HIST 101: Western Civilization
Introduction to the Course

Introduction to the course

1. After "9-11", Romano Prodi, then president of the European Community [and later president of Italy], explained the European support for the US in respect to the disaster in the following way.  That support was based on …shared values, rooted in democracy and freedom.  What are those shared values? and why are democracy and freedom critical to the western identity? and why do we believe that these are universal values?
2. Introductions:
   1. The Syllabus
   2. Foreign students; those with any other special needs regarding papers, exams, etc., please meet me after class or come to my office as soon as possible.
3. On "Western Civilization”
   1. Western = west of what?  A relative, geographical term, one that reflects a European, especially a western European, perspective on world history. 
   2. Civilization: more concretely, from the Latin word civitas, or city-state.  In cultural terms, and this is critical, it refers to the characteristics of urban life. Essentially, a course on western civilization means a course on the history and culture that developed in urban centers of western Asia and Europe. 
   3. Why study the 'Ancient History' of Western Civilization?  Why indeed study history at all?  The fact is history, for all its imperfections as a 'science', remains our best aid to understanding human behavior in the present and anticipating what will happen in the near and more distant future. Here is the argument:
      1. What we do, as individuals and as collectives, is determined by varying degrees of what is called ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’.  That is, our response to challenges is determined by our “DNA/genes” and also by the way we have been nurtured or brought up or “civilized”. 
         1. Our response to crises reflects our habits, our preferences, and our personal and collective life experiences, the way we have been conditioned. Becoming a duck
      1. It reflects, too, our identity with one or more social, religious, or ethnic groups.  Each element in this complex equation has a distinct historical development and has its own set of cultural values.  Often these values will complement one another; sometimes too they may be in conflict.  If we are to respond to challenges rationally, we need to become aware of the structure of our past. In brief, we try to learn from individual and collective experience.  
      2. Many of our cultural attitudes / conditionings find their origin in the Ancient World especially in the areas of religion, law and science.  Over the course of time these concepts have become so deeply ingrained that we tend to forget that they are culturally, not biologically determined (cf. "...we hold these truths to be self evident…").  One element in this course is to identify what those attitudes were and to understand how they were formed, and why we continue to use them as a means to cope with everyday problems. 
      3. How can this persistence of values be explained?  I offer two suggestions:
         1. Societies have discovered workable solutions (albeit many of them imperfect ones) to cope with persistent and recurring problems. Such solutions are typically embedded in certain works of literature; we continue to read and to be inspired by the same texts (Bible, Antigone, Homer; Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy; also by the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence). 
         2. We do so because these texts 'speak' to us as they did to our ancestors, because they reflect our deepest concerns about the human condition (life and death; the tension between the collective and individual good; the longing for justice, etc.) and they help to define our response to crisis.  They are, in brief, 'classics'; they endure and fascinate just as do Casablanca or Star Wars or Clueless [Jane Austen's Emma].
   4. Many of characteristic features of contemporary culture, notions that we tend to take for granted, were formulated in the ancient world and continue to influence our culture.  Some of these ideas (all of them are central to this course):
      1. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of a single, all-powerful, and moral god dominates our spiritual lives. This deity one who not only reward and punishes, but who is also concerned with human welfare.   All the basics of our beliefs were worked out in the ancient world.  It matters not whether you believe in the Christian god, the effects of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic experience have been decisive and remain pervasive in western culture. There are alternatives!
      2. It was in Greece that the modern perception of nature was first articulated, namely that natural forces, impersonal in character, are at work in the physical universe, that those forces are 'predictable' and 'knowable'; unexpected events are not the consequence of an angry god punishing us for immoral behavior, but are unexpected only because we do not know enough. Science asks us to be humble about what we do not know, and to tolerate ambiguity: Consider the uncertainty now about the "big bang theory" or a visions of the future; or the difficulties associated with predicting the path of hurricanes.
      3. Equally critical has been the formulation of the relationship between the individual and the collective; between the rights of citizens and the demands of the state.  What is the price of freedom? or how much freedom are we ready to sacrifice in the name of security?
4. Some Observations on the History and Method:
   1. The study of history will not provide a clear "answer" to our immediate or more fundamental problems; it is rather a means to an end.  In fact, the study of history reflects one of the characteristic features of western civilization: The more we know about a problem, the more likely we are to make a wise decision about how we can most successfully cope.
   2. A word of caution on judging the past: we will be studying societies that, on one hand, made significant contributions to the development of law, science and culture; on the other hand, they were societies that indulged in practices we consider to be morally offensive.  It is not simply that some societies believed that it was morally correct to eat one's dead parents.  More troubling is the pervasiveness of slavery, the restrictions on women.  We can however appeciate what was is worthy of imitation, and do so without losing track of what was regrettable.  We should not dismiss the values and achievements of the Greeks because they (as we) failed to live up to our ideals; we should also recognize that our standards regarding, for example the rejection of slavery, are based on arguments about justice and human nature that were first advanced in the Greek city-states. 
   3. Fact vs. historical fact: The former is the raw material for the historian, the latter involves interpretation and significance. Hence not all facts are historical facts; the latter is a selection of the former.  Historical facts must be arranged; some order must be established...partly chronological, but ultimately we must explain significance and introduce causes.
   4. Historical causation: History is the study of causes. In ordering our experiences we also want to know why things happened the way they did.  We assume that every event has a cause, that the actors on the stage of history had choice.  We reject the extreme alternatives either that events occur randomly or that fate rules our lives (if either were true there would be no point to the study of history except to learn 'submission' to forces we cannot control).  Soviet and Nazi historians rejected these notions
   5. Finally an observation:  A recent issue of National Geographic opens with the following images:  a galaxy and a DNA molecule.  The author writes:  "A distant galaxy and model of DNA spiral into view with suggestive symmetry.  The universe and life seem to be self-organizing…"  The human search for pattern, order, symmetry constitutes the underlying principle of this course, and indeed for our understanding of Western Civilization.  It is not just that societies sought order in nature and in their organization, but that we can only come to understand the past and provide for the future by assuming that there is indeed a pattern we can recognize.  
5. On the course: You must be enrolled in a section to be enrolled in the course. Section attendance is mandatory. You may be dropped from the section and course if you do not appear this week.
   1. Grading and examinations: Basis of grading appears on syllabus. The examinations will be partly on
      1. identifications (all of which will be drawn from the Western Heritage textbook) and from the items in boldface print including section and subsection headings) and
      2. partly on examination essays (drawn for the lectures).
      3. There are effectively three midterms, the third one in fact being the first part of the final examination.
      4. The final will include not only the third midterm, but also a comprehensive question covering the course.
   2. MWF Lecture: The textbook (Kagan, et al.) is designed to provide the basic narrative. In the lectures, I will try to answer any questions you may have on the textbook, but in particular I intend to develop specific themes central to the course; the essay part of the examinations will be based on these themes.
   3. Discussion section: attendance is mandatory; your grade will suffer if you do not participate; the teaching fellows will explain the rules.  The sections are not designed as supplementary lectures, but rather to give you a chance to participate in a dialogue on the central themes and issues of the course; to develop your skills at writing historical essays (formulation of the problem and use of supporting evidence).