Petr Hampl: You advocate the thesis that the West cannot be understood as one civilization, but as two civilizations that build on each other.
The first includes ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the Christian Middle Ages. Then a new Euro-Atlantic civilisation emerged, which is completely different in its nature, values and civilisational patterns. It would be consistent with this thesis that ancient texts (for example, scholastic texts) are as distant from us today as Indian or Chinese texts.
But at the same time you support a classical literacy based primarily on ancient authors. You even run a seminar. How does that work together?
Jiří Hejlek: Before answering the question asked, which brilliantly opens up both central themes of my lectures – i.e. the philosophy of history and education – , I will precede by clarifying my approach to the concept of “the West” and allow myself to clarify my starting position in terms of individual civilizations and their number.
I myself do not use the label “the West”. At first glance, everything seems clear. But one need only look at any attempt to define “the West” to see that it is ill-considered. Huntington serves as an example. He classifies Greece as a non-Western, so-called Orthodox civilization. But isn’t ancient Greece considered the cradle of Western civilization? This contradicts the assumption of the historical continuity of the so-called West. I consider it right to avoid this actually very new term. Moreover, it is still burdened by the ideological overlay of the second half of the 20th century.
The pioneers of the discontinuous view of history, Spengler and Toynbee, have convincingly shown that ancient and Christian Europe belong to different civilizations, and therefore I cannot think that they form a whole. The thoughtful Toynbee goes further and proves the civilizational distinctiveness of Hellenistic Greece and the preceding Cretan-Mycenaean period. Thus the number of civilizational units in the space of Europe is certainly more than three.
Huntington classifies Greece as a non-Western, so-called Orthodox civilization. But isn’t ancient Greece considered the cradle of Western civilization?
Toynbee has deepened Spengler’s conception in a respect which is significant for us. Spengler concentrated on the grand comparative morphology of civilizational formations. Toynbee turns his attention to what separates these formations, especially when they build on each other to some degree. He notes that it is precisely the failure to fully understand the meaning of what people previously did, wrote, believed. This is correctly pointed out in the phrasing of your question. To my mind it is clear that just as people in the “Middle Ages” did not understand, for example, Homer’s gods, so we today (if we have the relevant knowledge) can easily understand Kant or Locke, but hardly John Scott Eriugena or even John Hus (Czech theologian burned 1415).
Understanding is a special faculty of human reason, distinct from calculating and ordering rationality. The defect of modern, Atlantic civilization is that it mostly and increasingly reduces reason to logical ratio. And it is the study of previous civilizations and cultures that is able to raise man above his civilizational horizon. It is the opportunity to gain distance from one’s own civilization and to reflect critically on one’s own thought, values and formulas. This is why in the 19th century – thanks in particular to Wilhelm von Humboldt – the basis of study and education became established. It is not enough for scholars to cover the most important knowledge of their time. His equipment includes a knowledge of languages (including classical languages – at least the basic ones), history and classical (i.e. exemplary) literature, and possibly art and music history. And beware! Also mathematics and basic nature study.
Patrick Deneen legitimately invokes the medieval seven liberal arts (artes liberales) in his reflections on education. Three disciplines (trivium = three ways) formed the necessary basis of education: grammar (knowledge of the Latin language), dialectics (logic) and rhetoric. This was followed by the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (especially harmony). After the establishment of universities, the philosophy faculty provided this basic education. The remaining three faculties provided professional instruction in theology, law and medicine. It must be said that this model of education, where the basis of education is knowledge of a previous civilisation, including the relevant language, is as old as civilisation itself. Education and schools were also very important to the ancient Babylonians, more precisely to the Akkadians. Their scribes had to learn to know not only Sumerian writing, which they adopted, but also Sumerian literature and myths, i.e. religion. It is likely that this was already a different, alien way of thinking for them.