Allright, so perhaps I should've written it out more.
Forgive me for the random order in which I will reply to your posts, but it was necessary to form some coherence in my answers. Also, note that I have tried to answer to any criticism directed to me - even though I might have not quoted your criticism or responded directly to it. So you might have to read all of it
Kharn said:
Let me start of with something snide;
Gee, a history professors opinion against a simpe student's opinion. According to your logic of "I'm a student, hence I'm always more right than the uneducated", you should always be wrong if you disagree with your professors. But what the hey...
Where did I get this reputation? For the tenthousanth time: I have never used my academic education in any argument.
The closest I got to what you say I said (whoa) would we something more along the lines of "I'm a history student, hence I have more chance of knowing stuff about history than the average plebejan" - which kinda makes sense.
Kharn said:
Are you saying historical roots are tied to locations? That Holland can't have roots in Rome because it isn't physically in Rome? Or are you saying that a culture can't influence another culture because it focuses more on a certain location? GB was focused on its internal affairs during the colonial days, yet I'd say it influences the US.
I wouldn't underestimate the way locations affect cultures. The temperate climate in Greece was, for example, vital for the kind of public life led there. Just like the various mountain ranges were essential in the creation of the Polis-system. In the flat, colder plains of north-western Europe, such life wasn't possible, hence why a new kind of, less public, civilization emerged there in the later Medieval period. Greece was not located in the West, although it did plant some Western colonies, and didn't become 'Western' untill some thirty years ago.
Secondly, Greek leaders looked eastward, not westward. Other than raw materials and food supplies, there was nothing to be found in the West. Hence, when Alexander set out to build his empire, he built it in the Middle East and Africa. There was no contact with the West at all, and Alexander proved quite willing to adapt Greek culture to Eastern forms in order to make a lasting empire. Too much emphasis on classical Greece as 'Western' really distorts what the Greeks thought of themselves.
Futhermore, the Greek culture affected culture in Eastern Europe and even in the Middle East more than in the West. Western civilization owes to the Greeks, but it cannot look to classical Greece as "theirs", in the sense of providing an exclusive badge of Western cultural identity. Aristoteles, for instance, was adapted by the Arabs and Byzantines way before it was adapted by the West - who adapted Aristoteles in part to the reputation they learned from Arab and Byzantine sources. Greek cultural styles affected Turkey and Russia just as much as they affected France or Italy. All of this means that Greece can be seen as a Western... progenitor (if that's the right word), it was simply not
just a Western progenitor. It is really misleading to think of a straight line from Greece to the West, as if the purpose of Greek history was to provide ingredients for the Western cultural recipe.
And there is another problem with linking Greece and Rome to Western culture: Greece and Rome weren't as recogniseable Western as, say, Classical China is so recogniseable Chinese. Western civ stands to Greece like Japan stands to China: both are heavy cultural borrowers, yet noone would think of starting the history of Japan in China.
Kharn said:
True, but unless there's a specific culture that existed before Roman times that infuences us more than them, they're still our "biggest influence".
Hmmm, maybe the Slavs?
My point is that Western civ simply doens't go that far back: western civilization grew from the typical medieval European social landscape.
I mean really, where are the lines from Greece and Rome to the modern west to be drawn? There is very little linkage, for instance, between Greek and Roman sociall forms and the later western ones. Greeks and Romans has farmers, patricians, aristocrats and nobility, but so does almost every civilization in some part of it history. The Roman empire had a sort of capitalism in the first century of the imperial period, but almost every culture had that in some part of it's history. Furthermore, Roman economy was for a large part based on slavery, a phenomonon that, although it lived on slightly and in a greatly reduced form after the Roman empire fell, never became a distinct caracteristic of Western society. Nor is there much relationship to merchant positions and values in Greece and Rome as their vital positions in Western culture later on. And although the aristocracy in the West would long after Rome's fall admire classical culture, the foundations of Western aristocracy were very different from the Greco-Roman aristocracy. And while aristocrats of both classical and Western civilizations stressed military values, there forms of warfare were also quite different, etc. etc.
Mikael Grizzly said:
Then why does Roman law is considered the basis of modern-day law and is (at least in Poland) an obligatory subject on law & administration studies?
Roman did help form the Western law system since its re-discovery in the 11th and 12th century, but it's imporant to remember that the common law and jurisprudence reigned supreme in Europe - and that every single region, no matter how small (even cities) had their own law system.
Great territorial law-systems didn't really emerge untill Napoleonic times, and by then the old Roman law books were already so heavily modified they could rarely still be seen as Roman. So, what I'm trying to say is that although Roman law did heavily influence the way the Western law-system was built up - Roman law in its original form never has, and was impossible to implement on Western society because of its distinctively different nature.
Kharn said:
Jebus said:
Thirdly, there is absolutely no continuous line to be drawn from the Greco-Romani to modern day culture.
And yet there is. Take, for instance, the fact that Christianity was tied heavily to the Roman Empire, which influenced the Papal States rather heavily, not to mention Byzantium (no, wait, "Eastern")
One could argue that Christianity only really took hold when the Roman civilization was already falling apart.
Actually, probably the most overwhelming difference between Greco-Roman and Western culture is the lack of single, all-encompassing religion. The various civil religious festivals and the huge allegory of gods was truly important to most Greeks and Romans. Western civilization would recieve its first clear definition through christian culture - a culture that was, although gaining in popularity in the late classical period, not defining for Greco-Roman civilization. I'd guess people would much sooner identify Romans with Jupiter and Apollo than Christianity.
Also remember that, although the medieval church was based heavily on the Roman civitate-system, that system would also never be distinctive for Western culture - unless perhaps in early modern Italy. If anything, political organisation of the West is defined in nationstates rather than that.
Also, I never defined Greco-Roman civilization as 'Eastern'. Greco-Roman civilization is Greco-Roman civilization, and it ended oficially when the Byzantine empire fell - although it had already *really* died when the Western Roman empire fell.
Elric said:
Jebus said:
The democratic tradition, for example, was never based on Athens example, but grew organically out of the typically proto-Western feudal system.
That is wrong. There's no such thing as proto western feudal system, unless you imply the transiction to the NATIONAL STATE system. There you can find short distance roots to our western civilization. Not in the feudal system. No way.
Mikael Grizzly said:
Oh, and by the way - how come demcracy was to grow out of FEUDALISM???
Which is VERY undemocratic???
First of all, about the link between Classical democray and modern Western democracy:
Classical democracy was thouroughly different from modern. It involved direct citizen participation, not elected representatives like with us. But the
real problem with linking classical democracy to modern democracy is that democracy in the classical age was, all in all, more the exception that the rule and that the democracies that excisted were only temporary, and vanished without a direct trace in Western civilization later on.
When in modern times people began to cry out for democracy, they never pointed back to, for instance, Athens (except perhaps for some, marginal, exceptions). If anything, the cry for Western democracy was based on the Christian teachings of all men having a soul and the presumed equality of the Garden of Eden, the eyes of God, and in the afterlife.
When the democratic uprisings happened in the Late Medieval, Early Modern and even Modern times, elite thinkers did refer back to the ancient times - but their thinkings did not start the stirrings.
About the link between the feudal system and modern democracy:
I never said the current political systems were
based on feudal systems - I said they grew organically out of them, in a sort of action-reaction, Hegel way. The cry for more power to the people was largely caused by the fact that in the urban revolution the city dwellers and patricians didn't feel related to the feudal system anymore, and indeed the feudal system was detrimental to the Late Medieval city economy.
But, since you are a history student too, you probably know what I'm talking about here, and I won't waste time typing this whole dynamic out.
Briosafreak said:
having said that Hellenic Philosophy and Jus Romanum are the basis of the western civilization, Jebus, and you won`t convince me of anything else, i`m afraid.
Are they really? Or is western civilization based on Christian philosophy, and urban and economical dynamics in the Late Medieval European period?
The only
real link I see between the Greco-Roman period and the Western civilisation is in the so-called 'High Culture' of high philosophy and art. However, that's largely debateable too.
Elric said:
Do you even know what you are talking about? I don' think so, other wise you would bring up factual and objective examples, not some preposterous hypothesis drawn from lack of study and excess of pop-culture.
Not that I dislike your theory, it's simply inconsistent as Bush's explanation for the war in Iraq. Or probably your teachers are assholes, and the passed you partial and superficial notions. Either way, I am right.
Now now, that was rather harsh and uncalled for. Don't assume other people are moronic and uneducated just because they don't happen to share your views. I've taken largely the same intellectual bases you have, yet drawn a largely different conclusion for it.
And mine is more critical.
Which makes me cooler.
Closing Statement
Of course there was a legacy. Either directly, or more commonly through later revival, Greco-Roman features did influence Western civilization. The question is the amount of selectivity involved. Russia and India have in the same vein also borrowed heavily from modern Western culture, but who would go so far as to call them 'Western'?
There is simply the sheer memory of greatness. Even Westerners who have little in common with the Greco-Roman empires - be it ethnically or territorially - might feel pride over the glories of Athenian culture or the grandeur of the Roman empire. Therefore, there is often an emotional reaction to claim that civilization as 'ours', in order to sanctify and add prestige to the Western civilization to draw a line back to great past cultures. And this memory complicates the debate about how much of Greco-Roman civilization really survived in Western civilization.
damn you all for taking this much time away from my cramming.
