (at least as regards philosophy).

Only insofar as Celtic or Germanic culture would be supported in opposition to Greek or Roman, much in the same way nascent Celtic movements in the West were anti-Western... I'm glad to hear about philosophy though, more on that in a second.

Granted, some things are over the top, and some posters can be as well. However, what is generally objected to is the theory that romans are somehow superior to everyone culturally and militarily. This is the opinion of many, and it is a rather unfortunate and dim one. I am no cultural relativist, but the Romans and Greeks do not need 95% of all things attributed to them, their cultural achievements stand out enough.

Well look, we're not comparing Rome to China, since that's not the context for this thread or for the mod. Heck we're not even comparing it to Armenia or Persia, though it could easily sustain that comparison. We're simply comparing Classical civilization, a civilization which Europe accepted through ideas, without any racial connection, to Celtic or Germanic cultures which Europe need only accept through race. I know the official aim of EB is only to "portray quote barbarian unquote cultures in an accurate manner", but in truth the aim seems to be to put those on equal footing with the Classical culture. If you care for the Greek philosophy, you should bewail what the Germanics did to it (indifferently abandoned it); or what happened to Hypatia, even in Late Rome, by Roman and Greek people who no longer cared for Classical culture. Should I refresh what happened to Hypatia?

That's one of my pet peeves with EB (after the contempt for Roman culture): pro-Celtic people here are not happy to say Celts had some proto-Western features; they want to say Celts were just as good as the best of them, and in fact even better. This argument works only on people of their own race, and destroys a common European culture of ideals which is mostly Roman and in large part Greek. That's how all of this is anti-Western, that's where I'm coming from.

I am not quite sure why it has to be an -ism, but I digress.

I was making a substantive from an adjective...

Grammar should not be up there, as it is a unique characteristic to every formal language. Semites had formalized grammar long before Romans or Greeks. Note that these languages based their alphabet on the Phoenician.

Right we're not talking about a language people just inherited or developed by inertia. I'm talking about a rational, conscious, explicit formalization of a language, which explicitly specifies grammar rules, morphology, derivations, syntax, precisely what the Roman and Greek grammarians were doing. They had an explicit grammar, not something Semites or Celts did. Even if there's a Semitic example, it's more than likely Hellenistic, with Semites learning from the Greek example, just like Egyptians learned from them how to write history in the person of Manetho. But the point is that Greece and Rome were the fountainheads of these ideas, the greatest exemplars.

I suppose the Architectural styles of the Near East and Egypt (formalized and updated for thousands of years) are not formal enough for you?

Not on the level of Vitruvius. Still, I don't want to carp on Egypt, even though it really hasn't shown much for development in its inconceivably long ancient existence. It was old, venerable, I'll leave it at that. Again, the primary comparison is with the Celts and Germanics.

Medicine, likewise, could more accurately be considered a Greek/Phoenician development, as each built off the achievements of the other.

Not on the level of Celsus. It could be argued that Greeks had greater developments in Medicine, but I don't see how you could place Semites anywhere near Hippocrates and Erasistratus. These men were giants. Romans were giants in another way, which puts light on why Celsus is so important. Here is a casual remark from an old Latin textbook (Kelsey and Meinecke) that I still have:

Roman medicine at this time consisted of three general branches (see Celsus, De Medicina, Introduction 9): dietics, pharmaceutics, and surgery. Intelligent Romans like Cicero, Pliny, and Horace show a remarkable familiarity with a proper regimen of living, a field to which Roman physicians devoted much attention. Celsus (De Medicina, Books 1 and 2) discusses the proper use of exercise, food and drink according to their nutritive value and digestibility, the dietic and therapeutic value of water for promoting health (hydrotherapy), massage and friction, various kinds of baths, among them even warm oil-baths, and recommends a vegetarian diet. Cicero’s acquaintance with the theory and practice of medicine is also proved by a remarkable anatomical survey of the human body (De Natura Deorum 2.54, et seq.), exhibiting a grasp of things medical the like of which is rarely found among laymen even today.

In other words, the Roman achievement was the vast dissemination of medical knowledge out of hands of arcane doctors into hands of laymen, so that in the 19th century people could say the average person still didn't know as much about medicine as an ancient Roman. Need I remind you that even Celsus was not an arcane doctor either, and his On Medicine is but a small portion of the overall work that went into detail about rhetoric, agriculture, law, and military. So in other words he was a polymath, knew everything about everything, like Varro, Cicero, Pliny, etc etc. That is a very important intellectual achievement, even the Greeks didn't have a phenomenon like this. There is a reason why Roman writers were the teachers of the West, while few people read Bede or history of the Crusades. It is only in the 19th century, again, that the medieval era again becomes admirable.

Anyhow, you've addressed grammar, architecture, and medicine. Are you willing to grant me formalized oratory, philosophy, engineering, algebra and geometry?

Wrong again on the second. Note that early Greek styles were borrowed from the established Egyptian technique.

You're right, I agree, but you yourself say that only the early Greek styles were imitated on the Egyptian, which was very impressive (Menkaure). But Greeks and Romans took sculpture to the degree that the Egyptians never dreamed of. As a more salacious example, you have the Barberini Faun. As an athletic example, you have the Two Wrestlers. As a statesmanly example, you have the Prima Porta.

Still, are you granting me the "fully formed ideal of man" in sculpture? Since you're part of the mainstream, that won't be controversial to admit.

Also, as you said you are granting me all of philosophy:

No real argument here, as I am fond of saying: 'the Greeks invented rational thought'.

But how many people on EB forum do you think will make that statement? To be honest, I was surprised (happily) that you did. Would you be willing along with me to explain to other members of EB the exceptional nature of Greek philosophy? Wait, wasn't it you who once put the Celtic druids on the level of Pythagoras? I hope not :( But this is the kind of thing I've come to expect here at least. :(

Ok... Have you ever seen frescoes and funerary portraits?

Just briefly about this, since it's not important to argue. But yes I've seen the funerary portraits and some still life, that's why I said some ancient painting could stand with modern; but they lacked perspective and full control over lighting, which is why I'm more than willing to say most of it was proto-Western, as I'm not a fanboy interested in according everything to my favorite with no regard for measure or standard. I'd be perfectly willing to acknowledge faults or lackings, of which painting and music are an example.

Anyhow, let's not delve too much on this side issue.

The first is certainly untrue, and begs the question 'what is free government?' Is it a government in which 51% can vote themselves the property and liberty of the other 49%? A national hatred of self-submission existed among Celts too.

Right, but only insofar as people in general don't like self-submission. Romans and archaic Greeks took no-submission to extreme, they almost formalized it and made it a book. Let's remember what happened to Alexander when he started demanding proskynesis. Let's remember what was Xenophon's highest show of respect to another man, in Anabasis -- to give another man your hand; a handshake, more trivialized nowadays but considered extremely important in those days. How did the Persians show faithlessness? They didn't care for the handshake, taking another man's hand but then betraying him the next day. I'm not taking about hatred of self-submission as it naturally exists in everyone, I'm talking about the highest extreme that it reached in Archaic Greece and in the Republic.

Incidentally, this is a pattern for my response to your post: you listed a number of things which existed, in principle, elsewhere; it's just that the Greeks and Romans took these to the highest extreme possible; that's why we call them the Classical culture, they're the epitome of those good values. Plus, some things you omitted challenging because they could not be found in other countries in any form. That is what forms the essence of the modern West, don't you see? All these classical values. That is why I'm writing all this.

A free government is one that is run by the people it governs; women didn't vote but they didn't have to die on the battlefield either. The point is, the Republic was the greatest example of free government until, momentarily, Florence, but more really until Glorious Revolution, and really not until American Republic. As I never tire saying, even in 1789 Americans would quote Polybius on proper government. Madison was unhappy with the constitutional convention because people wanted to implement the Roman Republic literally. That needs to be respected, and people who developed it, admired. None of the "oligarchy" nonsense popular in books today.

Which is why the legal systems of the United States and Great Britain (among others) are based on Germanic laws?

The situation for law is far from simple, and not so clear cut as in your quote. In the late 1700s, John Adams, studying to become a lawyer, complained in his diary that he had no social life being imprisoned in his room "with Roman lawyers, and Dutch commentators". Roman law had a vast influence on all of Europe, as you know, and still a significant influence on Common Law that came separately. Furthermore, Common law is not really ancient Germanic, in the way that Feudal system is not Germanic. Just because it developed in the same people does not mean it originated from some primordial Germanic standards. In fact, medieval Common law really is not what built modern Europe; what did it were the commentaries by Coke and Littleton which were of stupendous influence upon Common Law, along with that monumental Dutch commentator whose name escapes me now. These are the men who built Common Law into what we know it as, and they lived in 1500-1600's, post Renaissance. Frankly, much of their commentary was based on Justinian, as were Adams' legal studies in America, in 1700s. Nobody read Jordanes to try to fish out primordial Germanic customs that would have some relevance.

This is asinine to me. We're not pro-germanic, we're pro-'not making them into stereotypical slathering cavemen'.

I know. But do you see where I'm coming from, overall? I too don't desire slathering cavemen. But my stand is, if people don't know about one of the people, it's better they don't know about the Germanics than about the Romans. Even if I don't want Germanics to be misrepresented, I prefer Germanics turned into cavemen than Romans turned into cavemen. Don't you see? Because Romans had much more to teach the West than Brennus or Ariovistus did. And that's what this is all about, the continuity of a common Western culture in the West, when education about common classical facts is falling apart at the seams, and highly intelligent mods like EB are instead teaching people about true facts of Germanics and Celts. The priorities are inverted, see? People in EB are like, "oh someone else will teach them about Greece and Rome", while no one else does; and the very leaders of Roman faction in EB believe their own faction to have little good to teach anyway.

Being obsessed with everything western is interesting, and largely missing the point. One cannot be Aristotelean and Platonic at the same time (Despite Boethius' attempt). You've ignored the Judaic and Christian elements in Western culture as well, which I find rather fascinating.

well I haven't ignored them, it's merely that Christianity does not fall into the concept of Classical culture as it has existed in the West for 600 years. We can discuss its influence, both bad and good, but I think it would be missing the point. The point is about Classical education, about the struggle of ideas between cultural relativism and a cultural hierarchy; culture is nothing but a set of ideas, and knowing cultural hierarchy allows us to take in the ideas we deem the best, as the West has been doing since Petrarch, but is stopping to do today. I agree with you about Aristotle vs. Plato, having a degree in philosophy I'd be more than willing to discuss it too, in another thread. I didn't catch the relevance of it, though, to the current issue.

I think that perhaps we ought to discuss singular facets of what makes the Romans and Greeks so superior to everyone else in every way, rather than painting with broad brush strokes. I'm willing to discuss it with you, if we keep it civil.

Sorry about writing a lot. What you said would be a welcome prospect, although as you can see from all of the EB replies after yours, a platonic Ideal rather than Aristotelian Observation :)