What is the West? Is Greece part of the West?

[Malthus]

I am reminded of the Philhellines of the early 19th century, who went to Greece expecting to support the glorious descendants of the heroes and philosophers they had admired - only to find the actual 19th century Greeks a bit of a dissapointment.

[The Minsky Moment]

I am reminded of the Philhellines of the early 19th century, who went to Greece expecting to support the glorious descendants of the heroes and philosophers they had admired - only to find the actual 19th century Greeks a bit of a dissapointment.

hah - you think they were disappointed?  Imagine how disappointed the Greeks were when they expected to fight alongside the scions of great warriors and poets of old England - and then ended up having to nursemaid an incestuous, syphilitic wastrel like Lord Byron.

[fhdz]

I am reminded of the Philhellines of the early 19th century, who went to Greece expecting to support the glorious descendants of the heroes and philosophers they had admired - only to find the actual 19th century Greeks a bit of a dissapointment.

hah - you think they were disappointed?  Imagine how disappointed the Greeks were when they expected to fight alongside the scions of great warriors and poets of old England - and then ended up having to nursemaid an incestuous, syphilitic wastrel like Lord Byron.

[Malthus]

I am reminded of the Philhellines of the early 19th century, who went to Greece expecting to support the glorious descendants of the heroes and philosophers they had admired - only to find the actual 19th century Greeks a bit of a dissapointment.

hah - you think they were disappointed?  Imagine how disappointed the Greeks were when they expected to fight alongside the scions of great warriors and poets of old England - and then ended up having to nursemaid an incestuous, syphilitic wastrel like Lord Byron.

Hah true. 

[dps]

I have no idea what this question is attempting to do.  Are you seriously asking if the concept of popular sovereignty predated 1919? 

No I am pointing out how absurd it would be to clam that.

Why on earth would it be absurd to claim that the concept of popular sovereignty predated 1919? 

I think you're confusing popular sovereignty with the sufferage movement.

[Viking]

I'm pretty sure that, say, Icelandic democracy was as developed as the Greek version, and developed pretty much independently of the Greek philosophers - so I don't think popular sovereignty is a uniquely Greek invention in spite of the fact that we use the word they coined.

Greek Democracy was nothing like what we might today call Democracy, even limited franchise democracy. Greek Democracy ended Alcibiades, Plato and Alexander killed it. I didn't say Ancient Greece lacked democracy I said it lacked popular sovreignty. The idead that legitimacy arises from popular support did not exist in the ancient Greek world.

Icelandic Democracy is very much like what we today call Democracy, though limited franchise. It followed the germanic model of each farmer supporting a representative to attend the Thing. The representative or Godhi gained his right to speak and be heard by virtue of his freely (and sometimes coerced) support.

We use the Greek word, but we don't use Greek values, virtues or methods when running it. Victor David Hansen said that the Greeks would not recognize what we have a democracy and would consider it (rightly in my view) a barbarian custom (which it is).   

[Martinus]

See that's the problem using this criteria, Russia has all those and it's not considered Western. 

This is what I mean. 
If West is defined as a particular community of nations in the present day as defined against other states not part of that community than obviously ancient Greece can't be a part of it.  Nor could any other historical state - like the French Third Republic.

Yet the Russia of 2012 has many institutions and characteristics typical of those historically associated with "Western civilization" - including a formally limited government, a constitution guarnteeing individual rights, elections, religious freedom, religious pluralism, extensive private property rights, a private (non-state) press, public and private universities, and so on.

It is part of the "West" in a way that say Saudi Arabia is not.

My point was that these are the three conditions sine qua non for a modern nation to be considered "Western" (although I concede that the connection of Anglo-Saxons to Roman law is tenuous at best - perhaps we should say Roman and/or Germanic law). In that sense, a civilization that birthed one of the three and helped to birth another one can hardly be disregarded as non-Western (whether modern Greece is Western is another matter whatsoever). That is not to say that it is enough for a nation to fulfill all three criteria to be considered Western - it needs more than that.

That being said, Russia is considered a part of the Western civilization understood in the broadest possible sense (when opposed to such meta-civilizations as East Asian, Indian or Muslim). Within thus understood Western civilization you could differentiate between Latin, Orthodox, Anglo-Saxon as a subset of Latin etc.

[Lettow77]

 Is Neo Venezia part of the west?

[Razgovory]

I'm pretty sure that, say, Icelandic democracy was as developed as the Greek version, and developed pretty much independently of the Greek philosophers - so I don't think popular sovereignty is a uniquely Greek invention in spite of the fact that we use the word they coined.

Greek Democracy was nothing like what we might today call Democracy, even limited franchise democracy. Greek Democracy ended Alcibiades, Plato and Alexander killed it. I didn't say Ancient Greece lacked democracy I said it lacked popular sovreignty. The idead that legitimacy arises from popular support did not exist in the ancient Greek world.

Icelandic Democracy is very much like what we today call Democracy, though limited franchise. It followed the germanic model of each farmer supporting a representative to attend the Thing. The representative or Godhi gained his right to speak and be heard by virtue of his freely (and sometimes coerced) support.

We use the Greek word, but we don't use Greek values, virtues or methods when running it. Victor David Hansen said that the Greeks would not recognize what we have a democracy and would consider it (rightly in my view) a barbarian custom (which it is).

I am inclined to agree with you.  The US and and UK draws at least as much from Germanic tribal democracy as from Greek Democracy.

[Razgovory]

My point was that these are the three conditions sine qua non for a modern nation to be considered "Western" (although I concede that the connection of Anglo-Saxons to Roman law is tenuous at best - perhaps we should say Roman and/or Germanic law). In that sense, a civilization that birthed one of the three and helped to birth another one can hardly be disregarded as non-Western (whether modern Greece is Western is another matter whatsoever). That is not to say that it is enough for a nation to fulfill all three criteria to be considered Western - it needs more than that.

That being said, Russia is considered a part of the Western civilization understood in the broadest possible sense (when opposed to such meta-civilizations as East Asian, Indian or Muslim). Within thus understood Western civilization you could differentiate between Latin, Orthodox, Anglo-Saxon as a subset of Latin etc.

I believe Egypt uses Roman law and probably studies ancient Greek philosophers.  You could also go back further and point to the ancient middle East and say "We use agriculture, wheels, and written language"  provided for us from the ancient Middle East.

[The Minsky Moment]

Greek Democracy was nothing like what we might today call Democracy, even limited franchise democracy . . . We use the Greek word, but we don't use Greek values, virtues or methods when running it. Victor David Hansen said that the Greeks would not recognize what we have a democracy and would consider it (rightly in my view) a barbarian custom (which it is).

Whatever one might say of the practices or custom of Greek democracy, the Greeks did something even more important than provide factual exemplars for democracy, they articulated a full-fledged theory of democracy, and theories of politics generally that still form the basis for how all "western" societies think about their politics and the constitution of their polities. 

Once again returning to Book III in the Politics:

The principle that the multitude ought to be supreme rather than the few best is one that is maintained, and, though not free from difficulty, yet seems to contain an element of truth. For the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively . . . For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses . . .  And if so, the difficulty which has been already raised, and also another which is akin to it -viz., what power should be assigned to the mass of freemen and citizens, who are not rich and have no personal merit- are both solved. There is still a danger in aflowing them to share the great offices of state, for their folly will lead them into error, and their dishonesty into crime. But there is a danger also in not letting them share, for a state in which many poor men are excluded from office will necessarily be full of enemies. The only way of escape is to assign to them some deliberative and judicial functions. For this reason Solon and certain other legislators give them the power of electing to offices, and of calling the magistrates to account, but they do not allow them to hold office singly. When they meet together their perceptions are quite good enough, and combined with the better class they are useful to the state . . . but each individual, left to himself, forms an imperfect judgment.

On the other hand, the popular form of government involves certain difficulties.  . . . For a right election can only be made by those who have knowledge . . . So that, according to this argument, neither the election of magistrates, nor the calling of them to account, should be entrusted to the many. Yet possibly these objections are to a great extent met by our old answer, that if the people are not utterly degraded, although individually they may be worse judges than those who have special knowledge- as a body they are as good or better. . . .

This difficulty seems now to be sufficiently answered, but there is another akin to it. That inferior persons should have authority in greater matters than the good would appear to be a strange thing, yet the election and calling to account of the magistrates is the greatest of all. And these, as I was saying, are functions which in some states are assigned to the people, for the assembly is supreme in all such matters. Yet persons of any age, and having but a small property qualification, sit in the assembly and deliberate and judge, although for the great officers of state, such as treasurers and generals, a high qualification is required. This difficulty may be solved in the same manner as the preceding, and the present practice of democracies may be really defensible. For the power does not reside in the dicast, or senator, or ecclesiast, but in the court, and the senate, and the assembly, of which individual senators, or ecclesiasts, or dicasts, are only parts or members.

This one short passage alone is densely packed with fundamental ideas about the nature of democracies, of representative versus direct rule, of the benefits and detriments of different kinds of democractic regime which form the basis of how Western socities have thought about these questions and continue to think about them today.  Pick up the Federalist Papers or Montesquieu or even the debates over post-Tahrir Square Egypt and you will see the same questions being talked about using Aristotle's framework.

[Razgovory]

Are the Greeks the first to think about this stuff, or were they the first to write it down?

[The Minsky Moment]

Are the Greeks the first to think about this stuff, or were they the first to write it down and have that writing be preserved down the centuries?

Amended.
Don't know.

[crazy canuck]

Are the Greeks the first to think about this stuff, or were they the first to write it down and have that writing be preserved down the centuries?

Amended.
Don't know.

If the Greeks knew about others having thought like that first they would probably have preserved that tradition in their own writing.  Is it possible that someone someplace had similar ideas but, in a socratic tirade against writing refused to write it down, or did write it down but such writing has been lost to us?  Anything is possible I suppose.

[Siege]

The analogy fails. 

No, I think there is something to it.