The Idea of the West: From Avalon to the Cold War
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12870644/The-Ide...to-the-Cold-War
By Jo Hedesan. Published in Esoteric Coffeehouse www.esotericoffeehouse.com on 27 Feb 2009.
The other day, being hit with an annoying bout of cold, I was (re)reading a short treatise by the medieval Iranian philosopher Suhrawardi. Suggestively called âA Tale of the Western Exileâ, the story follows the saga of a wisdom-seeker in the âWesternâ lands (1). In this story of esoteric initiation, the âWestâ stands as a negative symbol of materialism and bodily pleasure. Suhrawardi was a heretic philosopher who was executed in 1191 by the Sultan. Yet, if you ask an average Middle Eastern man today, chances are that he will hold similar views regarding the West being decadently materialistic. The resilience of this perspective of the West coming from the East is remarkable. Yet the views of the West in Europe were often different. Letâs now briefly switch to another mythical tale, this time written on the other extremity of the medieval world, in Ireland. Here, the adventures of St Brendan tell us how the saint sailed to the fairy islands in the West. The voyage takes him to the borders of Christian paradise whence he must return (2). Here we have a dramatically different view of the West as a spiritual, if real, land of the blessed.
This over-simplistic analysis is not meant to say that the Westerners always looked to the West and Easterners to the East for salvation. Things are much more complicated than this, and they probably go to the core of what we feel about the cardinal points of East and West. They are obviously linked with the Sunâs path in the sky. In the East, the Sun is just rising, foretelling a new day. Hence the East is about renewal, hope, the promise of a new beginning. The West is the mysterious end â the unknown at the end of the road. The West is about death, afterlife, the latter times, and frequently about the hopes of earthly survival beyond natural death.
Indeed, the Greeks, Celts and other cultures viewed the West as the direction souls departed after death. Yet the good souls did not simply vanish, but would continue to dwell in the âWesternâ islands. Hence mythologies such as the Greek Islands of the Blessed and Avalon of the Britons focused on the existence of islands where dead souls continued on living. These islands were physical places in the peopleâs minds at the time: Christopher Columbus himself believed in the existence of St Brendanâs Island (3).
Apparently, these beliefs in the earthly paradise of the West did not vanish with the advent of Judeo-Christianity. As a religion born in Israel, Christianity naturally looked East for inspiration: its earthly paradise was traditionally situated in the Eastern Garden of Eden. The Crusades intended to recapture back the edenic land of Israel and the heavenly Jerusalem. Yet the failure of the Crusades and subsequent developments made Europeans turn westward. Henceforth, early beliefs in a Western paradise and Christian hope in a new Jerusalem mixed together. An interesting development occurred when Columbus came to believe that the Garden of Eden itself â another earthly paradise â could be reached by sailing to the West of the European continent (4). Amerigo Vespucciâs stories of noble savages in America also sparked visions of a Western paradise; Thomas Moreâs Utopia may have been one of them (5). The discovery of the Americas became equated with the discovery of a new worldly paradise. This belief was further taken up by Protestant theologians of England and the new colonies in America (6). Mircea Eliade suggests that the colonization of the Americas began out of a fervor for the restoration of Christianity by establishing a new earthly paradise (7).
Based on this âWestern paradiseâ idea, the self-perception of America as the new âblessed landâ grew. As Eliade puts it, âit is very probable that the behavior of the average American today, as well as the political and cultural ideology of the United States, still reflects the consequences of the Puritan certitude of having been called to restore the Earthly Paradise.â (8, p.99).
Surely, it wasnât just America that created the idea of the âWestâ as it is understood today. British authors contributed to the concept of âWestâ as cultural identity due to the decline of the discourse of race in the early 1900s (9). Yet it was after World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union that the ideology of the âWestâ became pervasive, singling out Western Europe and the U.S. as the standard-bearers of the ideology. <span style='color:red'>In the idea of the West, writers mixed ideals originating from Christianity, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, exacerbated by an anti-communist rhetoric. Many were so convinced that these ideas are universal that, following the fall of the communist regime in Eastern Europe, proclaimed the end of history (10) and sought to explain why the West has won (11). The post-9-11 world may have proven them wrong. </span>
This has been a short and far from in-depth essay on some of the origins of the idea of the West. The purpose has been to suggest that the West as it stands today is an imaginary construct originating from mythology, religion and later ideology built by the âWestâ itself. As the introduction tried to show, Easterners may have inherited quite a different perspective of the West from their own mythology, which may stand as an origin of their own rejection of the concept. In the end, the idea of the âWestâ that we hear about every day is no more no less than a product of imagination, and will survive as long as people invest their beliefs in it.
References
(1) Suhrawardi, S.A-D. (1976). Kitab Al-Mashari' Wa'l-Motarahat, Arabic texts ed. by H. Corbin (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve).
(2), (3) Jeans, P.D. (2004). Seafaring Lore and Legend: A Miscellany of Maritime Myth, Superstition, Fable, and Fact (McGraw-Hill Professional).
(4) Sweet, L.I. (1986). Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New World. The Catholic Historical Review, 72(3), pp. 369-382.
(5) Cave, A. A. (1991). Thomas More and the New World. Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 23(2), pp. 209-229.
(6) Tuveson, E.L. (1980). Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Roleâ (Chicago: University of Chicago).
(7), (8) Eliade, M. (1969). âParadise and Utopia: Mythical Geography and Eschatologyâ, in The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
(9) Bonnett, A. (2004). The Idea of the West: Politics, Culture and History (Palgrave McMillan).
(10) Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. (Penguin).
(11) Hanson, V.D. (2000). Why the West has Won.(Faber & Faber).
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12870644/The-Ide...to-the-Cold-War
By Jo Hedesan. Published in Esoteric Coffeehouse www.esotericoffeehouse.com on 27 Feb 2009.
The other day, being hit with an annoying bout of cold, I was (re)reading a short treatise by the medieval Iranian philosopher Suhrawardi. Suggestively called âA Tale of the Western Exileâ, the story follows the saga of a wisdom-seeker in the âWesternâ lands (1). In this story of esoteric initiation, the âWestâ stands as a negative symbol of materialism and bodily pleasure. Suhrawardi was a heretic philosopher who was executed in 1191 by the Sultan. Yet, if you ask an average Middle Eastern man today, chances are that he will hold similar views regarding the West being decadently materialistic. The resilience of this perspective of the West coming from the East is remarkable. Yet the views of the West in Europe were often different. Letâs now briefly switch to another mythical tale, this time written on the other extremity of the medieval world, in Ireland. Here, the adventures of St Brendan tell us how the saint sailed to the fairy islands in the West. The voyage takes him to the borders of Christian paradise whence he must return (2). Here we have a dramatically different view of the West as a spiritual, if real, land of the blessed.
This over-simplistic analysis is not meant to say that the Westerners always looked to the West and Easterners to the East for salvation. Things are much more complicated than this, and they probably go to the core of what we feel about the cardinal points of East and West. They are obviously linked with the Sunâs path in the sky. In the East, the Sun is just rising, foretelling a new day. Hence the East is about renewal, hope, the promise of a new beginning. The West is the mysterious end â the unknown at the end of the road. The West is about death, afterlife, the latter times, and frequently about the hopes of earthly survival beyond natural death.
Indeed, the Greeks, Celts and other cultures viewed the West as the direction souls departed after death. Yet the good souls did not simply vanish, but would continue to dwell in the âWesternâ islands. Hence mythologies such as the Greek Islands of the Blessed and Avalon of the Britons focused on the existence of islands where dead souls continued on living. These islands were physical places in the peopleâs minds at the time: Christopher Columbus himself believed in the existence of St Brendanâs Island (3).
Apparently, these beliefs in the earthly paradise of the West did not vanish with the advent of Judeo-Christianity. As a religion born in Israel, Christianity naturally looked East for inspiration: its earthly paradise was traditionally situated in the Eastern Garden of Eden. The Crusades intended to recapture back the edenic land of Israel and the heavenly Jerusalem. Yet the failure of the Crusades and subsequent developments made Europeans turn westward. Henceforth, early beliefs in a Western paradise and Christian hope in a new Jerusalem mixed together. An interesting development occurred when Columbus came to believe that the Garden of Eden itself â another earthly paradise â could be reached by sailing to the West of the European continent (4). Amerigo Vespucciâs stories of noble savages in America also sparked visions of a Western paradise; Thomas Moreâs Utopia may have been one of them (5). The discovery of the Americas became equated with the discovery of a new worldly paradise. This belief was further taken up by Protestant theologians of England and the new colonies in America (6). Mircea Eliade suggests that the colonization of the Americas began out of a fervor for the restoration of Christianity by establishing a new earthly paradise (7).
Based on this âWestern paradiseâ idea, the self-perception of America as the new âblessed landâ grew. As Eliade puts it, âit is very probable that the behavior of the average American today, as well as the political and cultural ideology of the United States, still reflects the consequences of the Puritan certitude of having been called to restore the Earthly Paradise.â (8, p.99).
Surely, it wasnât just America that created the idea of the âWestâ as it is understood today. British authors contributed to the concept of âWestâ as cultural identity due to the decline of the discourse of race in the early 1900s (9). Yet it was after World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union that the ideology of the âWestâ became pervasive, singling out Western Europe and the U.S. as the standard-bearers of the ideology. <span style='color:red'>In the idea of the West, writers mixed ideals originating from Christianity, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, exacerbated by an anti-communist rhetoric. Many were so convinced that these ideas are universal that, following the fall of the communist regime in Eastern Europe, proclaimed the end of history (10) and sought to explain why the West has won (11). The post-9-11 world may have proven them wrong. </span>
This has been a short and far from in-depth essay on some of the origins of the idea of the West. The purpose has been to suggest that the West as it stands today is an imaginary construct originating from mythology, religion and later ideology built by the âWestâ itself. As the introduction tried to show, Easterners may have inherited quite a different perspective of the West from their own mythology, which may stand as an origin of their own rejection of the concept. In the end, the idea of the âWestâ that we hear about every day is no more no less than a product of imagination, and will survive as long as people invest their beliefs in it.
References
(1) Suhrawardi, S.A-D. (1976). Kitab Al-Mashari' Wa'l-Motarahat, Arabic texts ed. by H. Corbin (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve).
(2), (3) Jeans, P.D. (2004). Seafaring Lore and Legend: A Miscellany of Maritime Myth, Superstition, Fable, and Fact (McGraw-Hill Professional).
(4) Sweet, L.I. (1986). Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New World. The Catholic Historical Review, 72(3), pp. 369-382.
(5) Cave, A. A. (1991). Thomas More and the New World. Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 23(2), pp. 209-229.
(6) Tuveson, E.L. (1980). Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Roleâ (Chicago: University of Chicago).
(7), (8) Eliade, M. (1969). âParadise and Utopia: Mythical Geography and Eschatologyâ, in The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
(9) Bonnett, A. (2004). The Idea of the West: Politics, Culture and History (Palgrave McMillan).
(10) Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. (Penguin).
(11) Hanson, V.D. (2000). Why the West has Won.(Faber & Faber).