The Parthenon (Athens)

The Roman Forum (Rome)

The Supreme Court of the United States (Washington D.C.)

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context. There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common.^[1]

Though the term originally had a literal geographic meaning and contrasted Europe with the cultures of the Orient or Asia, today the term West does not imply geographic location, as most of Europe and Oceania, major components of the West, lie in the Eastern Hemisphere.^{[citation needed]}

The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, with the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of The Renaissance, The Protestant Reformation, The Enlightenment, and shaped by the expansive colonialism of the 16th-20th centuries. Its political usage was temporarily informed by a mutual antagonism with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1945–1991).

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western World includes many countries of Europe as well as many countries of European colonial origin in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc. ^[2][3][4]

Introduction[link]

Western culture originated with Greece and Rome. Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and south, conquering and absorbing many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East; later, they grew to the north and West to include Western Europe.

Historians, such as Carroll Quigley (Evolution of Civilizations), contend that Western Civilization was born around 400 AD, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of considerable decline,^[5] known as the Middle Ages, which include the Dark Ages and the Crusades.

The knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab World,^[6] and mostly by the concurrent ascendency of the Islamic Golden Age.^[7] The Arab importation of both the Ancient and new technology through Arabs from the India and China to Renaissance Europe represented “one of the largest technology transfers in world history.”^[8][9]

Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Islamic world due to the Commercial,^[10] Scientific,^[11] and Industrial Revolutions,^[12] and the expansion of the Christian peoples of Western European empires, and particularly the globe-spanning empires of the 18th and 19th centuries. Generally speaking, the current consensus would locate the West, at the very least, in the cultures and peoples of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and a great part of Central and South America. There is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category of its own. The argument supporting Eastern Europe being a part of the West is that Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Romania are now a part of the European Union, which mostly comprises Western countries. However, there are distinct cultural differences; the impact of Communism on these cultures in the 20th Century was great. Although geographically not located in Western Europe, Greece and Cyprus are usually considered a part of the Western World. This is partly due to political and economic reasons and partly due to Western culture having Greek roots. Some people^[who?] assume developed countries in Asia, such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, are a part of the Western world, because of their strong economic, political and military ties to Western Europe, NATO or the United States. However, while there are Western influences in their cultures, they nonetheless maintain largely different and distinctive cultures, religions (although Christianity is a major religion in South Korea), languages, customs, and worldviews that are products of their own indigenous development, rather than Western influences.

Japan and South Korea, in particular, are the only Asian members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and along with Taiwan one of three leading full democracies in East Asia, having a high standard of living and a high level of human development. However, having a high level of human development is not exclusive to the West. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore all have high income levels and high standards of living.

Western culture[link]

History of Western philosophy
Western philosophy
Pre-Socratic · Ancient Medieval · Renaissance · Modern Contemporary 16th · 17th · 18th · 19th · 20th Century
See also
Religious philosophy Christian · Jewish  · Islamic  · Hindu  · Buddhist
Eastern philosophy Babylonian · Indian · Iranian Chinese · Japanese · Korean
Western culture · Western world
v t e

The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies.

Specifically, Western culture may imply:

• a Biblical-Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around Post-Classical Era.
• European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, whose themes have been further developed by Romanticism.
• a Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, concerning artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions, the cultural social effects of migration period and the heritages of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and other ethnic groups, as well as a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, Humanisms, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.

The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles that set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.^[13]

The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe.

Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, laicism, generalization of middle class, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration. The modern shape of these societies is strongly based upon the Industrial Revolution and the societies' associated social and environmental problems, such as class struggle and pollution, as well as reactions to them, such as syndicalism and environmentalism.

Historical divisions[link]

The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire.^[14] The Eastern Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to the older empire of Alexander the Great and of the Hellenistic successors.), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe was substantially cut off from the East where Byzantine Greek culture and Eastern Christianity became founding influences in the Arab/Muslim world and among the Eastern and Southern Slavic peoples. Roman Catholic Western and central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived civilized world.

Use of the term West as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. In the past two centuries the term Western world has sometimes been used synonymously with Christian world because of the numerical dominance of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism compared to other Christian traditions, though this dominance is somewhat recent. As secularism rose in Europe and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries, the term West came to take on less religious connotations and more political connotations, especially during the Cold War. Additionally, closer contacts between the West and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use and meaning of the term.

Hellenic[link]

The Ancient Greek world, c. 550 BC

The Hellenic division between the barbarians and the Greeks contrasted in many societies the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the surrounding non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia^{[citation needed]} (which he considered to be all land north and east of the Sea of Marmara, respectively)^{[citation needed]}. The terms "West" and "East" were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term "West" appeared, it was used in opposition to the Greeks and Greek-speaking culture.^{[citation needed]}

Western society traces its cultural origins to both Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution that began in ancient Greece, continued through the Roman Empire and, with the coming of Christianity (which has its origins in the Middle East), spread throughout Europe. The inherently "Greek" classical ideas of history (which one might easily say they invented) and art may, however, be considered almost inviolate in the West, as their original spread of influence survived the Hellenic period of Roman classical antiquity, The Dark Ages, its resurgence during the Western Renaissance, and has managed somehow to keep and exert its pervasive influence down into the present age, with every expectation^{[by whom?]} of it continuing to dominate any secular Western cultural developments.

The major Hellenistic realms; the Ptolemaic kingdom (dark blue); the Seleucid empire (yellow); Macedon (green) and Epirus (pink).

However, the conquest of the Western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted in a rupture of the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought,^[15] including Christian Greek thought. The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation.

On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging after the Renaissance as a new civilization, has been greatly influenced by (its own interpretation of) Greek thought, which was preserved in the Roman Empire and the medieval Islamic world during the Medieval West's Dark Ages and transmitted from there by emigration of Greek scholars, courtly marriages, and Latin translations. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Roman Empire[link]

The Roman Empire under Trajan in 117 AD.

Ancient Rome (510 BC-AD 476) was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, to an autocratic empire. It came to dominate Western Europe, the Balkans and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by giving Roman privileges and eventually citizenship to the whole empire. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire.

The Western Roman Empire eventually broke into several kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Goths, the Franks and the Vandals.

The Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and for the subsequent onset of the Early Middle Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire survived the fall of the West, and protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years.

The Roman Empire succeeded the about 500 year-old Roman Republic (510 BC - 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla and the civil war of Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were killed, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.

Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual roman dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC). Octavian/Augustus officially proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully disguised his power under republican forms: Consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian who influenced everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it became necessary.

Roman expansion began long before the state was changed into an empire and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106. During this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about 5 900 000 km² (2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface and had a population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar to the Fall of the Western Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean, comprising the majority of its population. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.

The Roman Empire is where the idea of the "West" began to emerge. Due to Rome's central location at the heart of the Empire, "West" and "East" were terms used to denote provinces West and east of the capital itself. Therefore, Iberia (Portugal and Spain), Gaul (France), Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) and Britannia were all part of the "West", while Greece, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt were part of the "East." Italy itself was considered central, until the reforms of Diocletian, when the idea of formally dividing the Empire into true Eastern and Western halves was introduced.

In 395, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The dissolution of the Western half (nominally in 476, but in truth a long process that ended by 500) left only the Eastern Empire alive. For centuries, the East continued to call themselves Eastern Romans, while the West began to think in terms of Latins (those living in the old Western Empire) and Greeks (those inside the Roman remnant to the east).

Christian schism[link]

In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established the city of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. These two divisions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires were reflected in the administration of the Christian Church, with Rome and Constantinople debating and arguing over whether either city was the capital of Christianity.

As the Eastern (orthodox) and Western (firstly Catholic, then Protestant as well) churches spread their influence, the line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving towards one another until it was fully set at the time of Lithuanian Christianisation. The border of Western/Eastern Christianity was moving and its movement was defined by the existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the church in Rome. Now its border is East of Estonian border, via the very West of Ukraine until Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, not to mention enclaves in many countries such as Romania, Northern Albania etc. From Middle Ages until late 20th century religion was decreasingly important in Europe therefore the religious division followed a cultural divide and vice versa.

Huntington argued that this cultural division still existed during the Cold War as the approximate Western boundary of those countries that were allied with the Soviet Union. Others have fiercely criticized these views arguing they confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia, especially considering the fact that the country that had the most historical roots in Byzantium, Greece, expelled communists and was allied with the West during the Cold War. Still, Russia accepted Eastern Christianity from the Byzantine Empire (by the Patriarch of Constantinople: Photios I) linking Russia very close to the Eastern Roman Empire world. Later on, in 16th century Russia created own religious centre in Moscow. Religion survived in Russia beside severe persecution carrying values alternative to the communist ideology.

Worldwide distribution of Christianity and other religions

Under Charlemagne, the Franks established an empire that was recognized as the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope in Rome, offending the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, establishing, until the Protestant Reformation, the civilization of West Christendom. The Latin Rite Christian Church of Western and Central Europe headed by the Pope split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during the Great Schism. Meanwhile, the extent of each expanded, as British Isles, Germanic peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Baltic peoples and the other non-Christian lands of the northWest were converted by the West Church, while Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, lands of Belarus, Caucasus and most of Ukraine were converted by the Eastern Church.

In this context, the Protestant reformation may be viewed as a schism within the Latin Church. Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with the pope and with the emperor, backed by many of the German princes. These changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, the commoner Jean Cauvin (John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in Geneva, a former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler had been the bishop. The English King later improvised on the Lutheran model, but subsequently many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular dissenters, leading to the English Civil War.

Both royalists and dissenters colonized North America, eventually resulting in an independent United States of America.

Colonial "West"[link]

The Reformation, and consequent dissolution of West Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, resulted in the Thirty Years War. The war ended in the Peace of Westphalia, which enshrined the concept of the nation-state and the principle of absolute national sovereignty in international law.

These concepts of a world of nation-states, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution,^[16] and the Industrial Revolution,^[17] produced powerful political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in history.^[18]

This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Spain and Portugal; it continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and the creation and expansion of the British and French colonial empires. Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted. One specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Though the overt colonial era has passed, Western nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, still wield a large degree of influence throughout the world.

Although not part of Western colonization process proper, Western culture entered Japan in the so-called Meiji period (1868–1912). The traditional Japanese society was virtually overturned into a industrial and militarist power like Western countries such as the United Kingdom.

Cold War context[link]

During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called the West, was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. It included some Eastern European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (now split into Czech Republic and Slovakia).

The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India and Yugoslavia (of which European countries Slovenia and Croatia); some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed,^{[citation needed]} as the People's Republic of China is communist, had friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some Third World countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.

European trade blocs as of the late 1980s. EEC member states are marked in blue, EFTA – green, and Comecon – red.

East and West in 1980, as defined by the Cold War. The Cold War had divided Europe politically into East and West, with the Iron Curtain splitting Central Europe.

There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty) but remained neutral, was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was West of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral, but as a country to the West of the Iron Curtain, it was in the United States' sphere of influence. Spain did not join the NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the death of the authoritarian Franco.

Modern definitions[link]

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The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed.

Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians oppose "the West and the Rest" in a categorical manner.^[19] The same has been done by Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim, Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.^[19]

As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international definition, governments do not use the term in legislation of international treaties and instead rely on other definitions.

Ethnic / linguistic[link]

Indo-European languages.

The Western world is also considered to be the collection of nations, where Indo-European languages and cultures (primarily of Western European origin) are practiced and dominated. Ethnically speaking, it can refer to Germanic, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Baltic and Western Slavic peoples and most of their territories. It can also refer to some Southern Slavic (Slovenia and Croatia) territories.

Cultural[link]

See: Western culture

Latin alphabet world distribution. The dark green areas shows the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green shows the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts. In addition, China's widely-used pinyin system employs the Latin alphabet.

From a cultural and sociological approach the Western world is defined as including all cultures that are directly derived from Western European cultures, i.e. Western Europe, the Americas (North and South America), Australia, New Zealand and Israel. Together these countries constitute Western society.^[2][3][4]

In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, in Western Europe and elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. However, while church attendance is in decline, most Westerners nominally identify themselves as Christians (e.g. 70% in the UK) and attend church on major occasions, such as Christmas and Easter. In the Americas Christianity continues to play an important societal role (though at least Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil, specially among the middle and upper classes, are experiencing processes of secularization similar to European ones).

The official religion of the United Kingdom and some Nordic countries is Christianity, even though the majority of European countries have no official religion. Despite this, Christianity, in its different forms, remains the largest faith in most Western countries. Thus another definition of Occident would include reference to this majority Christian content within the culture.

Due to the high influence of European culture in places like South Africa, it could be said that the country is Western or has achieved Westernization. Moreover, White South Africans of European origin make up about 9% of South Africa. Another 9% are of mixed race. Unlike Black South Africans who've maintained their own native languages, most mixed South Africans speak Afrikaans as a first language. Likewise, most Indian South Africans speak English natively today. Therefore, it can be argued that this collective 20% of native English and Afrikaans speakers (both European-derived) live in heavily Western influenced cultures. Similarly, whites and coloureds are over 10% of Namibia. They primarily speak Afrikaans and German as a first language. In addition to that, many Black South Africans and Namibians speak European languages, e.g. Afrikaans and English, fluently and are also considered native speakers of those languages.

Another country which the Westernness is debatable is Cape Verde because most of the population speaks either Portuguese or a Portuguese-based creole language called Cape Verdean Creole natively. Due to it being far off the coast of Western Africa and not having an indigenous population, many of the mainland Africans who moved there or who were brought there have assimilated into a Portuguese-based Western culture.

Modern political[link]

Enlargement of the European Union

  Current members (since 2007)

  Candidate countries

  Current enlargement agenda

Countries of the Western world are generally considered to share certain fundamental political ideologies, including those of liberal democracy, the rule of law, human rights and a high degree of gender equality (although there are notable exceptions, especially in foreign policy). Additionally countries with strong political and/or military ties to West and Central Europe, NATO and/or the United States, such as Japan, Israel and South Korea can be said to be Western in a political sense at least.

As such, this definition of the term "West" is not necessarily tied to the geographic sense of the word. A geographically Western nation such as Cuba is sometimes not considered politically Western due to its general rejection of liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and personal liberty.^{[citation needed]} Conversely, some Eastern nations, for example, Japan, India, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, could be considered politically Western, due to their adoption of liberal democratic political institutions similar in structure to those of the traditionally Western nations.

Economic[link]

World map by quartiles of Human Development Index in 2011.

Very High	Low
High	Data unavailable
Medium

Though the Cold War has ended, and some members of the former Eastern Bloc are making a general movement towards liberal democracy and other values held in common by the traditionally Western states, most of the former Soviet republics are not considered Western because of the small presence of social and political reform, as well as their obvious cultural, economic and political differences to what is known today as described by the term "The West" North America, West and Central Europe, Baltic states and Croatia, Australia and New Zealand.

The term "Western world" is often interchangeablebly used with the term First World stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. This usage occurs despite the fact that many countries that may be geographically or culturally Western are developing countries. In fact, most of the Americas are developing countries, which make up a significant percentage of the West. It is also used despite many Developed countries not being Western (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan).

The existence of "The North" implies the existence of "The South", and the socio-economic divide between North and South. The term "the North" has in some contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the West", particularly in the critical sense, as a more robust demarcation than the terms "West" and "East". The North provides some absolute geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most of which are physically situated in the Northern Hemisphere, although, as most countries are located in the northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this distinction to be equally unhelpful.

The thirty high-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which include: Australia, Canada, Iceland, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, the United States and the countries of the EU (except for: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Romania), are generally included in what used to be called "developed world", although the OECD includes three countries, namely Chile, Mexico and Turkey, that are not yet fully industrial countries, but newly industrialised countries. Although Andorra, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Singapore, Taiwan and Vatican City, are not members of the OECD, they might also be regarded as developed countries, because their high living standards, high per capita incomes, and their social, economical and political structure are quite similar to those of the high income OECD countries.

Other views[link]

A series of scholars of civilization, including Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred Kroeber and Carroll Quigley have identified and analyzed "Western civilization" as one of the civilizations that have historically existed and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these borrowings into their very self-identity; carried to its limit, this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the intelligentsia formed among the educated elite of countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past. While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change both themselves and the West.^[20]

Huntington's map of major civilizations,^[21] What constitutes Western civilization in his view is coloured dark blue.

Yet more recently, Samuel P. Huntington has taken a far more controversial approach, forging a political science hypothesis he labeled the "The Clash of Civilizations?" in a Foreign Affairs article and a book.^[22] According to Huntington's hypothesis, what he calls "conflicts between civilizations" will be the primary tensions of the 21st century world. In this hypothesis, the West is based on religion, as the countries of West and Central Europe, Baltic states and Croatia were historically influenced by the two forms of Western Christianity, namely Protestantism and Catholicism. Also, some Anglophone countries share these traits, e.g. Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the more heterogeneous United States and Canada.

Huntington's thesis, while influential, was by no means universally accepted; its supporters say that it explains modern conflicts, such as those in the former Yugoslavia. The thesis's detractors fear that by equating values like democracy with the concept of "Western civilization", it reinforces stereotypes that some perceive as being common within the West about non-traditionally Western societies that some may consider racist or xenophobic. Others believe that Huntington ignores the existence of non-Western democracies such as the East Asian and South-Central Asian democracies. As such, these detractors believe that it will serve to provoke and amplify conflict rather than illuminating a way to find an accommodating world order, or in particular cases a commonly agreed solution.

In Huntington's narrow thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern and Eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and mainly Christian (as well as notable Muslim influence and populations, particularly in the Balkans and southern/central Russia), these nations were not, in Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not affect Orthodox Eastern Europe due in part to the proximity of Ottoman domination, despite the decisive influence of Greek émigré scholars on the Renaissance.^[23]

Other views might be made regarding Eastern Europe.^[24]

A controversial theory of Huntington is that he considered the possibility of South America being a separate civilization from the West, but also mused that it might become a third part (the first two being North America and Europe) of the West in the future.^[25]

The theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the West as the set of civilizations descended from the Nile Valley Civilization of Egypt.^[26]

Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said uses the term occident in his discussion of orientalism. According to his binary, the West, or Occident, created a romanticized vision of the East, or Orient, in order to justify colonial and imperialist intentions. This Occident-Orient binary is focused on the Western vision of the East instead of any truths about the East. His theories are rooted in Hegel's Master-slave dialectic: The Occident would not exist without the Orient and vice versa. Further, P writers created this irrational, feminine, weak "Other" to contrast with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist ambitions, said influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.

The term the "West" may also be used pejoratively by certain tendencies and especially critical of the influence of the traditional West, due to the history of most of the members of the traditional West being previously involved, at one time or another, in outright imperialism and colonialism. Some of these critics also claim that the traditional West has continued to engage in what might be viewed as modern implementations of imperialism and colonialism, such as neoliberalism and globalization. (It should be noted that many Westerners who subscribe to a positive view of the traditional West are also very critical of neoliberalism and globalization, for their allegedly negative effects on both the developed and developing world.)

Allegedly, definitions of the term "Western world" that some may consider "ethnocentric" are considered by some to be "constructed" around one or another Western culture. The British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote about this contrast: East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, expressing his belief that somebody from the West "can never understand the Asian cultures" as the latter "differ too much" from the Western cultures. Some may view this alleged incompatibility as a precursor to Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory.

Paradoxically, today Asia and Africa to varying degrees may be considered quasi-Western. Many East Asians and South Asians and Africans and others associate or even identify with the cosmopolitan cultures and international societies referred to sometimes as Western. Likewise, many in the West identify with a transcultural humanity, a notion often found in visions of the sacred.

From a very different perspective, it has also been argued that the idea of the West is, in part, a non-Western invention, deployed in the non-West to shape and define non-Western pathways through or against modernity.^[27]

See also[link]

• Americanization
• Anglicisation
• Anglosphere
• Europeanisation
• Indo-European languages
• Lusomundo
• Russification
• Western mystery tradition
• Westernisation

Organisations

• Group of Eight
• Western European and Others Group

Maps[link]

• 

  Latin alphabet world distribution. The dark green areas shows the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green shows the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts

• 

  Legal Systems of the World

• 

  Religions of the world, mapped by distribution.

• 

  Map showing relative degree of religiosity by country. Based on a 2006-2008 worldwide survey by Gallup.

• 

  Human language families

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ankerl, Guy (2000). Coexisting contemporary civilizations : Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and West. INU societal research. Vol.1:. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5. 
• Bavaj, Riccardo: "The West": A Conceptual Exploration , European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: November 28, 2011.
• Duchesne, Ricardo (2011): The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 28, Leiden and Boston: Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5
• J.F.C. Fuller. A Military History of the Western World. Three Volumes. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1987 and 1988.

V. 1. From the earliest times to the Battle of Lepanto; ISBN 0-306-80304-6.

V. 2. From the defeat of the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Waterloo; ISBN 0-306-80305-4.

V. 3. From the American Civil War to the end of World War II; ISBN 0-306-80306-2.

This article needs attention from an expert on the subject. See the talk page for details. WikiProject Psychology may be able to help recruit an expert. (May 2012)

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World is a 2009 book written by Iain McGilchrist that deals with the specialist hemispheric functioning of the brain. The differing world views of the right and left brain (the "Master" and "emissary" in the title, respectively) have, according to the author, shaped Western culture since the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the growing conflict between these views has implications for the way the modern world is changing.^[1] In part, McGilchrist's book, which is the product of twenty years of research,^[2] reviews the evidence of previous related research and theories, and based on this and cultural evidence, the author arrives at his own conclusions.

The Master and His Emissary received mostly favourable reviews upon its publication. Critics praised the book as being a landmark publication that could alter readers' perspective of how they viewed the world; A.C. Grayling, however, commented about the book that "the findings of brain science are nowhere near fine-grained enough yet to support the large psychological and cultural conclusions Iain McGilchrist draws".^[2]

The Master and His Emissary was shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize,^[3] and was longlisted for the Royal Society 2010 Prize for Science Books.^[4]

Background and influences[link]

In an interview with Frontier Psychiatrist, McGilchrist cites two main influences on his work: the psychiatrist John Cutting, and the Chicago psychologist David McNeill. McGilchrist states: "What I began to see – and it was John Cutting's work on the right hemisphere that set me thinking – was that the difference lay not in what they [the two hemispheres] do, but how they do it."^[5] In the same interview, the author explains: "Some very subtle research by David McNeill, amongst others, confirms that thought originates in the right hemisphere, is processed for expression in speech by the left hemisphere, and the meaning integrated again by the right (which alone understands the overall meaning of a complex utterance, taking everything into account)."^[5]

Synopsis[link]

The 608 page book is divided into an introduction, two parts and a conclusion. In the introduction, McGilchrist states that "there is, literally, a world of difference between the [brain] hemispheres. Understanding quite what that is has involved a journey through many apparently unrelated areas: not just neurology and psychology, but philosophy, literature and the arts, and even, to some extent, archaeology and anthropology."^[6]

Part One: The Divided Brain[link]

In the first part, "The Divided Brain", McGilchrist describes the functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and their respective and at times conflicting "world views". One of the core themes of the book is the importance of differentiation and integration, and of the integration of the two.

Superior-lateral view of the brain, showing left and right hemispheres.

Part Two: How the Brain Has Shaped Our World[link]

In the second part, "How the Brain Has Shaped Our World", the author describes the evolution of Western culture, as influenced by hemispheric brain functioning, from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and Reformation; the Enlightenment; Romanticism and Industrial Revolution; to the modern and postmodern worlds which, to our detriment, are becoming increasingly dominated by the left brain.

Reception[link]

The book received a number of positive reviews in newspapers and journals. Reviewing The Master and His Emissary in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jacob Freedman wrote the book “valiantly addresses the effect hemispheric asymmetry has had on Western civilization" and that it chronicled "how the left brain's determined reductionism and the right brain's insightful and holistic approach have shaped music, language, politics, and art."^[7] A review by Bryan Appleyard in Times Online described the book as suggesting "we are thinking more and more like machines, and risk losing what makes us human",^[8] while David Cox in the Evening Standard wrote that the author "shows convincingly that the degeneracy of the West springs from our failure to manage the binary division of our brains."^[9] In a positive review in The Guardian, philosopher Mary Midgley wrote that the book “points out the complexity, the divided nature of thought itself and asks about its connection with the structure of the brain",^[10] and that "though neurologists may well not welcome it because it asks them new questions, the rest of us will surely find it splendidly thought-provoking".^[10] In another positive review in Standpoint magazine, Professor Adam Zeman wrote that McGilcrist "extends [the] received wisdom with a hugely ambitious, absorbing and questionable thesis: the two hemispheres have radically contrasting personalities; that they live in a state of creative tension, sometimes declining into open war; and that their struggle for supremacy provides the key to understanding the major cultural movements of human history.^[11] In The Times Literary Supplement W. F. Bynum wrote: "McGilchrist's careful analysis of how brains work is a veritable tour de force, gradually and skilfully revealed. I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience."^[12]

In a mixed review in Literary Review A. C. Grayling wrote that the book was "beautifully written, erudite, fascinating and adventurous” but added, "the findings of brain science are nowhere near fine-grained enough yet to support the large psychological and cultural conclusions Iain McGilchrist draws".^[2] A negative review in The Economist stated that the book resorte to “generalisations of breathtaking sweep" and that the second part of the book "has plainly become untethered from its moorings in brain science".^[13]

Bibliography[link]

• McGilchrist, Iain (2009). The Master and His Emissary. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-14878-X. 

See also[link]

• Dehumanization
• Modernism
• Philosophy of mind
• Sociocultural evolution

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Brain Matters: The divided mind. Has our civilisation suffered from a failure to manage the binary division of our brains? Talk given by McGilchrist at the Wellcome Collection in April 2012
• Author's profile at All Souls College, University of Oxford
• The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. RSA Keynote by Iain McGilchrist

Further study[link]

Essays[link]

• McGilchrist, Iain (2 January 2010). "The Battle of the Brain: The mind's great conflict spills over onto the world stage". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574609992107994238.html. Retrieved 2010-01-03. 

Interviews[link]

• Crispin, Jessa (3 February 2010). "An Interview with Iain McGilchrist". Bookslut. http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_02_015677.php. Retrieved 2010-02-03. 
• Mitchell, Natasha (19 June 2010). "The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the reshaping of Western civilisation" (Audio podcast). ABC Radio National All in the Mind. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2010/2928822.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-23.  A transcript is also available.
• Staff (4 February 2010). "Interview with Iain McGilchrist". Frontier Psychiatrist. http://frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk/interview-with-iain-mcgilchrist/. Retrieved 2010-02-05. 
• Staff (14 November 2009). "Two worlds of the left and right brain" (Audio podcast). BBC Radio 4 Today. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8360000/8360221.stm. Retrieved 2009-12-24. 

Lectures[link]

• McGilchrist, Iain (17 Nov 2010). "The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" (Video). The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA). http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/iain-mcgilchrist. Retrieved 2011-01-26. 

Parts of this lecture were republished by the RSA in October 2011 as one of a series of "RSA Animates" with cartoonist Andrew Park's illustrations.^{[L 1]} The ten minute animation accompanying McGilchrist's talk took Park two months to complete.^{[L 2]}

• McGilchrist, Iain (May 2011). "Things Are Not What They Seem" (Video). Schumacher College. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiHStLfjP0. Retrieved 2011-06-05. 

Other reviews[link]

• Crispin, Jessa (21 December 2009). "Half and Half". The Smart Set, The Pennoni Honors College, Drexel University. http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article12210901.aspx. Retrieved 2010-01-04. 
• Flanagan, Owen (21 December 2009). "The vast left-brain conspiracy". New Scientist CultureLab blog. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/12/the-left-brain-plot-for-world-domination.php?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news. Retrieved 2009-12-21. 
• (Romanian) Iana, Cristina (27 November 2009). "Studiu: Emisferele cerebrale dreaptă şi stângă au personalităţi opuse". adevarul.ro international. http://www.adevarul.ro/international/in_jurul_lumii/Emisferele-personalitati-cerebrale-dreapta-stanga_0_160784389.html. Retrieved 2009-12-24. ^{[OR 1]}
• Vernon, Mark (22 January 2010). "What the other half doesn't know". Philosophy and Life Blog. http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/01/22/What-the-other-half-doesn-t-know. Retrieved 2010-01-28.  Vernon, a writer, journalist and columnist with The Guardian, writes: "At last! A book on neuroscience that is a thrilling read, philosophically astute and with wonderful science."
• Williams, Ray. B. (22 February 2010). "Why we need to use both sides of our brain". National Post (blog). http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpposted/archive/2010/02/22/why-we-need-to-use-both-sides-of-our-brain.aspx. Retrieved 2010-02-22. 
• Kingerlee, Roger; Testa, Rita (2011). "Review of The Master and his Emissary". Neuropsychoanalysis (Karnac Books for the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society) 12 (2): 222–226. 
• Ellis, Robert M. (10 January 2012). "'The Master and his Emissary' by Iain McGilchrist: An Extended Review". moralobjectivity.net (website). http://www.moralobjectivity.net/Master_and_his_Emissary.html. Retrieved 2012-04-15. 

Further reading[link]

• Jaynes, Julian (2000). The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-05707-2.  (Paperback) First published 1976.
• Ornstein, Robert (1998). The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres. Harcourt Brace International. ISBN 978-0-15-600627-9. 

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