(DOWNLOAD) "What is the "West"?(Comments) (Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education)" by Modern Age ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: What is the "West"?(Comments) (Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education)
- Author : Modern Age
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 191 KB
Description
IN THE AFTERMATH of 9/11, the term "civilized nations" suddenly began to be widely used. Of course, everyone had always known that England and France are civilized and that Syria and Rwanda-Burundi are not. I sense that it was not polite to raise the chasm of difference into consciousness, much less to dwell on it. The character of the assault on the Twin Towers and on the Pentagon changed all that, clarifying thought. Multiculturalism died an overdue death on 9/11; bin Laden, al Quaeda, and the Taliban rendered it untenable. I thought of the title of a major work by Jean-Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness (1943). Yes, an encounter with Nothingness can sharpen the edges of Being. On 9/11 we experienced pure negation, and as a consequence a renewed vibration of Being. In my book Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (2001) I tried to find a formulation that would reach deeply into the unique essence of the Western mind, explain at least in part its astounding success, its transforming energy, which have made the West supreme among the powers of the earth. The Declaration of Independence asked only for American political equality among those powers, especially with England. The condition of economic and military equality was achieved late in the nineteenth century, and has been vastly exceeded. But with America preeminent, the West as a whole remains immensely stronger than any combination of powers that could be raised against it.
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