Much of the objection against Western Civ. is Whiggish Western Civ. - the glorious progress of Western civilization against Asiatic barbarism. I thin… - Patrick J. Geary
" "Much of the objection against Western Civ. is Whiggish Western Civ. - the glorious progress of Western civilization against Asiatic barbarism. I think that that is dead, except as a rhetorical device. The important issue is that, for good and for ill, the world in every corner has been very, very profoundly affected and transformed by certain kinds of cultural attitudes and institutions, which need to be understood, and which developed in, and then out, of western Eurasia. Whether one likes them or not, we have to understand them. If the largest country in the world, China, adopts a philosophy which is at least theoretically developed by a German Jew in the nineteenth century... (1998)
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About Patrick J. Geary
(born September 26, 1948) is an American medieval historian and Professor of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Also Known As
Birth Name:
Patrick Joseph Geary
Native Name:
Patrick Geary
Alternative Names:
Geary, Patrick J.
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Additional quotes by Patrick J. Geary
Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.
As Frankish, Longobard, Anglo-Saxon, and Visigothic kingdoms assimilated surviving Roman political and cultural traditions, they became the center of post-Roman Europe, while new barbarian peoples, most notably the Saxons, Slavs, and Avars, replaced them on the periphery, Ethnic labels remained significant designations within the Romano-barbarian kingdoms, but they designated multiple and at times even contradictory aspects of social and political identity
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The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be... The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be.
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