MODERN AGE
many of the mechanisms employed, such
as those responsible for homeostasis, are
relatively simple feedback control systems,
which give the appearance of final causality but are really just efficient causality. So
it is difficult to infer final causality on the
basis of such mechanisms, even if they do
function to enable life. But final causality has become prominent recently with
the growing awareness of the anthropic
principle, which states that the universe is
fine-tuned for life and that were any laws
or initial conditions even slightly different,
life could not have arisen. Although not a
scientific principle, it utilizes the findings of
science and the extremely small probability
SUMMER 2014
that so many things could have happened
by chance to infer the final causality. Curiously, however, the author does not discuss
this subject in the book.
The epilogue of the book is quite interesting but only tangentially related to the
subject matter of the other chapters. It deals
with the problem of freedom, rights, and
education and culture in language that will
be familiar to readers of this journal.
Overall this book will be valuable for those
who want to get some insight into the way
that science is understood and fitted into an
Aristotelian framework. Those who are seeking answers to the hard questions this poses
will have to look elsewhere.
the stark truth about
western civilization
R. V. Young
How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity
by Rodney Stark (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2014)
R
odney Stark’s account of the triumph
of Western modernity is a remarkable
book and ought to prove useful for anyone
interested in grasping the unique contribution of the West to the well-being of humanity and defending it against its numerous
and vociferous academic critics. In order to
appreciate the book fully, however, and to
use it effectively, one must recognize what
it achieves and what it does not. For the
most part, How the West Won is not a work
of original scholarship but rather a skillfully
deployed compendium of myriad secondary
sources, although Stark does from time to
R. V. Young is editor of Modern Age.
62
time draw upon original research that he
has published in earlier volumes. It is no
surprise that his argument is sounder and
more cogent in some academic areas than in
others. Happily, he is best in assessing the
economic, social, and political development
of the Western world, where the need for
reliable information and interpretation is
currently most pressing.
And the need is pressing. As Stark’s introduction points out, “Forty years ago the most
important and popular freshman course at
the best American colleges and universities was ‘Western Civilization.’ . . . But this
course has long since disappeared from most
college catalogues on grounds that Western
REVIEWS
civilization is but one of many civilizations
and it is ethnocentric and arrogant for us to
study ours.” Citing Bruce Thornton, Stark
further observes that such courses are now
widely regarded as mere rationalizations “for
Western oppression and hegemony” (1).
Like so much conservative scholarship
nowadays, How the West Won undertakes the
crucial but unenviable task of proving in minute detail and with the massive accumulation
of evidence what ought to be self-evident to
any disinterested observer whose vision is
not warped by ideological astigmatism. Any
rational, impartial evaluation will judge the
material comfort and prosperity characteristic of the modern era, along with the rule
of law and administrative prowess that make
them possible, to be unique achievements
of Western civilization. Moreover, their
emergence in the West are not fortuitous,
random phenomena: the sheer physical fact
of triumphant modernity is directly attributable to the convergence of Greek thought
and Judeo-Christian revelation in the formation of European culture. Imperialism,
slavery, oppression, and violence—the sins
with which the West has been saddled—are
common to all civilizations; the industrial
revolution, scientific medicine, the symphony
orchestra—these benefits and countless
others are exclusive creations of the West.
To ignore this manifest reality requires a credence in coincidence verging on superstition.
Nevertheless, the presumption that Western civilization is exceptionally violent,
exploitative, and repressive has dominated
the discourse of our academic and media
elites for decades. Dissent from this orthodox “narrative” is subject to scorn, vilification, and general opprobrium and is rarely
afforded a hearing. The intention of How the
West Won is to discredit the general thesis of
Western culpability and to refute as many
of the specific charges as the author can fit
between the covers of this one substantial
book. Although I have some reservations
about how Stark frames and develops the
argument, there is no denying his extraordinary success in the gargantuan task that he
has set for himself.
The book is divided into five parts, comprising three to five chapters each. The first
part, “Classical Beginnings (500 BC–AD
500),” takes up successively the contributions of “Athens” and “Jerusalem” and concludes with a surprisingly dour dismissal of
“Rome.” In most respects, there is nothing
novel about Stark’s exposition of the Greek
“miracle,” which has been recognized since
the time of the Romans and firmly established as an element of Western civilization’s
self-identification since the Renaissance.
Stark treats the Greek achievement under
seven headings: warfare, democracy, economic progress, literacy, the arts, technology, and, finally, “the most lasting of all the
Greek achievements: speculative philosophy
and formal logic” (15). He does not maintain
that the Greeks were the exclusive inventors
of all their practices and institutions; the
point is that they developed and established
them rationally and systematically as a permanent part of their culture.
Contemporary critics harp on Greek slavery and imperial exploitation, for example,
of the weaker city-states by the Athenians;
but, as Stark points out, these were the areas
in which the Greeks failed to distinguish
themselves from the typical contemporary
regimes and virtually every civilization
that preceded theirs in known history. “As
the ratio of slaves to free citizens grew,” he
observes, “Greek progress declined proportionately. No Greek philosopher was sufficiently ‘enlightened’ to have condemned
slavery” (29). Similarly, Stark observes, “If
the Greek ‘miracle’ was based on the existence of many independent city-states, Greek
63
MODERN AGE
progress stagnated as the city-states were
submerged beneath new empires” (30). The
fact remains, however, that the Greeks, while
failing to live up to their own best insights,
offered an indispensable model for many of
the most important attributes of subsequent
Western civilization.
The condemnation of slavery, Stark maintains, “awaited the rise of Christianity: the
first known instance of the general abolition
of slavery anywhere in the world lay a millennium in the future in medieval Europe”
(29). The attitude that ended slavery emerges
along with many other beneficial features
from Christianity’s Jewish foundation,
which is expounded in the next chapter,
“Jerusalem’s Rational God.”
Stark’s principal thesis in this chapter is
that the scientific method of investigating
nature by means of careful observation and
rational inference, which leads to a belief in
the possibility of progress, results from the
Judeo-Christian conception of the world
as the work of a rational Creator. This is
hardly a new idea, and Stark might well be
accused of oversimplifying and exaggerating
it. In my view, the theme is handled with
more finesse by other works, such as Stanley Jaki’s The Road of Science and the Ways
to God (1980), which Stark does not cite.
St. Thomas Aquinas is credited with “optimism about progress” on the basis of three
secondary sources (only one of them dealing specifically with St. Thomas): “Because
humans could not see into the very essence
of things, Thomas argued, they must reason
their way to knowledge, step by step—using
the tools of philosophy, especially the principles of logic, to construct theology” (41).
Although one can see a connection between
Thomistic theological procedures and the
scientific method, the observation furnishes
an exiguous basis for deeming the Angelic
Doctor an apostle of progress.
64
SUMMER 2014
Stark quotes City of God to assert that
St. Augustine was likewise confident of
human progress: “Progress in general was
inevitable as well [as progress in theology],
he supposed. Augustine wrote: ‘Has not the
genius of man invented and applied countless
astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention,
so that this vigour of mind . . . betokens an
inexhaustible wealth in the nature which
can invent, learn, or employ such arts’” (41).
This unusual recourse to a primary text is
not altogether satisfactory, since Stark does
not mention that the quoted passage comes
in a chapter entitled “Of the good things
with which the Creator has filled even this
accursed life.” It immediately follows a
chapter entitled “Of the troubles besides
those evils common to the good and the bad
which especially pertain to the travail of the
just.” This preceding chapter concludes by
proving that “the testimony of so many and
such evils” shows “this life to be accursed.”
It is only by taking some of St. Augustine’s
statements out of context that he may be
characterized as an unequivocal believer in
earthly human progress.
S
tark’s disdain for Rome and its contribution to Western civilization likewise
seems exaggerated and based on a rather
selective assessment of the evidence. “The
Roman Interlude” closes by asserting that
the fall of Rome was not the fall of civilization: “To the contrary, with the stultifying
effects of Roman repression now ended,
the glorious journey toward modernity
resumed” (66). Stark makes much of the
fact that Roman culture and technology
both derived from the Greeks. Roman
temples, aqueducts, baths, mines, and even
the famous system of roads are dismissed as
negligible achievements (53). Roman literature is dismissed on the basis of one second-
REVIEWS
ary source published in 1867, which asserts
that the plays of Plautus and Terence are all
“translations” of Greek originals (52). The
relation between these Roman playwrights
and their Greek models has come to be seen
as a bit more complicated by a century and
a half of subsequent classical scholarship. In
any case, it is odd to disparage Roman literature without so much as a mention of Virgil,
Horace, Ovid, and a host of other brilliant
Latin writers.
In any case, the Romans cheerfully admitted how much they derived from Greek
philosophy, literature, and science. Graecia
capta ferum victorem cepit et artis / intulit
agresti Latio, Horace writes, and to the
Emperor Augustus, no less: “Captive Greece
conquered the savage victor and brought the
arts into rustic Italy” (Epistolae 2.1.156–57).
In the “blissful groves” of Elysium, the shade
of Anchises tells his heroic son Aeneas that
while others will surpass them in the arts,
oratory, and philosophy, it will fall to the
Romans “to impose their rule on the peoples
(these will be your arts) and add settled custom to peace, to spare the conquered and cast
down the proud” (Aeneid 6.851–53). Cicero
(whom Stark mentions only twice and not in
the chapter on Rome) makes a similar claim
for Roman distinction at the beginning of
the Tusculan Disputations.
Rarely did the Romans live up to this
exalted image of themselves; mortal men
and their institutions rarely do. Nevertheless, the ideal is a critical part of the Western
heritage. Cicero and Virgil and, in his own
way, H
­ orace are arguably more important
in shaping the minds of—for instance—the
American Founders than direct contact with
the Greeks. The crucial role of Rome in mediating the Greek and Judeo-Christian tradition is a point well made by Remi Brague in
Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (1992, trans. 2002), a book that Stark
does not mention, which might have added a
rich layer of subtlety to his discussion.
The motivation of Stark’s dismissal of the
Roman contribution to Western civilization
is revealed in the second and third parts
of How the West Won, “The Not-So-Dark
Ages (500–1200)” and “Medieval Transformations (1200–1500).” These sections
are the heart of the book and constitute an
invaluable contribution to any discussion of
the unique place of the West in the history
of the world. It was during the so-called
Dark Ages, Stark maintains, that numerous advances in technology and trade were
developed, and even the rudiments of capitalist free enterprise—counterintuitively in
Christian monasteries. Later in the Middle
Ages the university and the foundations of
modern science emerged. Contrary to the
typical historical versions, inventions, trade,
and the general level of culture advanced
much more rapidly in Europe than in the
Islamic world. The manifest superiority of
Western weapons and tactics during the
Crusades are a notable demonstration,
since the Crusaders were able to defeat
Muslim forces and dominate the Holy Land
for several centuries, although they were
fighting far from home and were vastly
outnumbered.
Stark points out that rapid European development during this period owes much to the
beneficent influence of the Church, which
was important both as an effective administrative institution and as a prophetic voice of
liberating doctrine. He posits a sharp contrast
between the Judeo-Christian emphasis on the
individual, endowed with free will, and other
religions and civilizations, which stressed fate
and the subjection of the individual to hierarchical powers and his submersion in the mass
of indistinguishable humanity. Much of his
animus against the Roman Empire arises
from its tendency to resemble the oppressive,
65
MODERN AGE
progress-smothering empires of Asia Minor
and the Far East. Hence chapter 4, “The Blessings of Disunity,” maintains that the breakup
of the Roman hegemony engendered a productive decentralization to the advantage of
economic and political development. While
Stark’s argument is undoubtedly overstated,
the case he makes is both important and basically undeniable. The long-standing myth
that the modern world emerged fully formed
out of a millennium of anarchy, primitivism,
and superstition in the teeth of opposition
from the principal medieval institution, the
Catholic Church, is absurd on its face.
The remaining parts of the book, “The
Dawn of Modernity (1500–1750)” and
“Modernity (1750–­­­­ ),” are devoted to an
exposition of the continuity of the modern
Western world with its roots in Athens and
Jerusalem. Stark has enlightening observations regarding numerous controversial
aspects of the ascent of the European civi-
SUMMER 2014
lization to political, economic, and cultural
domination of the world over the past few
centuries. While acknowledging the evils of
colonialism and slavery, he also notes that
they are hardly exclusive to the West, and
that it was Western Christendom that first
condemned and eventually eliminated the
latter. As for colonialism, the peoples that
suffered it were also introduced to the benefits of Western liberty and prosperity. Stark
is unapologetically enthusiastic for bourgeois society, which he credits with bringing
about the Industrial Revolution. Although
numerous evils are ascribed to the latter,
for Stark it was the engine of prosperity
and social reform. He credits it with ending
child labor, for example, which had always
been there, by making it visible and thus
subject to public indignation. And of course
the material wealth generated by large-scale,
mechanized manufacturing cannot be
doubted. Stark concludes his final chap-
“Donald Devine spells out the solution for the modern GOP. . . .
Intellectual ammunition for the conservative movement.”
—SENATOR RAND PAUL
L
ongtime Reagan adviser Donald J. Devine shows
America’s path to recovery: through twenty-firstcentury “fusionism”—the synthesis of freedom and tradition
that Reagan said was the essence of modern conservatism.
“Prepare for enlightenment.” — WASHINGTON TIMES
“At last someone has produced a worthy successor to Frank
Meyer’s classic In Defense of Freedom.” —EDWIN J. FEULNER
“Must reading—an outstanding book that will be around for a
long time to come.” —LEE EDWARDS , author of William F. Buckley Jr.
To order, go to www.isibooks.org
or call (800) 526-7022
66
REVIEWS
ter, “Globalization and Colonialism,” by
observing, “No doubt Western modernity
has its limitations and discontents. Still, it
is far better than the known a­ lternatives—
not only, or even primarily, because of its
advanced technology but because of its fundamental commitment to freedom, reason,
and human dignity” (370).
This assessment is hard to dispute in
the most general sense. At a recent conference, I rather diffidently began to point
out some of the problems with the modern
Western world, only to be bluntly interrupted and asked, “Do you want to go
back to nineteenth-century dentistry?” The
short answer to this point-clenching rejoinder is “No.” But, like Stark’s title and his
final sentence, it rests on the premise that
“Western civilization” and “modernity” are
virtually identical, when in fact there are
many critical differences, despite a large
overlap. Moreover, modern is hardly a univocal term. If I have dwelt a good deal on
the shortcomings of How the West Won, it is
because the book is too important and too
good not to have been better. I wish Rodney Stark had resisted overstatement and
selective quotation. I also wish that he had
been less polemical in tone and considerably
more careful about details (for example, the
confusion of the Latin “Vulgate” Bible with
vernacular Bibles, 352). Above all, I wish
that he had acknowledged the ambivalence
that any conservative is bound to feel about
our “modern age,” which is the point of this
journal’s title.
the path to a higher freedom
Tobias J. Lanz
The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger, trans. Thomas
Friese (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2013)
T
his is a book about freedom. It was first
published in 1951 as a response to the
Nazi experience and the perceived threat of
Soviet expansion. Its explicit focus was resistance to the totalitarian state. Yet its implicit
focus is resistance to all forms of social
control, including the soft totalitarianism of
present-day mass democracy. And this why
Ernst Jünger’s classic remains relevant today,
and that is why Telos Press has reissued it.
Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) was twentieth-
Tobias J. Lanz teaches politics at the University of
South Carolina. He is editor of Beyond Capitalism
and Socialism: A New Statement of an Old Ideal.
century Germany’s most prolific author.
He was also the most controversial. He was
a highly decorated soldier in World War 1
who first gained literary fame writing about
his war experiences. Jünger aligned himself
with the political Right during the 1920s
and 1930s and wrote scathing attacks against
the Weimar regime and the decadence of
liberal democracy and communism. He
championed a German nationalism based
on aristocratic and martial values.
His early writings gained him a reputation as a fascist and militarist, an image that
haunted him for the rest of his long literary
career. But Jünger distanced himself from
67