The West (the History Of An Idea)

By (author) Varouxakis Georgios
Description:

A comprehensive intellectual history of the idea of the West

How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It gradually emerged as of the 1820s and was then, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term “the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas.

After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often astonishingly surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and consequences related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis’s analysis offers a comprehensive account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current, and not least, prospective future meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership of the West have been reworked to consider Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinitions continue.

Review quote:
"A Financial Times Best Book of the Year"
Review quote:
"A Spectator Book of the Year"
Review quote:
"A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year"
Review quote:
"A Tablet Book of the Year"
Review quote:
"In The West: The History of an Idea, Georgios Varouxakis tells this story with wit, insight, and erudition. It is our great fortune that the first comprehensive history of the idea of the West is also, for the foreseeable future, the best. Anyone with ideas on the subject will be well advised to read it closely and keep it within reach."---Yuri Slezkine, New York Review of Books
Review quote:
"Illuminating. . . . As talk of the West is once again resurgent, Varouxakis’s book offers the best guide to understanding the meaning of this deeply elusive idea."
Review quote:
"The West is a monumental achievement of scholarship. Its chief contribution is its decentering of imperial and racial paradigms, which have become politicized and turned into stale orthodoxies that have led to distortions in historical understanding."---Max Skjönsberg, Law & Liberty
Review quote:
"A seriously impressive piece of intellectual history."---Nick Spencer, The Spectator
Review quote:
"This book will serve as a salutary reminder of how recent our ideas about the ancient past can really be and how deceptively complex are the ties that bind us with it."---Mark Mazower, Financial Times
Review quote:
"[A] masterful study."---G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs
Review quote:
"Much of the story Varouxakis tells will be new, even to other historians. His book …. is not only deeply researched and clearly written, but also highly original. [A] deeply erudite yet highly readable work that lays many myths to rest. . . .Varouxakis may have written the most original history book of